Moore has attended every training session and every home game in the national water polo league this season for her Cronulla Sharks women's team - without even competing.

Yet when she cheers her team-mates on in the finals of the Australian Water Polo League starting next week, she will be as valuable-a-member of the team as the players in the pool itself.

Spotted as an 11-year-old and playing for Gunnamatta, she was drafted into the Cronulla Water Polo Club, going on to represent at state championships in the under-14, 16 and 18 divisions.

But her world was turned upside down in April 2008 when she was knocked senseless and helped from the pool, blood streaming from her face.

It took four months or more before she would go back into the water, slowly resuming the sport she loves so dearly, even playing in the National League last year.

This year, something inside Moore told her she should bide her time, and not take the spot of someone who just might be as good as her in the pool.

She told her coach she'd keep on training, in case she might one day be needed as an emergency.

Eventually, some of the 16-year-olds and younger members of the Cronulla first grade team began to wonder why the powerfully-built centre forward was doing all the training, and turning up to the games, but not being used.

"I had to tell them in the end,'' said coach Alicia McCormack, the Beijing Olympian and bronze medallist:

"Bridgette was blind in one eye .... the result of that incident in 2008.''

Moore remembers exactly the day her optic nerve was sheared: on April 23, a day before her birthday, two days before Anzac Day, against Sydney University in the first game of the National Club Championships.

"It happened so quickly,'' said Moore at Sutherland Leisure Centre, speaking on her 19th birthday.