It is Saturday, September 3, the bye week following the AFL season, and 6365 people have come to Whitten Oval in the Melbourne suburb of Footscray to watch a game of football played by women – a feat that should not be unlikely but, until now, has been.
On this breezy spring evening, families are taking selfies with “Sid” the bulldog, there is music in the wind, seared sausage meat in nostrils and Mr Whippy in hands. Under lights, Auskick girls in pigtails dance across the immaculate oval.
Up on a grandstand balcony, commentators in a makeshift television studio are talking to television viewers. Plenty of them. The ratings for this exhibition game between the Western Bulldogs and the Melbourne Demons will peak at 1.05 million, besting every single Saturday night AFL match for the year. (“Landmark” quickly becomes the default descriptor of the evening.)
Meanwhile, down at basement level, two dozen players sit quietly in a tiered theatrette. They’re stretched and oiled. They hold Sherrins and bounce on the balls of their feet. They’ve strapped their ankles, removed nose rings and tied topknots.
Jordan Roughead, the ruckman of the men’s Bulldogs AFL team, sits chewing gum. “Let’s go, girls,” he says, clapping. “Let’s go.”
Also here are club powerbrokers Peter Gordon, Sue Alberti and Chris Grant, but the person commanding the room is Paul Groves, the coach. “Write your commitment,” he says, staring at his team, tapping the whiteboard. “Name, and a couple of words about what you’re bringing tonight.”
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I am here early, before the inaugural season of the long-awaited AFL Women’s league kicks off, to shadow the Doggies through the spring, to witness the birth of a team as they are drafted and drilled – and as they make history.
The current team is an All-Stars group, built from the best available talent, but as the league is officially born, they will be siphoned off to one of eight foundation clubs. The Dogs can’t keep them all. Sitting in the third row, for instance, is Moana Hope, whose hard-knocks life featured on Australian Story, and nearby is whippet-fast Steph Chiocci, the team captain. Both will end up playing at Collingwood.
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But there are some who will remain in red, white and blue hoops. Emma Kearney is one. She walks to the whiteboard and writes: I will run defensively to create turnovers for my team. Gun forward Katie Brennan, with a bandaged bicep, is another. Her note is all caps: WORK RATE. COURAGE. BRING OTHERS INTO GAME. SUPPORT. Ball magnet Ellie Blackburn is similarly selfless: I WILL RUN DEFENSIVELY AND LOCATE MY OPPONENT. WOOF WOOF!
The assistant coaches hammer home a few additional messages, a mix of tactics and affirmation. (“We win the ground balls, we kill ’em” and “Have a great time, show ’em how far women’s footy has come.”) Upstairs, the Demons club song begins playing in the twilight.
Groves says they’d better get used to what waits outside: the whirl of activity in the arena. Cameras and crowds are their reality now.
“I need you to coach yourselves out there,” he says. “You need to be verbal, let each other know what’s going on, deal with whatever happens.”
He highlights three words that the team identified as most important: unified, relentless, courageous.
“These words are pretty strong,” he says. “Is that what you’re going to give us?”
YES! they yell.
“Is that what I’m going to see tonight?”
YES! they scream. LET’S GO, GIRLS!
“You’ve got a great opportunity out there tonight, right?”
It’s bloody awesome! roars one.
“It is,” says Groves. “So I want that spark! Pick a girl up when she does something good. Pick up a girl when she falls. It sends a message that, ‘You know what? We’re here to fight. We’re here for our mates.’ ”
Between sips of Red Bull and sparkling water, Paul Groves frowns. It’s a Wednesday morning a few weeks later, early October, and he sits in a Docklands cafe with assistant coach Mick Sandry and operations manager Glenn Balmforth. Draft day is here.
“We’re on countdown now,” Groves says. “Last night we put the computer away and just said, ‘We’ve done enough.’ We’re prepared.”
This draft is like no other. Only eight spots on the Bulldogs list are taken so far – by various marquee players, priority players, rookies and free agents – meaning they need to draft 19 women. Basically, they have a few frantic hours to select two-thirds of their roster. Pick poorly today, it could take years to recover.
They have a “depth chart” ranking more than 100 players, categorised by position. They have to balance getting the best talent and having, say, enough tall defenders and small forwards. Every team is juggling with the same problem, which Groves hopes to exploit. “We’ve spread the word that we’re after a ruck very early, and we’re not,” he says, smiling. “We’ve made that known, to try to get another team to take rucks, because I think we can get a good one later.”
The guiding trait for him is leg speed. The AFL Women’s league will have 16 players per side on the field, instead of 18. It’s one of a handful of tweaks made to ensure the inaugural season produces an entertaining spectacle. The quarters are shorter, too, and the footballs are two sizes smaller than the men’s game’s version, because female hands are smaller. In a game of inches, a smaller ball should mean cleaner marks and gathers, while fewer players on the ground will open up the play. “But with all that extra space, you have to be able to cover the ground,” Groves says. “You’ve gotta be able to run.”
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Groves is biased. He was a national level triple-jumper who retired at 23 and played footy as a dashing wingman at local club St Bedes Mentone. His coach was the now reigning AFL premiership winner Luke Beveridge, but Groves first joined the coaching ranks by working with clubs in the TAC Cup, the AFL’s prime junior talent feeder league, watching elite kids named Adam Treloar and Dylan Shiel, Peter Wright and Touk Miller.
The draft kicks off after lunch. Loudspeakers thump Taylor Swift and Katy Perry, and AFL boss Gillon McLachlan talks about the “ambitious idea” that is now reality. “The first game is four months away,” he says, “but the game has already changed forever.”
The Dogs get their desired first pick: Jamie Lambert, a ferocious 22-year-old midfielder who can rack up as many as 10 tackles a game. “But she’s got tricks, too,” says Groves. “She can take a hanger and kick a goal.”
Their second choice is utility Aasta O’Connor. Sandry is shocked that she was available at pick No. 12. “If she hadn’t done her knee a year ago, she would have been a marquee player,” he says. “At that pick, she’s a bargain.”
Players and coaches climb on stage for short speeches and interviews. A father holds up his phone the entire time, FaceTiming the event for his wife. The slogan for the event is “Eight clubs. One dream. See what we create.” The men’s league has 18 teams, but the AFL was adamant that the female talent pool is not yet deep enough to sustain so many sides. Indeed, several of the girls drafted are high performers plucked from netball, rugby union sevens, baseball, gridiron and Gaelic football. There is a former striker from the Canberra United soccer team in the W-League, and an all rounder from the Brisbane Heat T20 cricket side. There are competitors from boundary umpiring, surf lifesaving and Ultimate Frisbee. With pick No. 53, the Bulldogs take Brooke Lochland, a former speed skater, and with No. 76, they grab beach volleyball star Lauren Spark.
Hannah Scott is their third-round pick. She started playing at nine, and within a year terrified the boys. She recalls an early game, knocking two lads down like dominoes. “They both started crying,” she remembers. “The umpire said to me, ‘You haven’t done anything wrong, but they’re crying, so I’m going to give them a free kick.’”
When she turned 12, Scott was told she couldn’t play with the boys anymore. Almost every girl here has this tale of frustration – forced to give up footy on the cusp of adolescence, “because you might get hurt”. A youth girls competition didn’t exist until 2004, and only after three schoolgirls took action through the Equal Opportunity Commission and the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal. Now there are hundreds of teams, but not when Scott was little. “It affected my happiness for quite a while,” she says, standing outside.
“To have no choice because of my gender was difficult. It was hard. I went inside my shell.”
She only returned to footy at 18, playing for the Eastern Devils in Mulgrave, the muddy heart of the Melbourne rain belt. Scott is a hard player, with muscles and tattoos. Her favourite thing is sticking a tackle. “It can be a game-changer. It gets me pumped.”
The final pick is read out – No. 145, Sarah Jolly, to Melbourne – and there are audible groans. One girl buries her face in her mum’s bosom. Another is cradled by teammates – the only one left without a seat when the music stopped. A girl named Sarah Perkins stands sobbing. The big full-forward walks out alone, but Daisy Pearce – a Demons star and marketing face of the competition – puts an arm around her waist. “You can’t control that,” Pearce soothes. “All you can do is get your body right, stay positive, hope for a call-up in the coming weeks as a free agent.” Be hopeful, she says, and ready.
A fortnight later, Adelaide selects Perkins, and she moves interstate to play for the Crows. She’s on a list. “Whether you’re a free agent, marquee player, priority selection or draftee, there’s no difference when we walk into the club,” says Pearce. “We’re all the same.”
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The girls walk into Whitten Oval less than a week later, with mums, dads, brothers and sisters. Scott brings her partner, Jess Havlin, who was with her at the draft. “I was beside her, and beside myself!” Havlin says, beaming. “Now I’m going to be a good supporter, a good WAG, and get my outfits ready.”
Groves introduces and welcomes the players. Dressed in club polos, they mingle and take tours, meeting their coaches between trays of satay skewers and finger sandwiches. The youngest is Bailey Hunt, 20. She prides herself on her work ethic and honesty. Her grandmother, Lea Smillie, says she is a mother hen. “She protects everyone around her,” she says. “A gentle soul. No ego.”
I wonder how she feels about remuneration. The wage issue is a contentious one.
The average male player earns more than $300,000, but what does gender parity or fairness look like in this context, when the men play a 23-week season with a month-long finals campaign, while the women’s league is seven games and one grand final, and when the men are full-time and the women are part-time? Naturally, the girls would happily play as many games as the guys, and train full-time, but the league took a cautious approach for this first season. No one yet knows how well the product – and football is an entertainment product – will be received by the market in terms of attendance, memberships and ratings, and the concomitant investment of sponsors and advertisers and broadcasting rights deals.
Hunt is pragmatic. “It should be equal in my opinion, but it’s not in my hands, and it doesn’t worry me. You’ve gotta start somewhere; it’ll grow and grow with the financial support.”
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Bulldogs president and prominent lawyer Peter Gordon, on hand at the event, appreciates the conservatism in this first step, but he can also attest to the growth. He has seen a “dramatic uptick” in quality since the exhibition games began, and believes the league erred, for instance, in allowing only eight initial teams, underestimating the swelling size of female junior competitions. “I’ve watched these games, I’ve seen the improvement,” he says. “If you combine that with the increase in numbers at grassroots level, it’s worth the punt.”
Ultimately, the AFL finalises a deal with the AFL Players’ Association. Controversially, players will need to cover their own medical insurance, but included in the salary packages are costs for gear, travel and income protection (and a carers’ allowance for players travelling interstate who have a child under 12 months old). The minimum contracts are set at $8500, priority players $12,000 and marquee players $27,000. Gordon points out that the Bulldogs’ recently retired vice president Sue Alberti was one of eight women – including AFL commissioner Major General Simone Wilkie – on the advisory group that helped shape the new league. “But having said that,” he says, “the deal for those who aren’t marquee players doesn’t feel right to me.”
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In a far eastern suburb of Melbourne, on the first floor of a building opposite a Pizza Hut, sits the Susan Alberti Medical Research Foundation. Alberti sits down at a glass table with biscuits and a bowl of Lindt balls. She wears a necklace of her signature bulbous pearls, her tiny fingers are adorned with big rocks, her white hair is in a perfect coif, and her smile is framed by glossy red lipstick. She sips instant coffee from a china cup, and talks me through her style of football as a child.
“I was never tall, but I was strong and I could tackle hard,” she says. “I was like a vice. And then I was 15, and I wasn’t allowed [to play] anymore. That was incredibly upsetting. I was very teary, for a long time. But times change.”
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Alberti, now a millionaire philanthropist, has become an off-field force for the Western Bulldogs. In 1996, when the club was struggling, she was part of the taskforce that helped save the organisation. She became a board member in 2004 – one of the first female board members in the AFL – and developed a reputation as a fighter, particularly on behalf of women. In 2008, for instance, she watched in disgust as resident Footy Show misogynist Sam Newman groped a lingerie-clad mannequin with a photo of The Age’s chief football writer Caroline Wilson stapled to the head. In a letter to the Nine Network, Alberti and others condemned the skit, but Newman then branded them “liars and hypocrites”, because the involvement of one signatory was in question. (Newman added that female board members “served little purpose”.)
Alberti had the finances to take a stand, and took him on, despite recovering from open-heart surgery, dealing with a stalker, and her husband being unwell. The Nine Network apologised, however, and surrendered a payout to Alberti of almost a quarter of a million dollars. “I remember when we got to the courtroom and Newman was out in the corridor. Chicken,” she spits. “I think it ignited something. The support that I got afterwards was immense.”
Alberti had also been quietly investigating local women’s leagues, watching games, attending luncheons, funnelling money into the sport – the occasional $25,000 cheque, say, or cash to pay for an administrative officer. “I didn’t like what was happening to women,” she says.
“They weren’t being given an opportunity to play the game they loved, and it was their right.”
She heaps praise on McLachlan as a change agent at AFL headquarters. “He listens, he acts,” she says. “He could see the writing on the wall and the dollars in a bank.”
Yet Alberti is perhaps the most dynamic catalyst in establishing the new league – constantly stopped and recognised now as “that women’s footy lady”. She most appreciates the texts and tweets, emails and hugs from the players. “Now they’ve gotta show how good they are,” she says. “They’ve got the opportunity – they’ve gotta perform.”
Tonight is the first time the group will train on Whitten Oval. Inside the rooms they run through the schedule, from touch drills to goal kicking. They get rub-downs from trainers who drive elbows into hips and thumbs into calves. The medical staff works with Elastoplast and scissors. Romy Timmins, getting her shoulder strapped, lifts an arm and gives her pit a sniff: “Just checkin’ if I smell all right,” she says, smirking. “Long day.”
Some of the players do hamstring pliability tests on the floor, trying to stretch their fingers beyond their toes. One girl is annoyed with her score of -5, meaning her fingers reach 5 centimetres short of her toes. The average is +2. Aasta O’Connor (+24) asks who has the best measure in the group, but it’s her mate, Brennan (+25). “F--k, Katie,” she says, laughing. “I mean, good on ’er, but bloody hell.”
Soon they’re on synthetic turf in the indoor gym, handballing in circles, practising trick shots, trying to dribble-kick balls into bins. They’ve established nicknames, too. Following sporting convention, Bailey Hunt is Bails while Libby Birch is Bircha. Tiarna Ernst is Doc (she specialises in obstetrics/gynaecology) while Kearney is Flem (for former Victorian paceman Damien Fleming, because Kearney also plays cricket).
There will be no rigorous time trial tonight. Groves is not big on benchmarking. “You’ve gotta believe they’re doing the work,” he says. “Ruling with an iron fist, you’re not giving them any trust. All you’re doing is highlighting the person who isn’t a great runner.”
He knows they’re working. He sees it in Meghan McDonald, their final free agent – essentially the last girl picked – who thrived in a recent game simulation. He sees it in Birch, who came from a netball background: “She’s played 10 games of footy and the girls are already looking at her and going, ‘Wow.’ ”
At a team meeting, he mentions a line he heard in a podcast last night: Listen to your eyes. What do they think it means? Maybe pay
attention to visual cues, they guess, or study someone you want to emulate. Groves nods. “But for me, it means ‘Back yourself – believe what you see.’ On game day, I’m going to trust every one of you to make decisions.
“Sometimes you’ll be wrong, but I want instinct.”
The girls run out onto the ground now. It’s late November. Summer is coming. Heavy trucks and ambulances fly along Geelong Road, and as the drills begin someone stands on the periphery. The hawkish figure is Lisa Hardeman, a police superintendent, Dogs fan and perhaps the biggest trailblazer in women’s football.
The Lisa Hardeman Medal is awarded to the best player in the Victorian women’s premier division grand final. The Hampson-Hardeman Cup is what the girls played for in the exhibition games, which recognises women’s AFL pioneer Barb Hampson as well as Hardeman, a state player and premiership captain, premiership coach and Victorian coach, and president of the league. She’s here in a mentoring role, and to provide a link to the past. “Initially women’s footy was thought of as a bit of a joke sport,” she says. “I never thought I’d see this.”
As night falls and the players pant and sprint and kick, and the Sherrins spin high in the sky then stick in the hands, I wonder if Hardeman is feeling anything besides pride. I wonder, as the players huddle and laugh, if she feels a pang of envy – regret for what she and others missed?
“Yeah, I’m jealous I can’t play,” she says, sighing. “I am … But seeing these girls out there – that’s amazing. And if I played some role in giving them this opportunity, that’s amazing. That’s enough.”