AFL

Caroline Wilson

Caroline Wilson has been chief football writer for The Age since 1999. She was the first woman to cover Australian Rules football on a full-time basis and the first woman to win the AFL's gold media award. She has won the AFL Players' Association's football writer of the year (1999) and the AFL Media Association's most outstanding football writer and most outstanding feature writer (2000, 2003, 2005). In 2014 she won the Melbourne Press Club's Graham Perkin award as Australian journalist of the year. She also won a MPC Quill Award in 2003.

Banged up: Nick Riewoldt

Football's lost years in Tasmania

Awash with images of ovals where footy is no longer played, a group of legendary Tasmanians make an emotional pitch to the AFL for their own team.

Marc Murphy leaves the field on Saturday.

Too little, too late from AFL over sexist attacks

The irony of the AFL proudly unveiling its first woman field umpire in a week in which it had utterly failed to take a stand on a series of disgusting sexist verbal attacks aimed at Carlton captain Marc Murphy was lost on the game's leaders.

Jake Carlisle and Marc Murphy.

AFL fails at stamping out sexism, misogyny on the field

The football fraternity's somewhat feeble response to a series of repulsive verbal attacks levelled at Carlton captain Marc Murphy does not reflect well on the game and its still clear default position regarding what happens verbally on the field.

Johann Wagner

Recruit dared to dream before the reality struck

Johann Wagner works nightshift these days in the Roxby Downs mines. He embarks on the six-hour drive from Port Lincoln for the seven-day shift on a week-on, week-off basis that makes even country football virtually impossible apart from the odd cameo.