Squad Goals
As the fourth season of the women's Australian Football League kicks off this month, the spotlight on female players has never been brighter. Underneath all the buzz, however, athletes and activists in Melbourne are still fighting for gender equity.
Mabuhay
AUSTRALIA HAS LONG BEEN A SPORTS-MAD NATION BUT FEW PLACES wear that badge quite as proudly as its cultural capital. People fly to Melbourne from all over the world to catch the courtside action at the Australian Open tennis tournament in January; the thrills and spills of the Formula 1 Grand Prix in March; and the more laid-back Boxing Day Test cricket match in December.
When it comes to on-ground attendance and television-viewing, however, no sports competition is more popular in Australia than the country’s own distinctive code of football. Also known as “Aussie Rules” or “footy”, it’s a faster-paced game compared to association football. The 2016 Grand Final alone – a hotly contested match between the Western Bulldogs and Sydney Swans – drew an audience of 6.5 million Australians.
Originally a way of keeping cricketers fit during the off-season, Aussie Rules had its first game held in 1858 in Melbourne. The 80-minute game works this way: Two teams of 18 players – dressed in guernseys (sleeveless shirts) and shorts – compete for possession of an oval ball. They try and score as many points as possible by kicking it through the four goal posts at each end of the field. The high-octane and physically demanding nature of the sport, which often involves dramatic marking, could explain its enduring appeal.
The Victorian Football League – now known as the AFL (Australian Football League) – was established in 1896. Yet throughout much of AFL’s illustrious history, something was missing. While women have been playing the game and participating in local competitions since its inception, a professional women’s league wasn’t established until late 2016, with a few changes made to the existing game format. For instance, the women’s competition is held during Australia’s sweltering summer months, so a smaller team of 16 women play shorter 60-minute games. The exhilarating first game of the inaugural season of AFL Women’s (AFLW) – between the Collingwood Magpies and Carlton Blues – kicked off in February 2017 at Ikon Park, a stadium in the inner-city suburb of Carlton North.
AFTER A 15-MINUTE TRAM RIDE FROM Flinders Street Station, I meet 33-year-old Kate O’Halloran at Ikon Park on a blue-sky December morning. The award-winning Australian Broadcasting Corporation sports journalist greets me with a hug outside the gates, wearing a black T-shirt bearing the logo for the Kick Like A Girl community radio show she hosts. The RRR program dissects the week in AFLW with stars and fans of the game, focusing not just on the action on the field but the politics off it.
“That first game was much bigger than anyone expected,” O’Halloran says about the AFLW inaugural, as we enter the historic ground. The AFL had anticipated between 5,000 and 10,000 people, but in the end more than 24,500 attended. Spectators spilled into the aisles and perched on fences in the grandstand, framed by the backdrop of Melbourne’s sprawling city skyline.
“They had to turn people away at the gates because the ground was at capacity,” says O’Halloran, whose passion for the game seems to reflect that of its rapidly growing fan base.
“There was an overwhelming sense from people like me, who are passionate about gender equity in sport, that we needed to show the AFL that the public wanted women's football on the biggest stage. The first game sent a loud and clear message.”
Three years on, the message continues to reverberate. Bolstered by free entry to matches and an inclusive family-friendly atmosphere, crowd attendance remains strong. The 2019 AFLW Grand Final drew 53,000 spectators, more than double the number of people who attended the first match in 2017.
That inaugural season did more than just open up football to a wider audience – it also inspired a new generation of players. Before AFLW, there were 960 registered women’s football teams in Australia. By 2018, that figure had risen to 2,281, with more than 1,000 professional and amateur teams in Victoria alone. There are now some 530,000 women and girls playing Aussie Rules in the country.
THE AFLW IS ALSO GROWING, WITH four new teams joining the 2020 season. During the first two years there were eight teams, which expanded to 10 in 2019. The newcomers this season are Gold Coast, Richmond, St Kilda and West Coast. “It’s exciting how quickly AFLW has grown in four years, and how much more it has to grow,” says 26-year the women’s league. After being overlooked in the 2016 AFLW draft, she was recruited by the Adelaide Crows that same year. Perkins went on to be their leading goal-kicker, and played an instrumental role in helping her team win the inaugural AFLW premiership.
Despite her considerable achievements on the field during the league’s first three seasons, and as a pioneer of the AFLW, Perkins is quiet and self-effacing when we meet for a coffee at Red Cup Cafe in Box Hill.
The hip eatery is a five-minute stroll from Box Hill City Oval, where – after being delisted (removed from the team) by the Crows at the end of the 2019 season – Perkins now plays for the Hawthorn Hawks, a state-level team. She’s also a coach for Hawthorn’s Next Generation Academy. When talking about footy, particularly the first AFLW Grand Final at Queensland’s Metricon Stadium, Perkins’ entire demeanor lifts. “I’d been lucky enough to attend AFL Grand Finals in the past, and hear that roar from the crowd when the national anthem ends,” she says. “That happened for us [at the AFLW Grand Final], and it was just spine-tingling! The rest of the match was a blur.”
Appallingly, Perkins has been the target of verbal abuse and online trolling. “I’m not the only one though,” she says. “Carlton player Tayla Harris also spoke out about it. As someone who has copped a fair bit of flack on social media, it was good to see someone else stand up to it.” Harris was the target of sexual harassment after a photo of her kicking a goal during a match against the Western Bulldogs was posted on social media by a news outlet. The image was, controversially, taken down before being reinstated due to public outcry, and sparked a nationwide conversation about the issue.
Harris’ handling of the episode saw a 3.3m-tall bronze statue erected in her honor in Federation Square, and has ultimately triumphed as an inspiring moment in the sport. “At the end of the day, the trolls sit behind a screen using hateful words,” Perkins says. “We're the ones busting our backsides to be professional athletes in a tough environment, proving our worth so that young girls growing up have a better chance than we did.”
BUT TROLLING IS JUST ONE OF MANY issues the AFLW still faces. There’s a laundry list of areas for improvement, including the provision of grounds to play on and upgrades of current infrastructure and facilities, as many of the suburban grounds where the women play only have men’s changing rooms.
The Victorian government has stepped in to support this cause, investing AU$20 million to redevelop Ikon Park as the home of women’s football, along with a further AU$25 million to improve infrastructure and facilities at four other grounds. However, more funding is required – and not just for changing rooms.
In 2018, the AFL acknowledged the need for an increase in women’s salaries, and offered an average increase of 38%. This meant the salaries for female players rose to between AU$13,400 and AU$19,000 a season, with a handful of elite players receiving AU$24,600. But these numbers still pale in comparison to the average salary of a male player, which is almost AU$400,000. As a result, most professional AFLW athletes also work full-time jobs in order to survive.
“Like any other sport or business, the AFL needs to invest in AFLW to see it reach its full potential,” O’Halloran says. “Players like Amanda Farrugia, who was captain of Greater Western Sydney's team until this year, are retiring early because they can't find a suitable work-life balance. The AFL reported a AU$50 million profit in 2018. It's time to make a bold call and invest that into the women's game.”
Coach and amateur player Emily Fox echoes the same sentiment. “It’s not about gender equality, it needs to be gender equity that’s key,” she says. Fox plays for the St Kilda Sharks, which was established in 1992 and has proven to be a successful incubator for future AFLW stars. “People are fearful of gender equity because they assume we’re going to take things from them in order to give other people a chance, but there shouldn’t be anything wrong with that.”
At 38, Fox is as confident in her own skin as she is with her opinions on football. As we make our way to the Seddon Deadly Sins café near Whitten Oval, the home of AFLW’s Western Bulldogs, her platinum blonde pixie haircut and half-sleeve tattoos turn heads.
A proud trans woman, Fox has spent a lifetime fighting for what she believes in – and brings unique insight to the subject of Aussie Rules, having played on men’s teams growing up, and with the women as an adult. “I’ve found women’s football to be an awful lot more physically demanding to play than men’s. It tends to be more contested; the ball doesn’t move away from congested areas as quickly.”
“Another thing I’ve noticed is that men are more empowered – growing up they’re taught to be confident and demanding. But women are encouraged to be selfless, which can mean they’re less aggressive with the ball,” says Fox, who hopes her role as a coach will help inspire female players to believe in themselves and their abilities.
An avid attendee of AFLW games, Fox is thrilled at the speed with which the league has grown, and the potential of its future players. “I watch the junior girls playing in the local leagues and they’re absolute guns already, because they have players like Brianna Davey, Darcy Vescio and Maddy Prespakis to look up to.”
Sports journalist O’Halloran agrees. She’s excited about what the league could look like in 10 years, when we’ll see what the first real generation of sportswomen – who have grown up playing football with the same levels of coaching, encouragement and opportunity afforded to the boys – can accomplish.
ALFW icon Perkins, who hopes to make her return to the league next season, is also optimistic. “I guess it’s what motivates me, that little girl who’s outside kicking a footy on a day like today, pretending to be an AFLW player,” she says. “And not only her, but to show young boys they can have female role models. So that rather than women footballers, they just see us as footballers. You can speak to any of the women who play, and they’ll say that’s one of the reasons we all do it.”