When Ashleigh Riddell was 12 years old, she walked away from football. She’d played since she was seven years old, first in Auskick and then the Northern Football League’s boys’ competition. But after five years she switched for basketball, as it had “a greater long term pathway”. Now Riddell, aged 21, is back playing football. Only this year it was in the VFLW for the Diamond Creek Women’s Football Club. Riddell played in the league’s Grand Final in just her second season back. She was also named a member of the VFLW Team of the Year.
Riddell’s story is not uncommon. More and more women are finally getting the opportunity to play football at an elite level. The Australian Football League Women’s (AFLW) launched in February this year, giving 216 women the chance to play AFL at an elite, nation-wide level. In March this year, the inaugural TAC Girls’ Cup was held, providing junior girl footballers the chance to develop their skills in an exclusive competition. Earlier this month, Riddell took part in the first NAB AFL Women’s Draft Combine, a chance for potential AFLW players to undergo vigorous fitness testing. “Just being around that elite environment was pretty special,” Riddell said.
But the creation of AFLW hasn’t just impacted elite players such as Riddell. It’s led to a huge uptake by girls who are just looking for a sport to play on the weekend. While in the past they may have turned to sports like netball or basketball, they’re now signing up to play football in unprecedented numbers.
18 year old Eliza Wood is one of these players. Wood also played Auskick when she was young, but quit aged nine. She grew up playing tennis but always “had a love for footy…and just wanted to really give it a proper go this year”. She joined the Montmorency Junior Football Club’s U/18 girls’ side, which she describes as “our own little family”.
Her love and enthusiasm for football is clear as she talks about her first game. She started on the bench, but five minutes in was told by her coach she was going on to play half back. As she ran out onto the field, the ball was thrown up and a rush of excitement came over her. Wood’s nerves disappeared and her attention turned to what she had to do.
When the final siren rang out across the ground two hours later, Wood’s team was in the lead. They headed back to the clubroom to belt out the club song, “we’re a TEAM, what a TEAM…”
“I just remember feeling so happy and thinking to myself “why didn’t I start playing sooner?”” Wood recalled.
Wood isn’t the only girl who decided to give football a go this year. In the Northern Football Netball League (NFNL), females now make up 23 per cent of football players. The number of girls’ playing and the number of girls’ teams “has gone through the roof” Phiv Demetriou, AFL’s Northern Region Community Development Manager, said. This year 2256 women and girls laced up their footy boots to play in the NFNL, compared to 837 in 2016 and 750 in 2015. 68 female teams took to the field, from U/10s, to the seniors division. It’s hard to believe there was once a time when clubs struggled to find enough players to field a girls’ team. It’s a change Riddell and Wood have observed at their own clubs, with Wood’s own team made up of “12-16 new players”.
They both agree this massive uptake in numbers is a result of the AFLW’s inaugural 2017 season. “I think young girls see a pathway now with football and are excited by the prospect of one day perhaps being a part of an AFLW list,” Riddell said.
It’s easy to see why. Visit the play.afl/womens-afl website, and you are urged to “join more than 380,000 girls and women playing football across Australia”. Photos of girls kicking and marking, from young Auskickers to skilled AFLW players, are splashed across the screen. Underneath this you’re told “there has never been a better time to play AFL. If you’re inspired by women like Moana Hope, Daisy Pearce and Darcy Vescio creating history in the 2017 NAB AFL Women’s Competition, why not give footy a go?”
Women “can play a physical game like men”, said Riddell, whose favourite aspect of the game is laying and breaking tackles. She and Wood believe there are still some people who view football as a ‘guy’s sport’. But AFLW is helping to change that and “so many more people are now open minded to women’s footy” Wood said. As Mr Demetriou points out, many football spectators are parents whose own daughters are playing football.
Naturally the huge influx of girls now looking to play AFL has led to some challenges, with Mr Demetriou identifying development as key area of improvement. “Let’s be honest they [the players] were thrown in the deep end,” he said. But the NFL has embraced this challenge, and is setting up a number of programs. Earlier this year they ran an academy for girls, with over 150 players attending the first sessions on development. In 2018 they plan to hold seminars for coaches of female teams focusing on kicking, contact skills and how players can protect their bodies.
But what is most clear is that this is only the beginning for female football. The AFLW is expanding to include six more teams by 2020 and new players such as Wood encourage other girls to give footy a go. There’s no telling how many more girls will take to the footy field in the years to come, whether that be at Etihad Stadium or the local footy oval just down the road.
Sarah Booth 