threenewpadlocks
Brownlow Medallist
Even if you ignore the economic benefits and the code wars aspects, a national league is the logical next step for the growth of grassroots women's footy.
Plenty of girls start footy because of the AFLW rolemodels and many of them will continue through being teenagers. But it's quite possibly the growth of actual adult teams that AFLW has had the biggest impact.
The 21st century has seen the growth of Youth Girls tournaments to bridge the gap between adulthood and auskick/mixed junior levels for teenage girls and that has been wonderful. But the transition to adult playing numbers was poor. Of course it's true for all sports everywhere, but it was particularly bad for teenage girls football because the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow was poor - no professional opportunities, no national competition, no opportunity for international travel for your dedication against other sports, and to play every weekend, long away trips with minimal teams.
For example, if we take 2013 (ie the first year of AFL-sanctioned/branded exhibition games) as the date between the two eras, we can look at the numbers. Female participation at all levels in Australia grew 4.5x from its 2005 to 2013 numbers. However this didn't translate to adult footy, to give an example, the amount of VWFL teams "only" grew from 25 competitng teams to 34 in the same period (ie only a 1.46x growth).
Of course, the AFL-branded era of 2013-17 has also had an even greater impact on participation - growth from about ~170,000 to ~360,000 in 2013-16 alone - but the big difference is the growth in adult teams.
In that as recently as 2013, there was only 34 VWFL teams, yet by 2016, this virtually doubled to 60-70.
Now with the AFLW, in 2017, Victoria is expected to have about 100 senior women's teams. That's a tripling from 2013.
By 2019-20, there could be 200 senior women's teams.
I don't think anybody's going to complain about the AFL putting in a few million more to help grassroots female footy - in many circumstances it's revitalising local clubs and communities, not to mention it being part of the growth strategy in the northern states. But then if you ask yourself, where is a few million best invested? Given that the last 10-odd years have seen investment in youth academies, adult academies, streamlined competition, national youth opportunities, where is that extra few million best spent? Is it best spent on expanding the level of supporting local clubs, investing in junior competitions and youth representative levels, where there's diminishing returns for every extra dollar that you spend, or is it best spent on creating a marketable national league which will allow for role models for girls playing and give a clear, visible pathway for those in the underage competitions thus meaning that they're more likely to keep playing footy into adulthood (even if they're unlikely to be good enough to make it to AFLW level?)
