It’s old news now but the inaugural AFL Women’s League (AFLW) match between Collingwood and Carlton generated sufficient interest among footy fans to warrant a change in venue. The clash, now taking place at Carlton’s Ikon Park instead of the Blues’ training pitch, will kick off on February 3 in front of an estimated 10,000 people.

In contrast to the men’s league, only eight teams (Crows, Pies, Carlton, Giants, Dockers, Bulldogs, Lions, and Demons) will participate in the debut running of the competition, with Melbourne and the Western Bulldogs an early shout for the Grand Final with the bookies. The same can’t be said for the Demons’s men’s team, who are an outside 26.00 in the latest odds.

So, for the next seven rounds over two months (the Grand Final is pencilled in for March 25), what can fans expect from the debut AFLW campaign?

Big Bash League

The AFLW has been a long time coming. While there were just four months between the awarding of the licenses for the women’s game and the first AFLW Draft in October 2016, the AFL’s bone idleness meant that little happened in public between mid-2014 and January of last year. The governing body hadn’t even finalised the league format by December 2016, and the amount of prize money the Grand Finalists earn is still up in the air.

Given the success of the second Women’s Big Bash League, a cricket tournament that attracted a TV audience of 386,000 viewers in December, just over a third more than a men’s game between the Adelaide Strikers and Melbourne Renegades, the appearance of the AFLW was always a good idea.

Add in the figures though and it becomes inevitability – the number of Australian community clubs for girls grew 56% last year, while female participation in the sport climbed 19%. However, the AFLW already had its backbone of senior players, with many of its current stars established at clubs like Sydney University or the Eastern Devils, which put several players forward for the recent Draft.

Moana Hope

The AFLW was slightly strange then in already having its golden children long before the league even existed. For example, Moana Hope, a marquee player at Collingwood and arguably the face of the AFL’s marketing campaign for the women’s game, was a record breaker in the Victorian Women’s Football League, kicking 100 goals in 2016.

 

 

Similarly, Nicola Barr, a powerful kicker and gifted runner who went at No.1 in the Draft (and has a lot to live up to in her debut season as a consequence) was a multi-award-winning player in the Sydney Women’s Premier Division. Barr’s story is one of the more inspirational, given that the twenty-year-old has only been playing three years.

It’s probably fair to say that the inaugural AFLW will be a more subdued affair than the conventional AFL – some matches will open men’s games, others take place in the relative intimacy of training grounds – but the AFLW will balloon to something approaching full size after 2018 with the addition of St Kilda, West Coast Eagles, North Melbourne, Richmond, and Geelong Cats.

The onus is now on the other five men’s clubs to get involved.