This post was first published before the first game on February 3. Here you can find everything you need to know about the competition.
It’s rare that I get emotional about sport. In fact, aside from the odd teenage tantrum while being dragged to an early morning netball game, it’s never really happened.
But at the launch of the inaugural AFL Women’s competition, I teared up a little bit.
Because this moment has been a century in the making. Don’t believe me? Listen here:
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“Early last year I potentially pre-emptively said we have a revolution happening in our game,” AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan told a North Melbourne warehouse-worth of media types and footy luminaries.
“It turns out revolution was the right word,” he said.
“But this moment in women’s football, this apparent overnight success, has in fact been over one hundred years in the making.
“We stand here today on a platform ready to launch, but it is a platform built for us by the passion and commitment of many unacknowledged women over many decades. Volunteers, administrators, players, umpires, coaches … these are the true change-agents, they are the true revolutionaries.”
The right to kick around the footy has been hard-won for generations of Aussie women.
For decades they were relegated to the sidelines and the stands but on Friday night they’ll be taking to the field — it’s pretty bloody exciting.
There are eight clubs, but the dream is to one day have eighteen, as Western Bulldogs vice-president and champion for the league Susan Alberti noted when she unveiled this:
