On Sunday, more than 53,000 people spent their afternoon at Adelaide Oval watching the 2019 AFLW Grand Final.
It was the biggest crowd ever for a domestic women’s sporting event in Australia, squashing the previous record by more than 11,000 people and absolutely smashing the AFL’s expected attendance of 25,000.
Thousands more watched the Adelaide Crows defeat Melbourne-based team Carlton 63-18 from their living rooms, which in itself, shows just how far we’ve come.
Steve Price shares his ‘feelings’ about women’s footy on The Project. Post continues below video.
People are undeniably embracing women’s football, but good old Steve Price doesn’t reckon this is anything to get excited about.
Sigh.
Price was co-hosting Monday night’s episode of The Project and after a report about the game and its impressive attendance, Price’s three co-hosts – Lisa Wilkinson, Waleed Aly and Peter Helliar – all shared their excitement over the rise of women’s footy.
Helliar told Price he should “eat humble pie” over the news, because he’s never been supportive of women’s football.
Price suggested that the reason for such a big crowd was because “there’s not much to do in Adelaide on a Sunday afternoon” or because of the AFLW’s free admission… which seems dumb because there are literally thousands of free events around the country, and we doubt many of them get 50,000 attendees.
Oh, and also, maybe people just ENJOY watching talented sportswomen play high-quality footy. But he probably didn’t think of that.
In response, Wilkinson questioned if Price realised how much the popularity of AFLW meant to women.
“Do you have any idea what that vision, what those optics mean to young girls?” she asked.
“I’ve got two daughters and I love sport,” Price responded. “But don’t go overboard, it was free. How many people would have been there if they’d charged?”
“At this stage it’s all about building the sport after centuries of women being told ‘no you sit and watch the men’,” Wilkinson said.
“Women actually get to go out there -” she started, before Price interrupted.
“I don’t have a problem with them playing,” he said. “I just don’t like watching it because I don’t think it’s very good.”
“Are you kidding me? Are you serious?” Wilkinson asked.
Then entered Waleed Aly, with a truly fantastic burn: “The problem is, he won’t eat humble pie on this because there’s no woman to bake it for him.”
Price then claimed that they could not change his mind on the matter, to which Helliar retorted that yes, actually, he could.
“You can change your mind. You can evolve. That’s what we do, as people.”
Amen to that.
Top Comments
The men’s game will always be vastly superior to watch due to the physicality. Just biology.
I look forward to broadcast men’s netball, and equal time for male models on catwalks, what with everything needing to be equal and all.
I love that you had to dredge the pool for netball and catwalk models as a way to illustrate how hard and inequitable things are for men. Hope you didn't pull any muscles reaching that far.
Dredge the pool for netball - are you serious??? Pretty good equivalent I would suggest given numbers of females playing.
And that is your opinion. It may shock you to learn out that some people actually prefer watching women play sports. But if men want to get more involved in netball and catwalks, then why not?
The popularity of netball would be about equivalent to ago but the pay is not. Also equal time for men's netball still wouldn't equate to much time
Does everthing have to devolve into a gender battle here?
Of course it does - gender is the political currency of our time.
Oh but I have more than you, because I am a woman... :P