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This week, AFL gets my award for the ‘good, the bad and the ugly’ when it comes to women in sport.
Let’s start with the good.
» AFL Women’s on The Roar
» All the team info for the women’s AFL league
» 2017 women’s AFL fixtures & draw
It was announced this week that Seven West Media and Fox Sports will, between them, broadcast all games in the new AFL Women’s League. With the AFL also committing to stream all matches for free on its website and app. There’s now plenty of ways for all fans to tune in and watch Daisy Pearce lead the Melbourne Demons, Moana Hope play for the Collingwood Magpies and cheer on no. 1 draft pick Nicola Barr as she stars for the GWS Giants.
This television deal is groundbreaking and I applaud the AFL and the broadcasters for their commitment to women in sport. With the exhibition match earlier this year between the Bulldogs and the Demons ranking second only to the 2016 Australian Open women’s final as the most watched women’s live TV sporting event in history, I think they are absolutely onto a winner.
Onto the bad.
There are now whispers that the AFL Women’s competition won’t be expanding until 2019. This has made some clubs who received provisional licences this year like Geelong and St Kilda cranky because both clubs have been working towards fielding a team in 2018.
Like the WBBL, the first year of the AFL Women’s competition will be an experiment. I am confident it will be a successful one.
Hopefully, like the inaugural season of the WBBL, the AFL Women’s competition will surpass expectation in terms of quality of football, interest and television ratings. This might encourage the AFL to stick to their initial plan of further expanding the competition in 2018.
And finally, the ugly.
For me, the AFL Women’s competition is about demonstrating to young women that they no longer have to dream about playing AFL at the highest level – that dream is now a reality. This should go hand in hand with encouraging women to be involved in any aspect of the AFL family they so choose.
With that in mind, you can imagine my delight when I heard the news that Kelli Underwood would lead the commentary team for the inaugural competition. Kelli is an experienced journalist and was the first woman to call an AFL game on television in 2009.
Unfortunately, not everyone shared my delight about this news, with some of the responses on social media calling Kelli’s voice ‘annoying’, ‘shrill’ and ‘hard to listen to.’ I call bullshit on this.
Could it be that one of the reasons women’s voices are ‘hard to listen to’ is because they are different from the norm? It’s time for a change in the old guard and I can think of no one better to commentate women’s footy than Kelli Underwood.
Were you one of the 6000 people that joined me at North Sydney Oval over the weekend for the first six matches of WBBL02?
It was a perfect cricket weekend – there was plenty of sunshine, plenty of sixes and plenty of kids running around yelling ‘howzat.’
Here’s what we know about the competition so far:
Our internationals are in fine form.
On the weekend we saw standout batting performances from Deandra Dottin in her first game against the Sixers (60 off 44) and Harmanpreet Kaur in her first game against the Stars (47 off 28). These two players are going to be explosive in this year’s competition and I have a feeling that Harmanpreet and Stefanie Taylor are going to make a spectacular combination for the Sydney Thunder.
It is far too early to call a dominant team yet.
Each team has played two games and at the moment each team has one win and one loss.
Australia loves women’s cricket.
On Saturday night, the game between the Thunder and the Stars had 432,000 viewers nationally and over the weekend as a whole, 293,000 viewers tuned in. This viewership is up 15 per cent from WBBL01.
Some other names to keep an eye out for this weekend include Sophie Molineaux, Marianne Kapp, Georgia Redmayne and Amanda Wellington – these women were in fine form over the weekend and I am expecting plenty more from them over the coming weeks.
This week the Australian Institute of Sport had it’s Sport Performance Awards and it was pleasing to see so many of my favourite women in sport celebrated on the night.
Kim Brennan was awarded ‘Female Athlete of the Year,’ the Australian Women’s rugby 7s team was named ‘Team of the Year’ and Chloe Esposito was named ‘Sports Personality of the Year’.
I want to particularly congratulate Kate McLoughlin, the chef de mission of the Australian Paralympic team on receiving the Award for Leadership. Kate led our Paralympic team fearlessly throughout their Rio campaign and Australia’s success at the games was a credit to her leadership.
Australia finished fifth on the medal tally at the Paralympic Games with 81 medals (22 gold, 30 silver and 29 bronze) – a stellar performance.
Baseball is a sport I am taking more of an interest in.
I’m frequently at Blacktown International Sports Park to cheer on the Sydney Blue Sox. This weekend I found out a bit more about women’s baseball in Australia because the third ABL Women’s All-Star game took place in Melbourne.
While baseball might not be a sport followed by the majority in Australia, this event was significant because it was the first time the event secured a major sponsor. It featured more women from the national squad than in previous years (just as an FYI, the Australian women’s baseball team is called the Emeralds) and it also featured the first woman to umpire an event in Australian professional baseball.
I would like to make specific mention of Jacinda Barclay who played in this game. Jacinda not only plays baseball at the highest level, but she also participated in the Australian Lingerie Football League and more excitingly has been drafted by the GWS Giants and will feature in the AFL Women’s competition.
For so many of our female athletes, dual representation is astonishing – Jacinda really is the triple threat.
It’s a very exciting time of the year with the W-League and the WBBL on at the moment.
So get amongst it and soak up some women’s sport.