When asked at a press conference for his opinion on the first handful of games in the second professional season of AFLW, Gillon McLachlan failed to give fans his full support.
Waht followed was the completely unnecessary leak of a brutal, internal memo directed to the eight AFLW coaches, informing them of structural changes that had to be made to improve the spectacle.
It wasn’t a friendly request or helpful advice. It was a demand with sinister, pernicious undertones. It effectively said, “Do this, or else.”
It was embarrassing for the AFL and head of football operations, Steve Hocking. Most importantly, it was an unmerited source of shame for the AFLW, which is in the middle of a battle to win over the football-loving public. A battle that hangs in the balance.
For all of the bumper crowds across the weekend and promising television numbers, many punters remain sceptical at best, and downright derisive at worst.
Much of that is coloured by a problem of the AFL’s own making, in selecting the most popular but perhaps the least talented and least deserving teams to contest the flagship season opener.
Critically, the analysis of scores, skill and spectacle in the women’s game is premised on a comparison to the men’s. This is misguided and fundamentally unfair.
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Scoring
AFLW quarters run for 15 minutes, with only the last two minutes of each quarter being subject to time-on. By comparison, in the men’s game, quarters are 20 minutes with full time-on for the duration.
At most, an AFLW quarter will last 16 minutes, with matches tallying a maximum of 64 minutes. Compare that to the 2017 AFL grand final, which featured quarters of 29:51, 34:12, 30:08 and 31:25 for a total time of a little over 125 minutes.
That’s close to double the match time in AFLW.
Natural extrapolation applied to the scores from the Melbourne-Greater Western Sydney game, for example, to make up for the time differential would give us a final scoreline of Melbourne: 14. 6 (90) to GWS: 12. 6 (78). That’s perfectly acceptable in the AFL home-and-away season.
Admittedly, this doesn’t apply to all games, which leads to the second point.
Daisy Pearce of the Demons (Photo by Scott Barbour/Getty Images)
Skills and spectacle
The AFLW’s participants were only afforded professional status a little over a year ago.
The league needs to be afforded time to develop its elite junior pathways, which will bring the most talented Australian sportswomen into the competition with a fully developed arsenal of skills.
These pathways can now be followed with the assurance that there is an elite competition as its destination. But it needs to be provided opportunity and funding to build upon its neglected development institutions, providing aspiring women the most professional environment possible.
These two crucial elements are not there yet, but have been in the men’s game for decades. Hence, AFLW is a generational project that must be given the luxury of patience from the punter and powers that be.
Likewise, teams and coaches should be given the trust and time to fiddle, experiment, design and implement gameplans that best suit the players at their disposal – not have a contrived concoction forced upon them.
Finally, a defining influence on all three areas of criticism is the unavoidable problem of the field dimensions.
The length of all football grounds is the distance between the arcs added to 100. This is not a problem for the average men’s professional player, as almost every AFL player can kick 40 metres, some considerably more. Just about all of them could make it from goal square to goal square in three kicks.
Most AFLW players, on the other hand, are limited to a maximum distance of 30 or so metres in their kicks. Yet they play on the same size field as the men.
In relative terms, it’s like fielding an AFL game on a ground that tallied a length of 250-plus metres. How low would men’s scores be if that was the case?
Women’s cricketers play on grounds that have been reduced in size due to similar distance limitations, yet that is not the case in the AFLW.
These are the issues the AFL should address if they want to improve score, skills and spectacle – not wasting time and mocking the code with myopic, short-term fixes like zones and forced gameplans.
The AFLW is its own game, with a distinct set of conditions, and needs to be judged for what it is in its own right, not what it isn’t in comparison to the men’s.
It needs to be allowed to breathe and evolve naturally, not manufactured by misguided memos.
I ate pies
Guest
Great athletes? Like Sarah Perkins?
I ate pies
Guest
Oooohh, I got the letters around the wrong way. Clearly there has been somewhere for women to play footy for the past 30 years; the crap about them not having pathways to play footy is just that, crap. Unless, of course, they only play footy for money, but we keep hearing how much they love the game so it can't be about money.
Dmak
Guest
Actually people might still watch the VFLW Grand final last year between 2 suburban teams and people still watched. Sun TV state footy #VFLW Grand Final Seven Diamond Creek v Darebin 106k (Mel 86k Vic 20k) https://twitter.com/MediaweekAUS/status/912117916446769152
Perry Bridge
Guest
#Aligee Of interest - AFL total participation as reported via the AFL Annual reports has grown from 844,779 back in 2012 to 1,547,915 for 2017. Total growth of over 700,000. Granted club footy only up 57,000 in that time. In that time AFL female participation has increased from 136,133 to 463,364. That's over 327,000. Back in 2012 there were around 9500 women in club footy. By 2015 - on the cusp of the AFW - the number of female participants as a whole was a tick under 319,000 and the number of female teams was up to 629. Generally 24 is about the average per 'team' - that would put women in club footy at around 15,000. By 2017, female teams has 'ballooned' to 1690, that would approximate 40,000 females in club footy. Females have gone from 16% in 2012 of all participation to 29.9% in 2017. School based competitions and programs (lasting 6 weeks or more) are still a huge driver of growth. The big leap was from 2014 to 2015. Growth had been about 30k a year for females (up to 195K in 2014). The jump of over 123,000 in 2015 has been followed by +71K in 2016 and +83K in 2017. The AFL would be over the moon. Not even soccer can boast that. I do feel a little sad for netball.
The_Wookie
Roar Guru
You should check to see what else was on during the match compared to last year.
Frankie321
Roar Rookie
+1
anon
Roar Pro
VFL players were semi-professional. In fact, many AFL players were semi-professional until the mid to late 90's.
mattyb
Guest
The WAFL is a pretty strong comp Claudio with players regularly drafted from it. Fair enough your not a big fan but a bit harsh bringing your criticism into this article.
Doc Disnick
Roar Guru
It's better than your 'BECAUSE' argument.
Dalgety Carrington
Roar Guru
Quite the circular argument Rick, not exactly very deep, but I see you are very satisfied with it.
Aligee
Guest
Yep, fair enough, we can agree to disagree.
Doc Disnick
Roar Guru
Well, that's where we will have to agree to disagree. I don't think the Tv rights, attendances and sponsorship is the only benchmark in this case. They're certainly easier to quantify though. Let me tell you why the health system is so $u#ked up in this country. The greatest proportion of our GDP is dedicated to health expenditure. This means healthcare is very political in any election. Politicians are only interested in one thing: being elected or re-elected. If a politician can promise an extra 1000 beds in a hospital for acute care (resulting in reduced waiting times), it's quantifiable to the electorate. However, it's expensive and not the most efficient use of funds in the long-term. Preventative care is far more effective but takes longer for its desired outcomes to be achieved. As such, it's harder to quantify to the electorate. No incumbent government wants the opposition to take credit for their long-term plans, which is why we see far too much short-term planning. Look at the bigger picture of what the AFLW competition can offer the AFL as a whole. Football at the grassroots is the AFL's biggest threat. I can assure you more mums prefer their kids playing football than AFL. It's just how it is... at the moment. This is where I agree with Dalgety. This mindset can change and what better person to influence than all those future mums.
Aligee
Guest
I agree with most of what you said, but i disagree about equal pay, i think pay in this case should reflect your ability to bring in TV rights and crowds. What i am hoping is that AFLW makes enough money to pay a decent wage to players via all the forms of income. If at any stage AFLW brings in most of the money via rights, sponsorship merchandising etc i would be happy for women to be paid more than the men.
Doc Disnick
Roar Guru
Like I said Dal, you can make a very poor argument in the case of fashion for the very reasons you have outlined. However, I'd suggest the economy of women's fashion surpassed the men's long ago precisely because women now live in a less oppressive society. I doubt that pendulum is going to swing back the other way — let's hope not anyway. Watch the Oscars in the coming weeks. No one ever cares about what the men wear. Women own the red carpet. Just like Gisele Bündchen owned the Rio Olympics Opening Ceremony by walking in a straight line. No guy can do that... ever! Elite sport is no different — just in reverse. It's just how it is.
Cat
Roar Guru
Of course you don't ... You had a crack at Aligee for replying with an insult. Your very next post did the same thing, you replied with an insult. That makes you a hypocrite.
Cat
Roar Guru
Show me anyone who has claimed they did ... Stop making straw man arguments, its not even challenging.
Doc Disnick
Roar Guru
The guernseys are all part of the marketing, iap. Aligee, I personally think the women in years to come should be paid exactly the same as the men irrespective of crowds and Tv viewership. Many will disagree with me, but I strongly believe equity must not be left in the hands of the masses, especially within capitalistic societies. This is where good governments and administrations earn their money. The AFLW won't be a commercial success, but that doesn't mean it won't be a success for the AFL as a whole. I pride myself on the bigger picture. It's clear to me more girls will start playing football as a result of this competition. I very much expected this to be the case, but the AFL needs to continue pumping funds into junior development. Mums have a big say in the household, especially when it comes to what their children play. The AFL realise this and what better person to target than the future mums of Australia. It's brilliant long-term marketing at its finest. If more kids play AFL as a result of this, it will increase the pie enormously for all to enjoy. What I'd hate to see is a doubling of the market base, only for the men to be paid twice as much at the elite level. If the AFLW only ever achieve Sheffield Shield ratings and attendances (i.e. stuff all) but contribute greatly to the health of the sport overall then their job is done both commercially, and more importantly, socially. They should be remunerated equally in the not too distant future. That's what our medium-term goal should be based on probable outcomes, expectations, and equity.
Beny Iniesta
Guest
Gillon? You should check the comparable TV numbers for AFLW Carlton v Collilngwood. It's the public driving whatever Gillon is doing w.r.t. AFLW.
Dalgety Carrington
Roar Guru
I understood what you were trying to say. The thing is we don't know just how much of women's appreciation for fashion, for example, is due to things already built into the system. If we say "that's just the way it is" we can then just smugly shrug our shoulders and not bother. And like fashion, tastes change, cultures change. There were times in history where men's fashion was everywhere as elaborate and valued as women's. It's often about exposure and opportunity.
Concerned Supporter
Guest
Cat, I've got no idea what you are saying