Following the announcement by the AFL of the first AFLW match to be played at the MCG, on these pages Rana Hussain encouraged fans “to turn up and celebrate this most important milestone”. AFLW inaugural premiership coach and senior coach for Hawthorn’s AFLW team, Bec Goddard, described it as “an opportunity for our women to feel valued and to show there are no gender barriers to playing on the big stage”. Records for attendance at women’s sporting events were cited as evidence that support is there when the conditions are right, and expectations for a big turnout grew.
Match attendance numbers at the AFLW have been disappointing this season, for many reasons. The combination of hot weather at largely unsheltered grounds, the already-crowded summer holidays for a traditionally family-focused fanbase and the last-minute rescheduling of the start of the season – as well as multiple games cancelled, rescheduled or moved to a different venue due to complications caused by Covid – created a perfect storm to deter attendance. A preliminary final at the MCG seemed the perfect way to redress this shortfall.
Outside the stadium on Saturday, it felt like history was being made on multiple levels – and that the people who love this game knew and understood this. Queues formed with what felt like thousands of fans with the first AFLW final between Melbourne and Brisbane was about to kick off inside the famous old ground. The excitement was palpable.
When the official crowd numbers were put up on the scoreboard after play had started, we were met with an underwhelming official attendance of 6,436. It was difficult not to be disappointed. But context is everything.
Much like the surprise suggestion by the AFL to bring forward the next AFLW season to August this year, the announcement that the preliminary final would be played at the MCG came as a surprise to most fans, media and players. It also seemed to contradict earlier statements made by the head of women’s football at the AFL, Nicole Livingstone.
Just nine days before the AFL’s historic announcement, Livingstone told Shelley Ware and Nelly Thomas on Broad Radio, that there was no capacity at most football stadiums for the AFL to host a women’s game on the same day as a men’s game. According to Livingstone, “there are very few big venues that can actually host a men’s and women’s team at the same time or a double header … to have a double header with AFLM is difficult and what I want to protect is that our AFLW players are not compromising their preparation.”
Livingstone explained that the women’s teams would have to have smaller change rooms and preparation rooms, and that there was not enough space for adequate warm-ups. This situation, Livingstone conceded, included both the SCG and the MCG. The other mitigating factor was the Covid-safe requirement for there to be at least two hours and 50 minutes between matches to allow for appropriate cleaning and changeovers throughout the stadium.
Yet just over a week later the AFL announced the preliminary final would indeed be played at the MCG on Saturday afternoon, with Collingwood scheduled to host its round three AFLM match against Geelong at the same venue at 7:25pm that night.
Perhaps the early start time allowed for a smoother changeover to avoid issues around change rooms and warm-up space. However, it also meant fans at the MCG would miss some or all of the Adelaide v Fremantle preliminary, which followed immediately after.
On a practical level, the short lead time likely ruled out anyone needing to travel to see this historic match, and its timing, coinciding with the first round of community football and the VAFA, ruled out another potential fan base.
It is difficult to know what impact these factors had on attendance numbers, but this doesn’t change the persistent feeling that too much of the AFLW competition is driven by thought bubbles and reactions, rather than a well-considered strategic approach.
Even the long-awaited, much-vaunted eight-year plan hasn’t withstood the test of a season in terms of one of its key aims. Public challenges by individual players, calls from the AFLPA and a general sense that the 2030 deadline is unreasonable suggest a shift to full-time playing conditions is likely to happen sooner than the AFL’s preferred target.
When pressed, Livingstone added that this equity was what they were aiming for, but again reminded that 160 years of the AFL men’s game dwarfed the six years of AFLW, and that expectations need to be considered within that context.
Advocates for an elite level of the women’s game have been knocking on the doors of AFL house for decades. That it took the AFL so long to answer is an indictment on the organisation, not a reflection of the newness of the women’s game. But that’s the problem with history. It’s of little use when planning the future if you don’t acknowledge the context.
