Sexism has turned from men to women in Australian football
SEXISM is far from gone in the world of AFL football, despite the launch of the new women’s league. And it doesn’t all run in the one direction, says Michelangelo Rucci.
SEXISM abounds in the AFL.
Oh yes, even as the inaugural AFL national women’s league starts this weekend, Australian football continues to live to sexist tones.
It is 2017. And still there is the concept men belong in men’s sports; women with women and the genders should remain in parallel universes and certainly should never cross nor mix.
Surely not, many would say. Women have reached senior umpiring ranks in the AFL men’s game.
They have even made critical on-field decisions in AFL grand finals. More than 20 years have passed since SA’s own Pat Mickan became the first female to work as a coach in an AFL system, at the Adelaide Football Club.
Others have followed, particularly at St Kilda, to prove diversity makes football clubs and the code stronger.
Now the reverse script is at play with men to feature in prominent roles in the women’s game because they are best suited to the jobs.
Men this weekend will be seen coaching and as umpires in the opening round of the AFL women’s national league. Barriers have fallen. Glass ceilings have been smashed. Australian football is now for everyone.
Or is this marvellous image — that has made sports such as world football, hockey, basketball and tennis stronger for bridging the gender gap — true in Australian football, in particular the AFL?
One of the strongest voices in Australian football media, a woman standing tall among men, wrote this of the AFLW this week: “(AFL chief executive) Gillon McLachlan (must) do what he should have done 12 months ago ... appoint a woman to run the national women’s competition.”
How sexist is that?
A woman to lead to the AFLW, demands Caroline Wilson. Why not the best person? Why specifically a woman?
In this context, the AFLW should then have only female coaches, female umpires, female timekeepers and females clipping the tickets at the turnstiles — just as it was with the men’s game almost 150 years ago.
But this is 2017 ... and a different world.
The Adelaide Football Club chose the best coach — not the best woman — to lead its inaugural female team. At one stage, certainly before Adelaide football chief David Noble was headhunted by the AFL to take charge of Brisbane, the Crows seemed destined to appoint a man to lead its women’s program, Tate Kaesler.
Then Bec Goddard emerged as the best candidate, just as the best person — male or female — should become McLachlan’s off-field leader to the AFLW administration.
Why must the AFLW begin with the same archaic themes that came with the start of Australian football that set up the boys’ network in the late 1800s? Why must a woman lead the AFLW administration — and not the best person regardless of gender?
Surely this new era for Australian football should begin with no gender-based ceilings.
This is 2017, months after a woman achieved more votes — but not the job — than a man for the White House. More than a century has passed since football was considered a man’s game — and a woman was charged for breaching public decency by (of all things) kicking a football in the streets of Bendigo.
But not much has changed since 1890.
Inaugural Crows coach Graham Cornes has not hidden, particularly from these pages, his discomfort with watching women play Australian football.
That theme of “boobs” being smashed echoes as much as the sexist image that women should not be involved in heavy contact sport.
But that is what Australian football is — a physical, strong contact game.
Crows co-captain Chelsea Randall, who does not mind getting physical on the field, summed it up perfectly at West Lakes this week by asking: “Do you want to watch Australian football without contact?”
No, we don’t — as every AFL fan came to appreciate even more after watching the Australian corrupted during the Gaelic International Rules adventure (that sadly continues).
Nor do the women want the contact taken out of the AFLW that begins this weekend with eight teams. The Crows, who start their AFLW premiership campaign on Saturday at Thebarton Oval, have a coach who certainly wants her team to play with “physicality” that would make men envious.
Goddard has told her pioneers at West Lakes she wants every AFLW rival that stands before the Crows to know they are playing a demanding, physical team.
She wants opponents to feel “uncomfortable” against the Crows — just as Alastair Clarkson built the Hawthorn premiership dynasty with “unsociable” football.
Goddard emphasises this does not mean her Crows will be thugs or take cheap shots to become regularly greeted on a first-name basis with the judges at the AFLW match review panel or tribunal (which surely will be staffed by the best people rather than be all-female committees). But Goodard’s players will be physical, a concept that still seems to trouble the old guard of men’s football. And at the other extreme there is the demand a woman lead the AFLW.
Sexism is far from gone in Australian football.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
THANK you all for the messages. We are sorry but we simply cannot respond to all of them. The bar is open all night.
— SUTTON UNITED Football Club — after its remarkable 1-0 triumph as a non-league club against Leeds United in the fourth round of the FA Cup — keeping it very real.
REALITY BITES
That Anthem
ANTHONY Mundine will not stand for the Australian national anthem. Rather than immediately condemn the controversial — and seemingly divisive Australian boxer — this could be the ideal time to pause, actually look at the far from well-known words to Advance Australia Fair and consider their meaning and relevance to Australia, its history and its people — and their ideals.
ADVANCE AUSTRALIA FAIR
Line by line
Australians all let us rejoice
(Seems inclusive)
For we are young and free
(Mundine may have a point that Australia’s ancestral people are far from a young community)
We’ve golden soil and wealth for toil
(As long as it is not owned by the Chinese ... or whichever group of foreigners has taken to investing in Australia today)
Our home is girt by sea
(No comment other than: Do you get bonus points in Scrabble for “girt”?)
Our land abounds in nature’s gifts
(And available to all)
Of beauty rich and rare
(As noted with Aboriginal art and culture)
In history’s page, let every stage
(Provided every stage is indeed before 1778)
Advance Australia Fair
(A noble theme)
In joyful strains then let us sing
(If you know — or can remember — the words)
Advance Australia Fair
(A goal for all)
Beneath our radiant Southern Cross
(No one has put a flag to declare sovereignty of those stars yet)
We’ll toil with hearts and hands
(Some with greater success and rewards than others)
To make this Commonwealth of ours renowned of all the lands
(Again, an inclusive concept)
For those who’ve come across the seas
(Yes, this may be a touchy point — and not just in reference to 1778 but also to many centuries before)
We’ve boundless plains to share
(And keep under Australian ownership, apparently)
With courage let us all combine
(Here is another inclusive plea)
To Advance Australia Fair
(What did JFK say about asking what you can do for your country?)
In joyful strains then let us sing
(Even if you do not have a voice as grand as Julie Anthony)
Advance Australia Fair
(While finding it easier to remember the words to Waltzing Matilda)
NOW if Mundine had taken issue with the Australian flag — and the need to debate the value or meaning of the Union Jack in the top-left corner — the cause may not have delivered the body blow collected from questioning the meaning of the national anthem.
Rooster’s Crow
IT is the Chinese Year of the Rooster. And the man who has had much to crow about China in the past year, Port Adelaide Football Club president DAVID KOCH, can take another bow ... even if his latest accolade is more of a team achievement at Alberton.
London-based analysts, Sports Business International, has ranked the top-25 innovators in world sport for the past year — and placed Koch (and by extension, the Power) at No. 11 for taking the AFL to China with Port Adelaide’s clash with Gold Coast in Shanghai in May.
“For our club to be recognised at this level, among some of the world’s most elite sports innovators, is a humbling accolade for Port Adelaide and our China strategy,” says Koch.
“It’s a testament to the incredible amount of work from many people within the club led by chief executive Keith Thomas and our China (strategist) Andrew Hunter.
“We’re incredibly excited about our ongoing relationship with China and the opportunities it will bring in continuing to develop and influence the future of our great game.
For our China strategy and work in sports diplomacy to be recognised at this level is an exceptional honour.
“To be grouped with the likes of the Golden State Warriors and the Philadelphia 76ers is remarkable and something that the entire Port Adelaide community should be proud of.”
michelangelo.rucci@news.com.au