New footy doco Fearless reveals the hopes, tears, triumphs and sexism of the AFLW

The new footy documentary Fearless reveals the challenges, hopes, tears and fears of how women have to juggle work, life and haters to succeed in the AFLW.

February 3, 2017 – the date of the very first AFL Women’s game – was a momentous day in Australian sport.

Not only did it mark the birth of a long-awaited new competition when a capacity crowd of 24,500 people packed into Ikon Part to see Carlton beat Collingwood by 46 to 11, it was also the day that dreams became reality for football loving women and girls around Australia.

Amanda Ling, who made her debut for the Western Bulldogs this year and is part of the new Disney+ documentary Fearless: The Inside Story of the AFLW, was one of the many teenagers watching the match on television that day and it proved to be turning point in her life. Aged 14 at the time, she’d only just convinced her sceptical mother to let her play AFL and what she saw as the players ran on to the field was hope.

“It was a moment where I was like ‘wow, I can actually possibly be out there one day’,” she recalls, sitting in a cafe alongside her teammate Richelle Cranston and Collingwood players Steph Chiocci and Ruby Schleicher. “It was an unreal moment – I remember sitting on the couch thinking there was a pathway now and in five years’ time it could be me.”

Cranston grew up an AFL football fanatic in a rugby loving family but when she started playing in Ballarat at the age of 18, the idea that she could pursue it professionally was fanciful. The now 32-year-old veteran was picked up by Melbourne in the first AFLW draft but was determined not to miss the birth of her new league, even if she thought she might have to climb the fence to get in. She spent most of that first game in tears of joy – partly at the action on the field, partly at how enthusiastically it had been embraced but mostly that she finally had the opportunity to participate in a professional competition.

Richelle Cranston, Steph Chiocci, Amanda Ling and Ruby Schleicher reveal tales of sacrifice and hard work in Fearless: The Inside Story of the AFLW. Picture: Jake Nowakowski

“It was crash and bash and the crowd was crazy,” Cranston says. “I had goosebumps the whole game. I cried my eyes out, so I am glad there was no footage of that. That’s probably my favourite moment of all AFLW – when I knew it was going to happen.”

Collingwood captain Chiocci and All-Australian Schleicher were both playing for the losing team that day (the former would like it on the record that she had the first kick, first free kick and first score in the fledgling league) but once they realised how important it was just to be playing in the game, neither one minded the result. Schleicher had grown up playing alongside the boys in Western Australia and crossed the Nullarbor to be part of the inaugural AFLW draft, while veteran Chiocci had been playing state league football for Diamond Creek for nearly a decade in Melbourne before belatedly getting her shot at the big time.

Both could hear the buzz of the crowd building, but it wasn’t until they headed up the players’ race to the field that the deafening roar hit them – so loud that they struggled to communicate during the game itself.

“It was so much bigger than a game,” says Chiocci. “That was the moment I thought ‘wow, we are part of a massive movement here’.

Schleicher agrees: “It is the best day of my life – it really is. I look back on it and it makes me choke up at how special it was.”

Since that momentous day five years ago, the AFLW has gone from strength to strength. Heading into the seventh season next week, the competition has expanded from the original eight teams to 18, the season is longer, the standard of football is harder and faster and the clubs’ setups more professional.

Amanda Ling, pictured in a scene from Fearless, had to convince her mother to let her play AFLW.

Fearless, the first locally commissioned show from streaming giant Disney+, aims to take viewers into the inner sanctum of the AFLW, spotlighting four clubs – the Western Bulldogs, Collingwood, Adelaide Crows and GWS Giants – as their players juggle the demands of being professional athletes with family and work commitments and battle outdated attitudes from dinosaurs who believe they still have no place on the football field.

Cranston, who balances the rigours of training with running a gym in Geelong, hopes the emotional and inspirational six-part series will provide “an insight to what we actually do”.

“I know people talk about the fact that girls are working and studying and we are part time and I think that’s a really important point,” she says. “It’s hard. Owning a business is a lot, so I feel if I want my business to go well, my footy is going to suffer. If I put my footy first, my business will suffer. So, it’s like trying to get the happy medium.”

Even though the women’s pay increased by an average of 94 per cent as part of the latest players agreement, it’s still far from enough to live on without either full time or part time work. Chiocci is taking unpaid leave from her job as a teacher to be able to accommodate this year’s season, Schleicher works for Fox Footy and Ling is studying to be a PE teacher. All are contracted for only part of the year, but are expected to stay in top shape all year round and while none of them expect to see pay parity with the men’s game in their career (with the possible exception of the 20-year-old Ling), they agree that more needs to be done.

Richelle Cranston, Steph Chiocci, Amanda Ling, and Ruby Schleicher still vividly remember the first AFLW match in 2017. Picture: Jake Nowakowski

“I look at how far we’ve come now and it’s baffling that we’re still not able to go full time,” says Schleicher. “You look at the improvement from year one where there were certainly some games that would have been hard to watch and I understand why people wouldn’t have backed it in. But the last two years where it’s fast and we have people really supporting it and the skill has gone up. There’s another few levels to go to but we can’t do that until we are full time and we have resources around us like the men do. You can’t do that until girls aren’t working.”

More than anything though, Fearless, like the AFLW, showcases a whole new generation of role models and allows aspiring female footballers to now see themselves on screen in the documentary as well as on the field each week. Chiocci recalls hearing stories of some of her predecessors at her club having to cook for the men’s teams – and remembers fielding boneheaded questions about taking chest marks early in her career – and is proud to part of something that’s helping change society’s attitudes to her chosen sport. She grew up with the Carlton men’s players as her idols and even though she now plays for their bitter rivals, takes the responsibility of being a footballing trailblazer seriously.

Steph Chiocci, pictured in Fearless, takes her responsibilities as a role model seriously.

“I think it’s really important that we are on the big stage,” she says. “I still get blown away when someone says ‘oh, my god, I’m a big fan of you’. You can’t underestimate the impact we’re having on the younger generation.

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“It’s really humbling and you feel weird saying it and I think it’s something we are going to reflect on when our careers are done. I am a teacher from Cheltenham, I’m a sister, I’m an aunty, I’m a daughter but to these young kids – and even adults – they just find so much joy in what we do. We bring a lot of hope to people as well.”

Fearless: The Inside Story of the AFLW streams on Disney+ from August 24