Hannah Mouncey opens up on her battle to be allowed to play football again
Hannah Mouncey just wants to play footy. And in an exclusive chat with Jon Ralph, the banned athlete says the AFL continues to avoid her pleas.
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If Hannah Mouncey ever gained that elusive meeting with Gillon McLachlan, she would tell him why playing football means so much to her despite all she has endured.
Why she believes the AFL’s new transgender policy could deny her a safe space around fellow athletes when so much of her existence is so far from safe.
Why the online death threats and legal battles for a player who never wanted to be the poster child for transgender footy are worth it so she can play with her mates.
She would tell him the new rules which increase the hurdles transgender athletes must jump through to play state league and AFLW football will actually scare them away from the game they love.
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But mostly she would make clear to McLachlan, despite their legal battles and years of bad blood, that she is not the enemy.
The 31-year-old says she has been turned into something she is not.
As Mouncey told the Herald Sun this week – during the AFLW Pride Round that she has such mixed feelings about — she just wants to play footy with the friends who supported her transition from man to woman.
“I played half a season in Canberra and came down here (to Melbourne) and everything blew up about me playing AFLW and I was made out to be some Buddy Franklin reincarnate who had come down to destroy the women’s competition. And that was never the case,” she says of being banned by the AFL.
“For me at Ainslie it’s playing with people who are legitimately happy to see you and for me that’s massive.
“Playing there led to coming down and trying to play AFLW but it was a place where I could be who I was and no one cared if I was trans or different.
“Women’s football in general is such an eclectic bunch but they don’t care who you are as long as you are a good person.”
Mouncey’s latest sortie with the AFL — which banned her on safety grounds only days before the 2017 draft — has seen her threaten legal action over its newly minted policy.
That policy now extends to the top level of all state leagues — not just the AFLW — and requires players to supply a range of strength and fitness data as well as maintain a testosterone level below five nml/L.
She says her testosterone levels are non-existent — well below the AFL’s threshold — and she would not threaten any of the strength, fitness and bench press tests that could disqualify her from playing under a policy that now governs all state leagues.
She will return to Canberra to live closer to family and friends next week, with the new policy only extending to elite leagues.
All transgender players are free to play any level of community football, with the league’s stance that it must safeguard the competitive balance of its elite leagues given the rewards and integrity at stake.
It means she is free to play in the Canberra seconds league in what would be high farce for a player only pipped in the VFLW’s goalkicking trophy by Darcy Vescio in the last round of the 2018 season.
Mouncey’s key issue with the AFL is its lack of transparency over its testing and coverall clause that means even if she ticks every box, they can reject her anyway.
Having previously met with AFL officials, her communications are now conducted via legal correspondence.
Mouncey says she wants to talk to AFL boss McLachlan about her situation.
“I would say let’s just try again,” she said.
“Mistakes were made and I don’t know what else I could have done but if he wanted to sit down and have a chat, I would just let him ask questions because there are no stupid questions.
“I would be really happy to do that. Really all I have ever wanted for is for someone at the AFL to have a conversation with me and not see me as someone who needs to be managed.
“I don’t know what they think of me but they don’t like me, I think that’s pretty clear.”
Mouncey says the AFL’s fears of her on safety grounds are ridiculous.
In that entire 2018 VFLW season playing deep forward for Darebin she recorded a single official tackle — she thinks she was hard done by — and her teammates laugh that she is so slow she couldn’t catch them if she tried.
In all her games representing the Australian women’s side in handball and in all football competitions she says there has never been a worrying safety incident.
She would like to express that to McLachlan and tear down the barriers.
But Mouncey is aware that a brand-spanking-new AFLW league doesn’t need the publicity of her gatecrashing the code.
McLachlan said upon releasing last October’s policy that “we want to send a message that all are welcome in our game”.
Several years ago at a University Blues sports business breakfast they sat several tables apart and caught each other’s eyes several times, Mouncey says.
As they stood close with the breakfast winding up she hoped he might approach.
Instead a member of the AFL’s legal team approached.
“It could have really mended some bridges, but even then everything was done through a lawyer,” Mouncey says.
Of those death threats that at one stage became a daily occurrence, she wonders why the league does so much to speak out about Tayla Harris’ online abuse but is silent about her persecutors.
“I am all for making sure the competition is equal and I am happy to go through the processes but I think there are things that need clarification before you go through that process, for transparency as much as anything given my relationship with the AFL,” she said.
“If someone is 10 per cent above a threshold in one fitness test but 10 per cent below in another do they cancel each other out?
“There is a clause in there that says you can meet those requirements but they still reserve the right to say no and not give you a reason why.
“To me given my background with the AFL people could understand why that would raise some issues with me.
“That’s the biggest one. If you talk about fairness that is pretty unfair on anyone.”
The league is in regular contact with Mouncey and her lawyers, but so far has been cautious about providing her more forensic information on the policy given what it sees as her legal threats.
So the two parties are in a stalemate.
They are encouraging her to go through with a state league submission that she might or might not have approved, but she is unwilling because she believes the decision is preordained.
They wonder why she has lawyered up when there is such a concrete process, yet as Mouncey says: “For the last two and a half years I haven’t been able to talk to anyone at the AFL who isn’t a lawyer.
“Part of the reason to get a legal team is if you only talk to me through a lawyer, I would be walked over as a layperson.
“I don’t want to go to court and would be happy to go through the process but I need some answers. Maybe I could do that in a 45-minute conversation.”
Mouncey will move back to Canberra next week having never once regretted her transition or the way it has emboldened her to move on with her life.
She has turned a background as a mental health support worker into a company running support for people with mental health issues that takes in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs as well as Canberra and NSW town Goulburn.
And she has learnt to thrive with a tight-knit group of friends who fiercely defend her in what has been an exhausting period in her life.
How does she feel about the AFLW’s Pride Round given her struggles for acceptance?
Mouncey still has her Darebin jumper from a Pride Round clash against a Hamilton team and remembers the thrill of that contest.
Yet she would not wish her struggles to play in the AFLW on other transgender players.
“Can I be really salty? Can I say proud is not the word I would have used,” she says, cheekily channelling this week’s much-scrutinised Eddie McGuire press conference.
“There is still such a long way to go in terms of trans acceptance in our sport and football and the community.
“People lost the battle on gay marriage and now they have turned their focus on trans kids. “Having said that, the players are great. They have no issues.
“So many mens and women’s players are saying, ‘Just go for it. If you need anything we are behind you’.”
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