AFLW expansion: AFL locks in 18-team AFLW competition for 2022-23 season
Bec Goddard says it’s time for the AFL to ensure more women are coaching AFLW teams — and here’s what she says the league needs to do to make it happen.
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The AFL has been urged by new Hawthorn coach Bec Goddard to consider quota systems to ensure more female AFLW coaches after announcing a groundbreaking 18-team competition from 2022.
As revealed by News Corp on Thursday the AFL Commission approved the entry of Essendon, Hawthorn, Sydney and Port Adelaide for the 2022 season, to start late next year.
The league’s own talent bosses made clear to the Commission that fast-tracking those teams would be possible given the burgeoning levels of talent coming through the ranks.
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AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan labelled the announcement as “a defining day” for the league only six years after he fast-tracked plans for a national women’s league despite concerns about diluting levels of talent.
“Simply, the competition is now whole. We have 18 AFLW clubs to send a message to every female playing footy, they can play for any one of our AFLW teams,” McLachlan said.
McLachlan said quotas were a consideration — with the AFL aware it needed to bring more women into all levels of AFLW, including management and coaching.
Port Adelaide has declared its coach next year will be female while Essendon’s VFLW coach is Brendan Major but it has yet to make a decision on its AFLW coach next year.
Goddard, revealed as Hawthorn’s official AFLW coach on Thursday, told the Herald Sun she believed quotas could work as they forced clubs to get serious about female representation.
“Quotas are an option. They aren’t tokenistic,” she said/
“It shouldn’t be a prerequisite for all AFLW teams to have female (senior) coaches but we need to make a concerted effort to fix it. That’s from people in power.
“Quotas might be the only way it is going to change. And we need some creativity around the football soft cap. A $50,000 (exemption) isn’t going to cut it.
“Why can’t we sit entire salaries out of the cap? And there are some great sponsors, especially in the women’s space, who would help make that happen.”
Essendon president Paul Brasher said of the achievement: “We are a football club with a proud, rich, diverse, inclusive and successful history, but today, the Essendon Football Club becomes whole. Today is a landmark day for the red and black.”
McLachlan admitted the AFL faced significant challenges to conduct the upcoming season, which starts in December this year, given Covid-19 issues.
Many women will not be in a position to stay away for weeks at a time given they have alternate employment and are on modest wages of around $20,000.
McLachlan said while the league was aware of the benefits of the entire AFLW competition becoming vaccinated by December, he said it did not guarantee state governments would allow greater freedoms for travelling players.
McLachlan said he did not believe every AFLW team needed to play each other for the competition to have integrity.
The league has shifted its season to December-March as a pure summer league which will allow it to secure clean air from rival codes.
But its players are still keen to fast-track a league where players receive genuine professional salaries and play each other once per season.
Carlton star Darcy Vescio made clear the league would quickly adjust to 18 teams.
“Whenever expansion comes around we often fall into the trap of worrying about if there’s enough talent available,” she said.
“We hear it publicly as well as privately from players. I feel we can put this idea to bed. Every single time the AFLW has expanded, the playing standard has risen.”
Four teams to join AFLW in historic announcement
The AFL has finally embraced an 18-team AFLW competition for the 2022-23 season.
The league announced on Thursday the remaining four clubs — Essendon, Port Adelaide, Sydney and Hawthorn — would join the competition next year.
Earlier, the Herald Sun reported the AFL would make the declaration that every team will have its own women’s side for a 2022-23 competition that will start at the end of next year.
The four teams lodged detailed submissions, which were assessed by the AFL Commission at its two-day meeting last week.
And while there will be significant concerns about the dilution of talent in coming seasons, the reality is the league cannot continue holding out sides like Hawthorn, who have battled for years to gain entry to the AFLW.
“To accelerate the growth of the NAB AFLW Competition and to allow for greater opportunities for AFLW players, it is paramount that we engage all 18 AFL clubs and their supporter bases,” AFL chief Gillon McLachlan said on Thursday.
“The decision to expand the competition again, after the AFLW was expanded from eight teams to 10 teams in 2019 and then to 14 teams in 2020, comes as the number of women and girls playing football has grown to more than 600,000 nationally.
“With an additional four clubs entering the Competition in Season Seven, we will grow to 540 AFLW players across all 18 clubs, the largest employer of female athletes in the country, presenting further opportunities for women and girls involved in women’s football pathways, from Auskick to the elite competition.
“It has been often said that clubs haven’t felt whole if they didn’t have an AFLW team, and I am proud to say that our competition will now be complete with the addition of the new four clubs.
“The entry into the competition is based on the clubs delivering on the key criteria within their submission, especially across resourcing, facilities, corporate support and investment into their AFLW program.”
The league fast-tracking an 18-team competition will allow greater opportunities for women footballers across Australia to reach the elite level and eventually grow the talent pool.
This year’s competition will start in December with clubs already worrying about the state of the upcoming season.
The official pre-season starts in coming weeks, with some clubs including GWS having a number of players who do not live in the state.
It means they will have to train remotely ahead of the December start, with a fixturing nightmare coming up given many players are part-time and work in other pursuits.
Players on an average of about $18,000-$20,000 will not be able to drop their university or work commitments to spend weeks on the road or submit to long quarantine commitments.
Many AFLW staff and coaches are also part-time, with no plans yet for a full-blown vaccination program of the AFLW cohort which might ease concerns.
But by December a more thorough vaccination program of the Australian population might allow greater travel between states and crowds at more AFL venues.
Hawthorn was thrilled to have its licence granted with an AFLW side a long held-strategic goal of the club. President Jeff Kennett hit out at the AFL in May for not expanding the competition sooner and today CEO Justin Reeves emphasised the club’s preparedness to step into the AFLW competition.
“The growth of women’s football is one of the most significant developments in the AFL’s history. Hawthorn has laid strong foundations and is ready to step up to the elite level,” Reeves said.
Essendon President Paul Brasher said the club had never been better positioned to join the competition after securing pathways with the Calder Cannons and flagship First Nation’s Women’s Program in recent years and will now look to host games at Windy Hill.
“With our bespoke AFLW facilities now completed at the NEC Hangar, and with our long-term vision of AFLW games being played at Windy Hill, our impact in the AFLW competition will only be further strengthened,” Brasher said.
Sydney and Port Adelaide also welcomed today’s announcement. Swans chairman Andrew Pridham said it was a landmark day for the club.
“There are currently 290 girls engaged in the QBE Sydney Swans Academy program and it is exciting for our club that those girls now have a pathway to wearing the red and white at the elite level,” Pridham said.
Port Adelaide Chairman David Koch said the club was now complete.
“Great women have always been at the heart of Port Adelaide,” Koch said.
“We have a women’s team who will proudly sit alongside our men’s program on the national stage and embrace the expectations of more than 150 years of football tradition.”
McLachlan said this year female participation numbers had increased 100 per cent since 2015.
The NAB AFLW Competition has built a new audience base for the code with some 4.5 million AFLW fans, 155,908 attendees, 6.1 million viewers and an incredible 20 per cent of supporters who are new or first-time AFL attendees,” he said.
“But we don’t feel that the competition is whole without all 18 clubs and we know from the clubs that they don’t feel whole now without an AFLW team. AFLW is not just a competition that makes our game better but a culture that makes our whole industry better.”
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