The landmark year women flooded into professional sport

For Australian sport, 2017 will go down as the year the dam broke and women flooded into professional sport.

Adelaide Crows co-captain Erin Phillips celebrates winning the AFLW grand final at Metricon Stadium in March.

Has there ever been a more important year for women in sport in Australia?

The most powerful female sports leader in the country, Australian Sports Commission chief executive Kate Palmer, says an emphatic no. “Calling it the most important year is understating it,’’ Palmer says.

For Australian sport, 2017 will go down as a landmark, a milestone, a watershed, the year the dam broke and women flooded into professional sport.

There have been other defining moments for women in sport in this country.

The first women’s cycling race in the world was held in Ashfield in Sydney in 1888 and the first Australian Ladies Golf Championship was held in Geelong in 1894.

The Million Dollar Mermaid, Annette Kellerman, was arguably Australia’s first professional sportswoman, turning her swimming prowess into paid entertainment and eventually a film career before the First World War. She also freed female swimmers from the strictures of bathing dresses and pantaloons by popularising a one-piece swimsuit that allowed women to move properly in the water.

Then in 1912, Sydney swimmers Fanny Durack and Mina Wylie (whose father Henry built Wylie’s Baths at Coogee in 1907) became the first women to represent Australia at the Olympic Games, defying the prejudice of the sporting establishment of the day to win gold and silver medals in the 100m freestyle in Stockholm.

The Australian women’s cricket team played their first Test against England in 1934 and an Australian netball team toured England for the first time in 1956, the same year that women won more than half of Australia’s Olympic gold medals for the first time, at the Melbourne Olympics. They were all trailblazers but the paths were narrow and followed by only the few talented women brave enough to defy convention. The difference this year was that a broad movement of women swept to the forefront of sport, creating a freeway for all those who will follow them.

This has been building for a few years. Football Federation of Australia and Cricket Australia were the first male-dominated professional team sports to really get behind their respective national women’s teams and make female participation a priority, perhaps encouraged by the groundbreaking work of Netball Australia in demonstrating that women’s sport could pull a crowd.

Then the AFL, the Australian Rugby Union (through the sevens form of the game) and finally the NRL, woke up to the commercial value of supporting their female athletes and establishing women’s leagues. The momentum really began to roll in February this year when the AFL completely underestimated the appetite for its pilot women’s league.

The lockout at Princes Park for the first match between traditional foes Carlton and Collingwood, as 25,000 fans tried to pack into a ground designed for 20,000, will go into legend.

The competition’s future was secured that day. At the end of the two-month season, the Adelaide Crows, with superstar Erin Phillips and a female coach in Bec Goddard, emerged as the premier team.

Netball Australia then took up the ball with the launch of Super Netball, its first fully-professional competition (paying an average salary of $67,500), shown free to air on the Nine Network and eventually won by expansion team the Sunshine Coast Lightning in June in front of a packed crowd at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre.

In July, the Matildas took centre stage as they took down the world No 1 ranked US team on their home ground in California and went on to win the Tournament of Nations, and Australia discovered Sam Kerr.

They rode that wave home for two sellout matches against Brazil in Penrith and Newcastle where the Kerr craziness reached a new peak as she backflipped her way into Australian hearts.

The accolades followed: US national women’s league player of the year, Asian player of the year, selection in the FIFA team of the year and ABC Personality of the year. At the same time the Matildas rose to a historical high of No. 4 in the world rankings this year.

Former Matilda, the multi-talented Ellyse Perry then led the Australian women’s cricket team to an Ashes victory, her double century the defining moment of the first day-night Test for women at North Sydney Oval in November. Last week she was named the ICC’s female player of the year.

Rugby league’s Jillaroos kept the ball rolling as they dominated the World Cup, playing a more entertaining final than the higher-profile men, and the NRL announced it would join the party by launching a six-team women’s competition with a final that will run as a curtain-raiser to the men’s grant final. It will also contract the top 40 national team players.

The rising tide of professionalism in women’s sport in Australia is neatly documented by the website, www.sportingintelligence.com which does an annual survey of global sports salaries.

It’s 2017 edition lists three Australian competitions among the 12 best-paid women’s sports leagues in the world. The Super Netball league comes in at No 2 (with an average salary of $67,500, only behind the WNBA), cricket’s Big Bash is at No 8 ($20,000), soccer’s W-League is at No 9 ($113,800) and the AFLW is at No 11 ($12.700).

However it’s worth remembering that even the best female league players in the world are paid per season less than half what the best male players are paid per week (in the NBA).

Palmer believes several factors have combined to provide the spark that has ignited women’s sport, led by “upward pressure on the various organisations’’.

“All of the big commercial sports have been taking it on and pushing it, which is a bit about equality, but all about good business and they should be congratulated for that,’’ she said.

“It’s now captured the imagination of the public. It’s now about putting the shoulder to the wheel and making that sustainable and making sure these athletes are paid what they are worth.’’