The AFL’s female footy boss is a victim of unconscious bias from clubs dominated by men

Laura Kane was meeting a Melbourne footballer at Casey Fields early last year when Demons football boss Alan Richardson approached her for some advice. The club was nearing the end of its hellish pre-season punctuated by Joel Smith’s drug suspension, the Clayton Oliver trade saga, and rumours of a widespread drug culture. Richardson was looking for answers.

Kane told Richardson that in her experience, cultural issues at football clubs started and ended with the senior players. Richardson in turn set up a meeting with Kane, Max Gawn, Jack Viney and the Demons’ leadership group in which the AFL’s most senior football executive outlined to the experienced footballers - some of whom had become clearly frustrated at what was happening within their club - the role they could play to address player behaviour.

AFL football boss Laura Kane.Credit: Getty Images

Richardson later applauded Kane’s message to the players that they needed to take responsibility. He was appreciative of the time she took with the club at Casey even though Kane explained to him that such meetings were a regular part of her job. It’s not difficult to find supporters among the clubs when you ask them about the game’s first female head of football, who won the job as a 33-year-old two years after joining the AFL and now marks 18 months in the job.

Nor is it difficult to find critics at a time when Andrew Dillon’s entire executive team, stripped of experience after an extraordinarily lengthy handover period with Gillon McLachlan, is being heavily scrutinised by both the clubs and the AFL boardroom.

The spotlight on Kane comes in no small part with the job that remains one of the toughest and thankless in the game. The AFL’s general manager of football oversees the running, the shape, the look and the officiating of the game. The job operates on a weekly knife-edge cycle battling the inevitable on and off-field mistakes and crises against a barrage of club and supporter self-interest.

Kane’s portfolio also includes AFL talent, and she raised eyebrows last year by insisting upon remaining at the helm of the struggling AFLW competition and appointing Emma Moore from NAB with a background in marketing and strategy to report to her. There is a strong view that the AFLW boss should be a separate executive role.

Kane is regarded as a superb strategist.Credit: AFL Photos via Getty Images

Kane’s supporters across the clubs describe her as a calm operator and superb strategist, and point to her deep knowledge and passion for the game and her work ethic. Her detractors say she can be difficult to get through to and remains too black and white in a job demanding nuance and pragmatism.

But there is no doubt that Kane, as the first woman to hold the AFL football job and at the age of 34, is a victim of unconscious bias in a club community still dominated by men. This opinion has been communicated by Trevor Nisbett, the long-serving West Coast boss who has been employed by the AFL to work as a middleman between the clubs and head office, who has been providing feedback to Kane.

That the AFL, with a strong push from some clubs, is looking to insert Geoff Walsh - another veteran club executive - into Kane’s football department to add grey-haired experience, is symbolic.

Dillon, too, with some strong feedback from the commission, is looking to appoint an experienced deputy. That role was to have been filled by Dillon’s first choice Brendon Gale, but the role was diluted after a number of other executives took umbrage at Gale’s potential seniority and pay packet.

Kane with AFLW boss Emma Moore.Credit: Simon Schluter

That Dillon needs more seniority around him seems publicly to be less of a reflection upon him than Kane has experienced in the same situation. Which has made the Walsh appointment highly sensitive.

Kane’s supporters remain concerned at the appearance of an experienced older male, Walsh, entering the fray to help a relatively inexperienced football boss half his age. Internally at the communications-alert league headquarters the Walsh role is the subject of some debate, but he is expected to work alongside Kane either four or five days a week. Kane is also expected to separately replace her former football deputy Josh Mahoney, who has been moved to a new position.

The role was offered to Graham Wright last year but he rejected it in favour of becoming CEO elect at Carlton.

It is worth pointing out that that Kane’s so-called youth is something of a misnomer. Andrew Demetriou, still in his 30s when he took over the AFL’s top football job, appointed 31-year-old Adrian Anderson - a lawyer like Kane - into the role when he became the AFL boss. Despite his often difficult relationship with the clubs Anderson served nine years in the role and oversaw significant changes to the AFL’s rules and judicial system and integrity unit.

If the clubs ultimately ganged up on Anderson who many saw as an outsider, his near decade in the role was accompanied by the unwavering support of Demetriou and his chairman Mike Fitzpatrick; a reality not lost upon Dillon and current AFL chairman Richard Goyder as they work to quell club disquiet concerning Kane.

Some of the Kane criticism seems difficult to fathom. That she, like other AFL executives, lacks light and shade in her decision-making is belied by the fact that she relented last season on her stated aim to immediately toughen the rules governing academy and father-son draft selections, bowing to pressure from some clubs to defer the changes for a year.

And midway through 2024 Kane ceased her weekly umpiring reviews broadcast on the AFL website after a less than convincing defence of an umpiring decision in the North Melbourne-Collingwood clash. This was followed up by a series of umpiring errors in a Geelong-Essendon game which saw Kane personally admit fault to coach Brad Scott on behalf of the umpires. Both Kane and her superiors and advisers finally saw the pitfalls of a weekly purging session distracting from the good news stories.

In May last year, Kane oversaw a mid-season change to the contentious holding the ball rule shortening the ‘reasonable time’ component. Now some clubs are pressuring her to act upon players being pushed into contests after a series of unpunished incidents causing serious injuries, including Sam Lalor in the pre-season and more recently Brandon Starcevich. To date the AFL has resisted.

The suggestion that she can be difficult to pin down and remote would probably shock her and has not been the experience of Alan Richardson and the Melbourne leadership group, nor a number of clubs with struggling AFLW teams currently working with Kane in a bid to keep their homegrown players away from the draft.

Kane’s trajectory has been extraordinary since she was poached by the Kangaroos as a 25-year-old personal injury lawyer to run their fledgling women’s football program. An influential figure in the women’s game, Kane was president of the Melbourne University women’s club, a past player and coach, and was poached by the AFL after five years at North to work under Brad Scott in a football division then overseen by Andrew Dillon.

Ironically, given that North now boasts a woman president and the game’s only female CEO, the club back in 2021 had failed to promote Kane to the executive role she probably deserved and lost her to head office.

Her appointment to the top football job two years later was Dillon’s first big announcement around the time he also controversially introduced Opening Round onto the football calendar. That radical fixture adjustment came about because Dillon was determined to place football in the spotlight in Queensland and New South Wales. For years the promotion of the game in Sydney, in particular, had been neglected by the AFL.

Unmoved by club complaints Dillon has conceded only that the AFL might add just one extra game - potentially in Geelong on either the Sunday or Monday of Opening Round - to the early March weekend.

As Dillon handles the delicate matter of the Geoff Walsh appointment while backing Lara Kane’s authority, his priority is to remain as staunch in his support of his football lieutenant as he is to retain Opening Round, despite pressure coming from self-interested clubs.

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