A Mary Poppins-like figure waved her umbrella in the direction of Gillon McLachlan and made sure her voice – and frustration – was heard.

It was February 3, 2017 – the opening night of the AFL Women’s competition – the ground was full and the gates were locked.

And as some scampered over the fences in a bid to get a look at the first-ever women’s national competition game, she wasn’t getting in.

As the former AFL boss McLachlan cut through the throng on Royal Parade, he sensed their disharmony amid his apology but the voice of the woman rose above all others.

“I remember going out (of the arena) and the first people I saw were very nice and appreciative, and then I went around the corner and there was a lot of people who had strong views who couldn’t get in,” McLachlan told this masthead this week on the eve of the 10th AFLW season.

“I remember a woman saying to me ‘it was so obvious that this game should have been at the MCG, you don’t know what you’re doing!’.

“I was like ‘well, it wasn’t obvious to me that it was an MCG capacity game, but I’m pleased we’re here but disappointed you and many couldn’t get in’.

“She had this umbrella she was waving around. She looked like Mary Poppins. And was saying ‘everyone knew this should have been at the MCG’.

“In the moment, it felt like a lot of people were agitated.

“It was a scale of people who weren’t to be reasoned with at that point, and I thought, well, I probably need to go back inside.”

McLachlan said it was special to watch as the build up grew in the lead up to the match and admitted it was impossible to track just how big it could get given the inaugural game was not ticketed.

“It was a pretty unstructured, un-AFL-style, fluid thing,” he recalled.

“Which was part of the beauty of AFLW – that it was organic and coming out of the ground and things were happening in real-time, by eye and judging what was capacity without scanning facilities.

“It was a fun thing, with a huge build-up and a lot of people put a lot of time and effort over decades to get to that point. It was a fabulous thing for lots of people to be sold out. That night was pretty incredible.”

The competition that started with such a bang has since faced the challenges of Covid cancellations, finding the right time in the calendar for the season, rapid expansion and broadcast and crowd metrics that now need to be met for the fixture to be grown.

In 2019, Adelaide Oval was rocking with more than 53,000 people in the house to see powerhouse Adelaide knock off Carlton in the grand final — recent Australian football hall of fame inductee Erin Phillips’ second of three AFLW flags.

The largest crowd last season saw 12,122 at Ikon Park for the grand final between North Melbourne and Brisbane.

Only three games since that 2019 decider have cracked 10,000 – all grand finals.

Talk to those at AFL House and the benefits of the women’s competition far outweigh just the competition itself.

Attendances at men’s games, participation and reach of the game are all cited, while one leading club figure went as far this week to say that the women’s game could become “the saviour” of the league in years to come as it continues to grow.

Talk to those at clubs and players and their frustrations of instability and a lack of vision for the competition have been a common theme since season one.

It’s clear to them that the women’s game has needed more than just a spoonful of sugar.

Speaking upon her induction to the hall of fame, Phillips made clear to this masthead her wish was to see the game back to the peak of its initial glory.

“I feel like we’ve been on this journey recently of finding where we sit in the calendar year, where we’re best played, and we’ve tried some midweek games … I feel like what I want is stability,” she said.

“I want more attention put on it, more stories written about it, more of the W players out in the spotlight marketing the game. I want to see W played in timeslots where our fans can get there and it can be — if you think back to the first game of AFLW, while it was free entry — over 10,000 people.

“For me, why can’t we (get) back to those crowds? It doesn’t cost that much to get in, it’s definitely accessible for our fans.

“I just want these athletes in AFLW to be set up and be able to be the best that they can and perform on stages in front of people that can see their talent and see their incredible style of game.”

The dual-sport star said comparison to the men’s game was natural, but unnecessary.

“I want us to have our own footy,” she said.

“(Tennis greats) Serena Williams and Roger Federer played the same sport, but they played completely different, and they can admire and respect it for how they both play.

“I feel like we’re in episode one of season two, this season. It feels like it’s a new era that we’re about to enter in.

“I know the amount of work that’s been done, now that I sit in the AFL space, having plans beyond just one or two years. It’s now four-year, five-year plans, so we know where we’re going. It’s been a bit ‘see what happens after this year’, or through CBAs and we haven’t been able to have a full go at it.

“The standard in terms of how many incredible young athletes we have and their skills at a base level, it’s all true and growing.

“Now, we’ve got to be able to showcase it as best we can.”

Inaugural Collingwood draftee Ruby Schleicher – pick 144 in the first draft – was just a teenager on that inaugural night

On Thursday evening, she will lead the Magpies onto Ikon Park as captain in her 10th season in something of a full-circle moment and hopeful of where the competition is heading.

“We did the jumper presentation out on the ground before anyone had come in. All of our families were there, and I’d been surprised by four of my best friends,” she told this masthead of that night.

“I think I had 17 family and friends there, who rocked up and surprised me, and there was no one in the stands.

“We knew we were probably going to get 14,000 – that was what people were saying. So then we came back out for the first warm-up and it was starting to fill up, and we thought, ‘righto’.

“But then when we came back for that second one, it was genuinely unbelievable.

“I was walking out with goosebumps and I remember going, ‘holy s…’, and just smiling and being like, we’re here.

The competition, that game, the groundswell, changed Schleicher’s life.

The teenager from WA had jetted to Melbourne in hope of what could be, now employed in the game on Fox Footy and one of the competition’s 18 captains.

“You get people telling you stories about where they were watching it, or something like that, and you realise that that’s actually what it did,” she said.

“It changed a lot. It changed people’s lives. It changed my life.

“To now be leading them out for the 10th season, I’m thinking, how did I land myself here. It’s going to be an incredible experience to be able to lead the girls out for the first time, for sure.”

League general manager of AFLW Emma Moore stood in the outer with a swag of Collingwood faithful, a 78-year-old female Magpies fan gripping her arm in tears at the occasion.

AFL football operations boss Laura Kane – then working at North Melbourne and a little miffed at the Roos not having an inaugural AFLW licence – sat in the stands in a Melbourne University women’s scarf clad in badges of MUGARs players who were playing in the top-flight, the likes of Ellie Blackburn, Emma Kearney and Alicia Eva just a few of the 25-odd.

“One of my friends from high school, Bridget, at one point just looked at me and she had tears running down her face,” Kane told this masthead.

“We were 14 when we started playing youth girls football together and she just held my hand, I think, for the whole first quarter.

“And then all she said was, ‘this is amazing’.”

Schleicher, 27, said capturing the magic of that opening night is something that the game “wants to be able to find”.

“Particularly because the standard is better now,” she said, with the league having conducted significant research on the rise in game and skill standard.

“That first year, they had thrown all these girls together that had not either been in a gym, or had proper coaching, girls from other sports, just to give it a crack.

“It was a different time then and with different support. Now, we are (with everything to make us elite athletes) and we’re seeing that in the game. It’s continuing to grow. The amount of people that say to me ‘it’s a lot quicker in person than it is on the TV, and you hit a lot harder’, and it’s true.”

McLachlan famously accelerated the introduction of the women’s competition years ahead of schedule after making the announcement on a whim in a function in a move that sparked headquarters quickly into gear for the 2017 inception.

The now Tabcorp chief executive knew something in the game had changed on Ikon Park with his kids after the first game, driving home and feeling like “something had started”.

“A lot of women over many decades had done so much hard work to get to that point, and then a lot of my team had made great decisions and people had invested a lot of time,” he said.

“For it to start strongly and be such an amazing evening was rewarding.

“At my local football club, there’s 30 teams of which probably 30 per cent are girls. There’s a magic there, and there’s a good group of people with the AFL and with the clubs need to just invest and consolidate, and I’m sure they’ll make the right decisions. It’s not for me to comment on that, but there is greatness in this competition.

“It’s there – it’s just whatever form it takes and people will make the right decisions.”