Second year of all 18 teams could see levelling of the playing field and end dominance of Adelaide, Melbourne and Brisbane Last year brought two AFLW seasons thanks to the league’s shift from summer to late August and it has made the wait for Friday night’s 2023 season opener feel that much longer. While there was no main draft this off-season given the intake between the last two seasons, there’s still been plenty of change. A tumultuous trade period gave way to a mature-age supplementary draft in April before the players settled in for pre-season at the end of May. It means there are a lot of unknowns.St Kilda were perhaps the most proactive over the off-season, picking up the...
Not a total upheaval of the status quo, but enough of a shake-up to remind people women are here to stay, on and off the fieldSport has long been a masculine domain. Even when women began to make inroads – as things slowly improved on the field and media coverage crept into the back pages of newspapers – men still held the positions of power.The announcement this week that Laura Kane has been appointed the AFL’s executive general manager of football is a sign of the changing times. It is not a complete upheaval of the status quo, but it is enough of a disturbance to cause a ripple and remind people that women in sport are here to stay,...
For women’s sport to benefit after the World Cup, leagues have to show commitment to the product beyond symbolic gesturesWith a successful home Women’s World Cup in the rearview mirror there are hopes other women’s sports may ride the wave of momentum to increased viewership, attendances, funding and, importantly, respect. The nearly 2 million tickets sold across Australia and New Zealand for the tournament are a reminder the audience already exists.The AFLW stood ready to capitalise on this momentum, ramping up its marketing and officially launching the 2023 season as the World Cup ended. The decision to wait for clean air made sense given the Matildas fever that struck the nation saw an estimated 17 million Australians watch the semi-final...
Luke Beveridge’s side were lopsided, occasionally astonishing and frequently bewildering – and now rue another lost yearIt’s no way to live your footballing life. You’re being well beaten at half-time. You trail the tackle count 43 to 23. You’re lucky not to be further behind. You send Rory Lobb, who’s no Gary Dempsey, into the ruck. You kick three goals in two minutes. You overrun your bogey side and get the four points in Geelong for the first time in twenty years.You then have to wait. You stew for 20 hours. Your finals fate, for the second year in a row, is wedded to Carlton. You look at their outs – Cripps, Docherty, Pittonet, Motlop. You gather as a playing...
Goal review debacle and shock results killed off some suspense but last weekend’s upheaval shows nothing is certain in footballAs the AFL was reminded again last weekend, to its significant chagrin, there is no such thing as a certainty in sport after a round that damaged reputations and decimated finals hopes. Not only did a goal review farce sink Adelaide and further dent the battered commodity known as the integrity of the competition, a string of shock results in the penultimate round has largely robbed the AFL of a fairy-tale lead-in to the finals series.The suspense is not completely killed off as flag contenders jostle for position but the final round of the season is not the blockbuster envisaged earlier...