On a blustery Wednesday night in Preston, the lights are on for the first night game of the season at AH Capp Reserve. The president of the Darebin Falcons, Aleisha Leonard, is watching a newly-formed Under-14 girls team. The Falcons get belted, but manage to score their first goal in two matches. Honking horns abound and players and parents alike celebrate like they’ve just won a final. “Good for them,” she says, smiling broadly. “They only formed a few weeks ago, so they’re pretty fresh.”
The new Under-14s team is just one product of an influx of girls – but also many women – who have made their way to Australian rules football for the first time in the wake of a wildly successful inaugural AFLW season. Leonard says 50 new players tried out this season, and many had to be taught how to hold a football for the first time. “In the past we might have had six [new players]. We couldn’t even remember their names. And people have wanted to get involved as coaches, team managers, trainers. You always have to pull teeth to get those people. People have emailed and said ‘I’d like to run water for you’… it’s incredible.”
This story is a familiar one for most women’s football clubs around the country, but the Falcons might be the ultimate destination club. At just 27 years old they are the most successful AFL/VFL team in the history of the game. They have won nine of the last 11 premierships in the VWFL (now VFL) including the last four-straight. Unsurprisingly, they were one of the key feeder clubs of the AFLW, and their changeroom walls are adorned with photos of the finest Falcons products: Daisy Pearce (Melbourne captain), Darcy Vescio (Carlton cult hero) and Katie Brennan (Western Bulldogs captain) to name just a few. Sixteen of their senior players were recruited to AFLW clubs, head coach Jane Lange was head-hunted to be an assistant at Carlton, and their head of strength and conditioning James McConnell was recruited by the Bulldogs.
So what makes the Falcons so successful? For Leonard, it’s the “community ethos” that the club infuses into its players. “It doesn’t matter who you are, you’ve got to help out. You’ve got to do your duties. That’s what we teach here. You’ve got to clean the towels, go and pick up dog poo. That’s what it means to be part of a community club. It forms a well-rounded person who is humble. That’s the difference between a lot of the female players you see, and the men who’ve grown up and been told ‘you’re fantastic’, ‘you can have everything’.”
It’s the Darebin ethos that has so impressed the AFL teams their players now represent. So much so that Western Bulldogs president Peter Gordon invited Leonard to dinner with him and CEO Gary Kent to learn the secrets to the club’s blistering success. But in a cruel twist of irony, the increasing professionalisation – and looming expansion – of the women’s game means that many of the VFL’s community clubs may be at risk of losing their licences if they don’t partner with one of the existing AFL men’s clubs.
This is a particularly difficult conundrum for Darebin, as a women’s only club with a young but proud heritage, and a political commitment to providing a safe space for girls and women in sport. The club has female coaches and administrators, and its committee is 100% female and always has been. In a recent strategic planning session, the club committed to three non-negotiables: they will always have a female president, always be known as the Darebin women’s sports club, and will always train at their “spiritual home”, AH Capp Reserve.
The professionalisation of the women’s game also represents a broader difficulty for grass-roots, volunteer-run women’s clubs who are unable to match cashed-up AFL/VFL affiliates like Box Hill and Geelong in terms of the facilities and sponsorship they can provide. “Of course girls [from all clubs] are trying out at Box Hill, because they are paying the girls fees, you get a free uniform and you’re playing for Hawthorn essentially,” said Leonard. “We can’t afford for girls not to pay their fees. And it’s not in our ethos that our elite team wouldn’t pay their fees and everyone else would”.
As only one example, Leonard pointed to the AFL’s introduction of the smaller AFLW Sherrin – which is a size 4 rather than the traditional 4.5 – as a hurdle for the volunteer-run club. After the rule change, the Falcons were left with 80 redundant 4.5 size balls. Facing an $8,000 bill for 100 new balls, the club started a successful crowdfunding campaign to replace them.
In the face of a turning tide, Leonard at least hopes that AFLW stays true to its community roots. “There’s sort of something raw about [the fact that] it’s not perfect, and I think a lot of people have been drawn back to it because it’s not as manicured as guys’ footy tends to be. The way they’ve learned to be at their club, to be nice humans with interesting personalities who don’t just give the same answers – that really shines through. That’s why your Mo Hopes and your Darcy Vescios are really loved by people.”
