Richmond and Carlton opened the 2020 AFLW season at Princes Park on Friday night against a hazy Melbourne backdrop. It was a historic moment for the Tigers, a club with a long and proud history, and an important moment for the Blues too, who this season will be looking to atone for last year’s grand final loss. But it wasn’t the first time women wearing the navy blue and the yellow sash have faced each other. It wasn’t even the first time at Princes Park.
In 1933, women wearing the distinctive kit of each club played in a charity match at the venue. A scant 60 seconds of footage from the game shows crowds jostling for space at the boundary fence alongside a few nice bumps, some clever feigning and a couple of decent kicks on the field. Watching the black and white footage feels like a peek into a future that might have been. A just imagine moment.
For fans of the women’s game, returning to Princes Park on a Friday night in February has become a tradition. It’s a night we start pining for as soon as the shine of the grand final wears off. One that fills our bellies with nerves, and our hearts with joy. The old ground has a distinctive kind of magic, infused as it is with so many special AFLW memories – so many footy firsts, historic moments and iconic images.
So when Richmond and Carlton returned to Princes Park on Friday night, nearly 90 years after that first meeting in 1933, they added to that list of historic moments and special memories. For the Tigers, who had bemoaned their exclusion from the competition, it was a night and a game that was a long time coming and was always going to be an important milestone regardless of the result. For the Blues, while it may have been less of a historic marker in their narrative it was still a game of footy the 2019 grand finalists were determined to win. And that’s just what they did.
Just over 15,000 fans, who began lining up hours before the gates opened, piled in. Touted as a potential lockout, you have to wonder if the hype for an event that was not ticketed kept many fans at home, where they knew they wouldn’t have to fight for a seat.
In the modern game, it is easy to get caught up in the stats, the metres gained and the one percenters. We focus on metrics like crowd numbers and TV ratings and assume that’s the whole story. We get wrapped up in the politics of trades and debating a coach’s future. It is not that these things don’t matter, or that they aren’t a part of the fabric of the game. The point is that they’re not the only parts. The stories matter too. The ones that don’t care about stats and TV ratings and whoever is coaching. The ones that are saturated in tradition and footy folklore, superstition and dreams and love for a game that doesn’t always love you back.
In the crowd last night, I spoke to fans young and not so young. Girls who dream of being the next Darcy Vescio or Monique Conti. Lifelong footy fans who had felt alienated from the men’s competition, but welcomed by the women’s. People who had travelled from interstate or up the road.
As the fourth season of the AFLW gets underway, taking time for those stories is as important now as it was in 2017 – or in 1933. Because in a hundred years, the conversation about Friday night’s game won’t be about the stats. It’ll be about a warm and hazy Melbourne night and the people we sat beside and shared the game with. It’ll be about the outlandish but wonderful costumes of the cheer squads. The Tigers first game. The fast and tough game of footy will be there too, and of course, that first Richmond goal, kicked by the inimitable Sabrina Frederick. Those are the moments that matter, the ones that make us fall in love with this game, that keep us enamoured, that stay with us long after everything else falls away.
