This week AFLW’s inaugural Pride round went from being in serious jeopardy, as Covid-19 cases were confirmed in Western Australia and Victoria, to undergoing a significant fixture overhaul after valiant efforts from the league, clubs and state governments kept the season alive.
The final game, the Western derby between Fremantle and West Coast – confirmed Friday afternoon for a Sunday twilight game – ensured all 14 clubs could still play a match in round two, one that means so much more than football for athletes and many fans.
The first AFLW Pride game was played in 2018 between the Western Bulldogs and Carlton after Australia said ‘yes’ to the gruelling and harmful marriage equality plebiscite. The AFL and most of its clubs took strong stances during the postal vote to show their fans, players and stakeholders that football has a role to play in helping to drive positive social change. This year the celebration extended to a full round, featuring players in Pride guernseys and rainbow socks, goals kicked from a rainbow 50m arc and umpires waving rainbow flags. Bright and beautiful.
For many AFLW athletes, playing the sport they love in a Pride round is special. That is also the case for fans as the league builds on a long tradition of women’s sports offering refuge for those who have not always been actively welcomed into men’s sporting arenas.
Most research on sports fans speaks to support stemming from a strong sense of identity with their team.
Academic Matthew Klugman notes in his book, Passion Play, that Australian rules fans are frequently celebrated as “mad, fevered, obsessed, fanatical, and addicted”. Klugman goes on to write that “adoration like this can blind the conscience, and it’s little wonder that passionate fans are often referred to as blind or at least ‘one-eyed’ for, no matter what the club does, these barrackers will maintain their love”.
This has been the way fans have typically embraced fellow fans. Through a connection to football clubs and collective understanding that everyone is a bit too passionate, but that is how it is meant to be. But it is also the way in which fans exclude other fans. Fans perceived as lesser fans because they challenge the status quo. For those who have not maintained their love for their club, who have been marginalised, vilified and excluded and ultimately walk away, are immediately discounted. A real fan would stay. A real fan would never give up on their team.
But in the outer at AFLW games, and many other women’s sports, we are learning this is not true. More and more stories are being shared by people who are returning and renegotiating their fandom in a space they now feel welcome, safe and celebrated. These stories show us that perhaps the real fans are those who have had to sacrifice the teams and sports they loved because they did not love them back.
Comedian and sports commentator Bobby Macumber wrote of her experience leaving the team she grew up supporting for The Women’s Footy Almanac 2018 due to the position they took on the same-sex marriage plebiscite. Macumber then chose another team who she felt had been proactive and had a women’s team, writing: “I now support a team who proudly supports marriage equality and all LGBTIQ+ people.”
Sportswriter Kirby Fenwick, in her segment on Triple R’s Kick Like a Girl radio show, in 2019 interviewed fans who returned to the AFLW after feeling like the men’s game had let them down. One shared that “the AFLW has given me back something I thought I’d lost, which is the sport I love”.
Such stories show supporters who felt isolated and ignored now have somewhere else to go. They have “maintained their love”, as Klugman notes, but in a different way. In finding a space that embraces them and that allows them to feel proud of who they and be proud of who is representing them on the field.
Four years later, Macumber is still a Western Bulldogs supporter after finding her place back in the stands as a passionate footy fan. She watched her Bulldogs take on Carlton in the thrilling Pride round opener on TV in Adelaide with her fiancé Abbie along with Abbie’s parents, Abbie’s sister Kristy and her fiancé Kathryn.
“This match was even more special being able to share it with my second family.” Macumber says. “I explained the Pride round and how special and inclusive it is for so many young LGBTQIA people. We chatted about the Bulldogs jumper which displayed the ‘Progress Pride Flag’. We discussed each of the different flags and what they represented, with the addition of the Trans triangle and the LGBTQIA+ people of colour. There were a number of the different ways in which people identify that most of us learnt about that night. Once again, witnessing the AFLW’s ability to start a conversation that is hidden from most male-dominated sports circles.”
There is still work to be done in this space, and the Bulldogs’ brilliantly designed progress guernsey is a key example of this. We have a lot to learn.
While the AFLW offers more diverse on-field representation than the men’s game, there are still no transgender women playing football at the elite level. Further education and research is also needed to work through how to connect and engage with communities who express their sexuality, gender and identity in different ways, then bring them into, or back to, the game.
