After nine short weeks the AFLW season is over. Tuesday night’s W-Awards brought down the curtain on another compelling season of women’s footy and now is a salient time to review this ever-changing competition.
In one of a number of departures from the norm, the tradition of a Friday night season opener at Princes Park was erased this year. The league cited feedback from players that Friday night footy was challenging for players also juggling work commitments. AFLW fans baptised on the hype of Friday night footy felt it was a certain miss, especially on International Women’s Day which serendipitously fell on a Friday.
Also for the first time, we saw an AFLW double header – a great initiative to capitalise on the collegiate spirit of women’s footy – while new teams and new rules were welcomed. The rule changes resulted in less game time spent scrambling on the boundary and an increase in scoreboard results by 8%. In addition to a noticeable improvement in skills across the competition, the game increased in pace.
But for every action there is a reaction, and this faster paced game may be the reason we farewelled two of the competition’s most mature players as former MVP Courtney Gum and former Olympian Cecilia McIntosh retired.
The North Melbourne Tasmanian Kangaroos and Geelong both entered the competition this year. Despite being game day ready, North were passed over for a licence in the inaugural year of the competition. With an aggressive list build the Kangaroos looked good on paper and they didn’t disappoint on field.
But football games are not just won on the field. Coach Scott Gowans told the Outer Sanctum radio show that North Melbourne’s best recruit was Laura Kane, their football operations manager. With no female coaches in the competition this year, fostering strong female leaders is essential in the ongoing endeavour for gender equity within the football landscape.
Geelong’s AFLW team opened a new page in the club’s history with the season opener in front of a parochial home town crowd. No 1 draft pick, Nina Morrison, was a good news/bad news story. A stand out in preseason and round one, she suffered an ACL injury which sidelined her for the season.
Morrison along with Madison Prespakis (Carlton), Olivia Purcell (Geelong) and Alyce Parker (GWS) form a formidable rookie class of 2019. Geelong captain Melissa Hickey highlighted the impact the rookies will have on the competition saying, “Nina and her peer group come to the competition with a professional attitude and skill set that is indicative of uninterrupted footballing pathways”.
This was the first year we saw the conference system in action. Universally disliked by fans, all fears of an unfair system were realised when Conference A produced the top four teams. Melbourne and North Melbourne missed out on the finals making way for Carlton and Geelong who made it purely through the luck of the draw.
The Blues were the new black when they re-wrote the script, decisively beating the powerhouse that was Fremantle 3.0 and subsequently trading their 2017-18 wooden spoons for a spot in the grand final against the Crows. Adelaide, meanwhile, looked dominant all year with a core group of players rolling into their third season together. Their might, power and consistency was always going to be a challenge for any contender.
Both Carlton and Adelaide enjoyed a season uninterrupted by injury but this lucky streak was to end on grand final day as Erin Phillips and Chloe Scheer both succumbed to ACL injuries before the final siren. Despite injury, the Crows reigned supreme on Adelaide Oval and were crowned premiers for the second time in three years.
Phillips remains the north star of the competition. As an elite athlete, but one who was lost to game for years because of a lack of opportunity for her gender, she represents the both the future and the history of women’s football. Her domination saw her achieve a clean sweep of every medal on offer this year, including the prestigious W Award handed out on Tuesday night. In the years to come at least one of these yet to be named awards will no doubt be named in her honour.
The standing ovation of the grand final day crowd and the well wishes of both Crows and Blues players as Phillips was stretchered off the field will be an enduring moment of the season. But it is a photograph which will stand alone as the most indelible image of AFLW season three.
The trademark kicking style of Tayla Harris, as captured by photographer Michael Willson, dominated the news cycle after online trolls responded to it with offensive and gendered comments. Messages of support for the AFLW both nationally and internationally overpowered the messages of hate in a galvanising moment for the fledgling competition.
So, who or what was the biggest winner of the AFLW in 2019? Haneen Zreika’s first AFLW goal in the wake of the Christchurch terror attack was a highlight, the Tayla photo was a game changer and the Crows were gallant. But the biggest winners of the season were the 53,034 supporters who broke attendance records on grand final day.
Season three belonged to the fans. A recent Neilsen report confirmed that the increase in AFLW fans was not imagined. This season the fans got their footies, grabbed their friends and went to games. One tattooed Tayla on his leg and many made their own merchandise, much to the chagrin of the AFL lawyers.
As the sun sets on another season, the players will resume their day jobs. Next week a new day will dawn on a brutal trade period where clubs will delist eight players in an endeavour to support the growth of the competition in 2020. For AFLW fans the party is over for another year.
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