P.T. Barnum, a man who knew a thing or two about putting on a show, once said “clowns are the pegs on which the circus is hung”. For football in the 1980s the show seemed to be hung on characters and showmen – from the unhinged antics of Mark Jackson through to Dermott Brereton’s parody of every rock-star swagger from Elvis to Jagger.
Like Stephen Sondheim in A Little Night Music, the game’s commentators last week lamentably asked themselves where are the clowns – the characters and the showmen – after Collingwood’s Dane Swan hung up his boots.
In many ways the game has never been better, the irony being that as it has improved and become more professional, footballers are being scrutinised years before they even enter the league. They are told not to be reckless on the field or off it, and that they must define themselves, always, as part of a team. You are expected to fold yourself into a character. One who can be drafted.
“I’m an individual!” Well, you’re not fooling anybody. But those suggesting we won’t see the like of if not Swan, then certainly Brereton, again simply aren’t casting their eyes wide enough. In the supermarket of football opinion, it is not the most wobble-wheeled of carts that contains the suggestion that the next Brereton may be a woman.
If you want proof, head out under the lights at the Whitten Oval on Saturday night, where the women’s all-stars match will be at the centre of football’s gravity and the only show in town.
One of the players to feature will be Moana Hope. What Collingwood lost in Swan last week, they more than replaced a month ago in Hope, one of their two marquee signings for the upcoming AFL women’s league. Collingwood’s newest tattooed forward has 14 siblings and a history as a state-level cricketer. When she kicked her 100th goal for the season last week with the St Kilda Sharks, members of her family stormed the ground and performed a haka.
The game will also feature midfielder Lauren Arnell, who was not only Carlton’s first priority pick, but also their first female football ambassador who is working to develop the women’s game in Melbourne’s north.
A man who not only knows Arnell well, but also the women’s game, is Graham Burgen. Burgen is the head coach of the Victorian Women’s Football League Academy and in October, will take the role of Carlton women’s team’s inaugural list manager and midfield coach.
Burgen is also no stranger to the times when the game’s pegs were characters and showmen, having plied his trade in the VFA during the 1980s against Port Melbourne’s Fred Cooke and “Buster” Harland. Burgan has seen more women’s footy than most and loves what he sees.
“I’ve been out to hundreds of games all across Victoria and interstate, and the skills of the game are first class,” says Burgen. “Once they get to play on a bigger stage and exposed to a larger audience, the public is going to love it – and the women who play it.”
Much to the delight of Burgen, one of those women has already been drafted by Carlton. Brianna Davey is a team-mate of Hope’s at St Kilda Sharks and is the AFL women’s competition’s first high-profile code-hopper, having previously kept goal for both the Matildas and Melbourne City.
“Brianna Davey could be as good as anyone in the competition in a couple of years,” says Burgen. “They can’t tackle her and she’ll bust out of a clearance with four women hanging off her. She’s really exciting.”
And there is exciting talent everywhere he looks, including another potential code-hopper in Cecilia McIntosh who represented Australia in the bobsled in the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, having previously won a silver medal in the javelin at the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester.
“C-bomb is an excitement machine,” says Burgen of McIntosh. “Something is always happening when she’s near the ball.
There’s also Emma Kearney who will line up for the Bulldogs on Saturday night. In the likely event she’ll be drafted into the AFL women’s league, she’ll need to balance football with opening the bowling in the women’s cricket Big Bash competition.
Those women drafted into the league will not only be talented footballers, they will be physical footballers also. After the success of the women’s rugby sevens team in Brazil, those who think that women’s sport is neither entertaining nor physical must be of such an archaic, misogynist mindset that they still believe you can decide if someone is a witch by seeing if she floats.
“There’s a girl called Lauren Tesoriero from the Eastern Devils who’s got a bit of character about her – she likes knocking girls down and there’s usually a bit of carnage in her vicinity,” says Burgen. “All the defenders are looking over their shoulder when she’s coming.”
As a footballer with the Darebin reserves, Alison Smirnoff is not expecting her name to be called on draft night, but as the founder of Change Her Game, an online movement that aims to positively raise the profile of women in sport, can’t wait to see how the inaugural competition plays out.
“A lot of the women that will be drafted for next year are women that are in their mid- to late-20s, some in their early 30s,” says Smirnoff. “They also have broader life experience in that they’ve had to fit footy around their job, so they’re vastly different from the TAC Cup footballer that comes into the AFL system.”
Smirnoff believes this provides clubs with a great opportunity to engage an audience beyond the important demographic of female members and supporters.
A lot of the women will have amazing backstories – Moana Hope gets up at three in the morning most days to start work, so she can take her sister Vinny, who has the rare neurological disorder, Möbius syndrome, to school – and they are not just remarkable athletes, but incredible people.
“Given clubs want people coming through the gates, their stories should be told and their individuality encouraged,” says Smirnoff. “In the future, we may reach the level of the men’s game with similar pathways, but for now the point of difference should be celebrated.”
As well as characters, the aesthetics of women’s football is likely to be a drawcard. Rather than the AFL tampering with the rules, Burgen believes in a simpler approach to make the game more free-flowing.
“I want to see the game blossom, so I’d be pushing for 16-a-side, rather than any rule changes,” says Burgen. “Because if the girls are taking hangers, running, bouncing and kicking goals, everyone’s going to go, ‘this is fantastic, I’m going to watch this’.”
Tinkering with the rules too much, could risk the league being perceived to take a patronising view of the women’s game, something Burgen believes is not required. “Having coached both men and women, I can comfortably say that to me it’s no different. I just coach footballers,” he says.
“If there is a difference with women, it’s that they can improve their footy IQ really quickly as they’ve not had years and years of being exposed to top-level coaching. So if you’ve an intelligent player, you’ll give her something, watch her do it and when it works you’ll see her smile and she’ll run back to you and say, ‘what else ya’ got?’”
Burgen says he has up to 150 women on speed dial seeking his feedback. “They’ll call as ask, ‘Did you see my game on the weekend? What do you think?’ The appetite for self-improvement is enormous.”
There are other ways too that Burgen believes the AFL could exert a positive influence. “I think it would be great that after draft night, the AFL get all the coaches together and say just let ‘em play.”
And once they play, the fans will come. “The most exciting thing for me is that it is not a gimmick,” says Smirnoff. “The clubs are 100% invested in growing the women’s game.”
And the more access that young girls have to sports can only be a good thing. “As a kid my football idols were Stephen Silvagni and Brett Ratten. But now little girls will be able to look up to Darcy Vescio, Moana Hope, Katie Brennan or Daisy Pearce.”
The women’s game has the potential to be many things – skilful, fast and expressive. It should be as entertaining as hell, but the one thing it won’t be is a circus.
