FOOTBALL will take a giant leap forward on June 29 when 50 female footballers will take part in the first AFL-sanctioned women’s football match between Melbourne and the Western Bulldogs.
For a sport with as many women supporters as men, this is long overdue.
Last Wednesday was a landmark day with the inaugural AFL women’s draft held at the MCG.
SEE: Madeline Keryk excited to make the grade for Demons
Women have long been hailed for their contributions on football boards, as support staff and in umpiring, but as players they have been sent out to play on local football grounds out of sight, with the odd exception being state representative matches.
The Victorian Women’s Football League and the respective leagues across the country have done a fantastic job in getting girls and women into the field of battle, but this sanctioned match as part of the AFL’s women-in-football round will be the greatest boon for a sport that has for so long neglected its female players at the elite level.
These 50 pioneers will have the chance to play with an AFL logo on their chest, represent an AFL club and share the same excitement elite young male footballers experience when they get drafted by a club.
It will be the best-of-the-best from right across Australia coming to showcase their talents.
Could it be the first step on the road to a national women’s league by 2020?
AFL commissioner Linda Dessau was present when the AFL took its sport global by playing a game for premiership points outside Australia for the first time.
She felt the sense of history being created, the first small step for football beyond our borders.
Dessau had a similar feeling when Daisy Pearce, a five-time All Australian, player of the national championships in 2007, Australian representative in the international rules and a Victorian player in the EJ Whitten game, became the first player taken in the inaugural AFL women’s draft.
“I have exactly that feeling tonight because I’m watching the most wonderful history in the making,” she said.
“What we are witnessing here is the first step of what I expect will become normal for our daughters and granddaughters.
“I very much hope that’s the case.”
Pearce was taken aback by her No.1 selection.
The Darebin Falcons star admitted she never saw this day coming for women’s football.
The best female footballer in the land can now play on the grand AFL stage and she will have all the Demons fans in her corner, just as the No.2 Stephanie Chiocci will have all the Bulldogs fans barracking for her at the ‘G.
“Wow is all I can say,” Pearce said.
“In terms of being selected and being here tonight and being part of this is amazing.
“To think I would’ve been standing here is well beyond what I ever thought I would do in football.
“Growing up playing footy, it was a dream to play AFL, but you realise pretty soon that that’s not going to happen.
“Thanks to the hard work of so many people in football, here we are tonight and I can’t say thanks enough.”
