Channel 7 will make history later this year by issuing the first ever free-to-air broadcast of women’s AFL.
On August 16, Network Seven will present a live broadcast of the women’s AFL exhibition match between Melbourne and the Western Bulldogs. The match will air live at 12.30pm in Melbourne and will also be broadcast nationally on Channel 7.
Channel 7 has described the decision to broadcast women’s AFL for the first time as a “history-making television first in Australia”.
In another first, 2015 marks the first year that the AFL has organised two separate women’s matches. Previously, the league only sanctioned one women’s match per year.
The matches will involve players drafted from all over the country. There were 268 women nominated in this year’s women’s AFL draft, but while there were more nominees and more matches on offer than ever before, the official draft received very little mainstream attention.
The lack of coverage of the draft led Western Bulldogs vice-president Susan Alberti to issue a call for the AFL to improve its approach to advancing female players and the women’s league.
The league’s new CEO Gillon McLachlan recently moved its goal of having a national women’s competition by 2020 forward to a 2017 target, but Alberti says there is more that needs to be done.
“Let’s just say I believe that much more could be done,” she said.
“The recognition that these women deserve right here and now is just not happening. I go to lots of schools with my work – primary, secondary – and everywhere I go I’m getting the impression that not enough is being done.”
She said the if the league does not act fast to promote women’s AFL, it will risk losing its top players to sports more supportive of their female codes.
“The writing’s on the wall; we’re going to miss out if we don’t encourage our young children – men and women – to play AFL football. We’re going to lose out to soccer. We’re going to miss out if we don’t push this along the way we should be,” she said.
“I say it’s up to the AFL, and powers that I don’t have anything to do with, who need to really and sincerely promote the game of women’s football.”
She did say that she thought the new CEO was doing a good job so far of addressing the issue.
“I think he’s a man who is open to discussion, and more discussion about women’s football. Well, let’s talk some more.”
But she pointed out that more resources need to be committed to the task of advancing women’s AFL, particularly if the league hopes to meet their 2017 target for a national women’s competition.
Currently, women’s AFL is under the remit of the league’s general manager of people, customer and community Dorothy Hisgrove, but Alberti said the task is too big to be allocated to someone with such a broad ranging brief.
“Perhaps they need to give a bit more support and help to Dorothy. She appears to me to be working under the pump. She’s a dynamo of a woman, but maybe she needs some more resources and support to be able to do this.”
Alberti’s calls seem to have been answered by the announcement of Australia’s first ever broadcast of women’s AFL on free-to-air TV.
Fairfax Media confirmed the broadcast this week despite the league’s plans to officially announce it on May 12, at an industry-wide event celebrating women in football.