Professional AFLW player Gabby Seymour didn’t start playing football until she was 21 years old. Beginning her sporting career in volleyball, she says the options to become a professional volleyball player in Australia were pretty limited.
“You’d have to move overseas and that wasn’t really what I was interested in doing,” Seymour tells Women’s Agenda. “So that was kind of what led me into football.”
“I just found that I really loved playing sport at that high-end, elite level, and it was kind of right place, right time as AFLW opportunities were popping up.”
Following her love of sport and competition, Seymour found herself in a professional space where she says the opportunities available to her felt “life-changing”.
She’s currently an AFLW player at Richmond Football Club and was one of six player delegates involved in the negotiatory committee for the Season 7 AFLW CBA. This saw a 94 per cent increase in player wages and progress in employment terms.
Seymour also works at Richmond Institute, the education arm of the Richmond Football Club where she works to help better the understanding of the current sporting landscape and representation of women in leadership positions.
Outside of her advocacy work and football, she’s also a physiotherapist.
“Being a professional athlete, you realise the number of opportunities available to you and just how big sport is,” she says, noting that in addition to community level sport, “the professional sporting world is so much more than the game that gets played”.
“There’s these whole systems and you can work within sport without even being an athlete,” she says.
It’s within this vast world of sport that Seymour is now working to expand opportunities for women. Particularly in leadership positions where she notes the trickle down effect that can happen when women in sport have role models to look up to who are already driving change.
“I’m a really big believer in ‘you can’t be what you can’t see’,” she says, noting that putting more women into leadership spaces in the sporting industry allows for entry level workers to more readily aspire to higher positions or put themselves forward for promotions– creating a powerful cycle of change.
Seymour wants women to know that if there’s something they want to do in the sporting world, they “have just as much right” to be there as anyone else.
“So put your name into the hat, or put your name up for that trial or, you know, the extra sessions or whatever it is,” she says.
“Don’t be afraid to have a crack and put yourself out there because there’s some pretty awesome women who are leading the way in the AFLW space, and we want to make sure there’s another generation to follow up.”
Encouraging the growth of women’s sport at both elite and community levels is exactly what Seymour is platforming as a Change Our Game ambassador. This year, she was selected by the Office for Women in Sport and Recreation to join the Change Our Game movement alongside seven other inspiring women who are raising awareness on key issues in women’s sport.
“It’s a real privilege to be an ambassador,” says Seymour, adding that playing a role in supporting more women to join sport is an honour.
“I’m quite an optimistic person, generally. I think especially in the last 12 months in the women in sport space, we’re seeing some really great examples of how much women in sport can succeed,” she says, giving the example of the Women’s World Cup and new pay rises for the AFLW and Cricket Australia.
“There’s been a whole bunch of things that are moving in the right direction, but statistically, it looks like we still do have a way to go,” says Seymour.
“We have to be a little bit careful about not jumping to ‘oh, well, we’ve done one thing really well like the Women’s World Cup and okay, we’ve nailed women’s sport now’.”
“We have got quite a way to go with this, and we want to keep on pushing to make sure it’s at the forefront.”
Change Our Game Ambassadors are using their platforms to help drive change and raise awareness on key issues and barriers for women in sport. Change Our Game is led by the Office for Women in Sport and Recreation to level the playing field for women and girls. Be sure to follow the Ambassadors’ journeys through @ChangeOurGame on socials.