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Fitter, stronger, more skilled and better paid — that is how the AFL top brass were selling their women's competition at the launch of the third AFLW season.
But not all the club captains at today's event were sold on what lies ahead for the AFLW.
- New team Geelong will host Collingwood in the opening round of the AFLW season
- The home-and-away season lasts seven rounds
- Top tier players will be paid $24,600
"We want a bit more of a vision for the next few seasons, so we can see where this league is actually going, and whether the time and sacrifices are worth it," Geelong's Melissa Hickey said.
Her team is one of two new sides — along with North Melbourne — added to the competition this season, which begins on the weekend.
It means there are now 300 female players using the AFL's high-performance training facilities.
And with three elite pre-seasons now under the belts of many of those players, league boss Gillon McLachlan said the word from clubs is that many players are reaching new heights, both athletically and with their technique.
But even with increased professionalism and a 38 per cent pay rise this season, the life of an AFLW player remains considerably different to that of their counterparts in the men's competition.
For starters, female players are still having to balance work and football.
With the home-and-away season running just seven weeks, they play a limited number of games at the elite level in any year.
And then there is the pay: tier 1 players get just $24,600.
"To me, what's the most important thing is that the women are remunerated," said Susan Alberti, a former board member at the Western Bulldogs and a driving force in the development of the AFLW.
"If they want to keep these wonderful women, these elite sportspeople, they've got to look after them.
"I'm sure that's what they'll do … We need to encourage them, and support them."
Four more teams will be added next season, including ones from the West Coast Eagles and Richmond, the winners of the two previous men's flags.
Even so, it remains unclear if the number of games each team plays will be increased.
The AFL appears reluctant to have more than a few weeks of overlap with its men's and women's competitions, or to run it for too many weeks over the summer, where it competes with tennis, cricket, soccer and basketball.
Some are also upset that the AFL has scheduled its new AFLX competition — football's gimmicky version of cricket's Twenty-20 format — during the women's season.
It has led to fears the women's game will be drowned out.
"From a scheduling point of view, a broadcast point of view, there are lots of considerations," the head of the AFLW, Nicole Livingstone, said.
Carlton captain Brianna Davey is hopeful that as the competition expands, it will attract more athletes from other sports.
She herself gave up soccer to commit herself to Australian rules.
But she realises not every athlete will share the "massive passion" she has for the sport.
"If any player is being honest, obviously a bit more pay is always going to be great," she said.
"The dream is one day that we are full-time athletes, whenever that is, I'm not sure. Ideally, we'd like to get some more pay.
"In saying that, we understand we're in the infancy of the competition.
"And being such a short comp still at the moment, we obviously know that it still needs to grow and the talent needs to grow."
For McLachlan and Livingstone, sustainability is the key word going forward.
"It might be season three, but this is still a competition in a building phase," McLachlan said.
"Some of our growth has been incredibly fast, but we have more teams coming, and we have to develop more talent. There's infrastructure to build.
"We have to make the right decisions to ensure the league is sustainable and the foundations for growth are strong."
"We are getting an opportunity to do what a lot of women didn't get to do in the past," said Livingstone.
"We know that there's a lot to do, we do acknowledge that. However, we are on this journey to build a sustainable AFLW."
Topics: australian-football-league, sport, women, community-and-society, melbourne-3000, vic
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