When the women’s AFL exhibition match between the Western Bulldogs and Melbourne made history last weekend, one of the greats of the game, Graham Cornes, appeared more concerned with the players’ breasts. The contest marked the first time the women’s game has been broadcast on commercial television and drew an audience greater than that of the men’s Adelaide v Essendon game the day before. Yet for the AFL Hall of Famer and father of recently retired Port Adelaide stars Kane and Chad, the spectacle “just didn’t look right”.

“Perhaps it was the outfits,” Cornes wrote in Adelaide’s The Advertiser. “They wore boys’ footy jumpers and shorts. Not particularly flattering.” He went on to write, “apart from the few who really looked like footballers, most of them looked like girls playing football. Boobs and all.”

Reaction to Cornes’ piece has so far been limited to social media or non-mainstream publications such as the Girls Play Footy blog, where Matt Marsden reminded Cornes that women “can in fact play footy. Boobs and all”. The fact that nothing has been made of Cornes’ piece in mainstream media says something about the silent acceptance of these chauvinistic attitudes towards women’s sport from those who, like Cornes, should know better.

Indeed, comments like these are nothing unusual for women who play elite “men’s” sports. The truth is that women who play at the highest level are constantly faced with attention to anything but their skills. Just ask Eugenie Bouchard, the professional tennis player who became the first Canadian woman to reach the semi-finals of the Australian Open in January 2014. “If you could date anyone in the world of sport, of movies … who would you date?” came the question in the immediate aftermath of her historic quarter-final victory.

As a society we simply cannot get past the idea that the only thing interesting about women playing sport is what they’re wearing, who they’re dating and how quaint it is that they think they can approximate their male counterparts. This despite the fact that last week’s exhibition game was played with the kind of flair that has been lacking from the men’s game, which has this year been accused of ugliness amidst increasing congestion and defensive tactics.

The women’s game likewise attracted numbers to the pack but only on account of a ferocity at the contest that left not one member of an enchanted crowd in doubt of their hunger. Cornes’ response to this was to note that the 44 women who ran out onto the Etihad Stadium field last week “were good – for girls”.



This is another commonplace comment when it comes to women’s sport. Most people – men and women – believe that women are inherently less capable than men at competitive sports. This belief, however, fails to address some significant structural issues for women’s sport, which receives a pittance of sponsorship, support and coverage in comparison to men’s sport. The oft-held stance is that women’s sport is unmarketable and that any money spent on it is charity without hope of return. The national TV audience of 501,000 for last week’s women’s game flies in the face of such logic.

So does the fact that these players are so good, “for girls”. The vast majority of the women who played in the exhibition match last weekend hold down full-time jobs and train an average of a couple of hours per week. They also frequently split their time between several sports, with last Sunday’s game featuring former Matildas goalkeeper Brianna Davey and Victorian state cricketer Emma Kearney. Unlike their male counterparts, they rarely choose just one sport because there is no career progression in it.

Which brings me to Cornes’ one decent point – that if the AFL is serious about a national league for women in 2017 then it needs to first invest in local and community level women’s sport. Women’s AFL football is the fastest growing sport in Australia but many of the girls who participate in it will drop out as teenagers as a result of the structural barriers they face. Women need to grow up believing that they have the option of a career in sport – especially traditionally male-dominated, competitive team sports like AFL football. This belief will only come when they are financially supported, their injuries managed and their endeavours taken seriously with appropriate mentoring and sponsorship initiatives.

Thankfully not everyone is as behind the times as Cornes. The AFL Players Association chief Paul Marsh wants to include women in the definition of AFL players so that they are paid out of the latest record-breaking collective bargaining agreement. This move is widely supported by male AFL players. Were this to eventuate it would be a monumental step towards women AFL players receiving the minimum standard of treatment and support that male players do.

Only then would I welcome Cornes’ assessment of the talent of these women athletes. Perhaps then we will have a culture that treats the women’s game with anywhere near the reverence reserved for men’s AFL. As it stands we have a long way to go. Last Sunday the women’s game was cut 90 seconds short because it had “gone over time” and the women needed to make way for the men coming onto the ground. The Bulldogs, who had been trailing all match, were in the midst of a blistering comeback and four points away from their first victory over a historically dominant Melbourne team. When the siren sounded at 18:30 the abrupt end to the immersive spectacle was met by confusion and a hush amongst the crowd.

One of the most disheartening things about Cornes’ comments is that they come at a time when the AFL so desperately needs – and is trying – to change its attitude towards women more broadly, given the sport’s history of serious accusations of sexual assault and a more general culture of chauvinism.

Cornes – and the likes of Sam Newman – may well be dinosaurs but their comments and the fact that editors publish them speak volumes for how the game thinks of and treats women. With such a grip over the public psyche this sexist culture can be incredibly damaging for attitudes towards women more broadly.

One can only hope that this next generation of AFL footballers will continue to support not only the women’s game but shifts in the culture of the AFL and its attitude towards women.