Show caption ‘Seeing women making all the decisions and getting it done was empowering,’ Darcy Vescio says of the Falcons. Photograph: Joe Castro/AAP AFLW The importance of queer players in the survival of women’s Australian football The AFLW would never have happened were it not for clubs such as the Darebin Falcons, say three of its former players Emma Race and Julia Chiera @Emsyanna Fri 23 Aug 2019 23.00 BST Share on Facebook

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When the Swans host the Saints on Saturday afternoon the rainbow flag will fly at the SCG to mark the AFL’s fourth Pride game. This celebration – one of a number of themed games in the AFL fixture that champions messages of inclusion and diversity – specifically provides an opportunity to acknowledge the impact Pride has on the football community.

In the decades before the AFLW launched, the torch of women’s football was kept alight by dedicated and passionate football-loving women. The women’s game was largely invisible to the larger football community, but the clubs they created were inclusive and safe spaces for many queer identifying women.

One such club is the Darebin Falcons Women’s Sports Club. The Falcons are considered a powerhouse in the history of the women’s game. Three former Falcons players came together at a recent event called Pride: Our Untold Stories of Women’s Football to discuss the legacy of queer women on football and the role they played in creating a unique football culture which would lay the foundations for the AFLW competition.

Patty Kinnersly is the CEO of Our Watch, a Carlton Football Club board member and was named in the Darebin Falcons silver jubilee team. Julia Chiera is currently an assistant coach in the VFLW and during the AFLW season the welfare manager for the Carlton AFLW team. Carlton player Darcy Vescio is one of the faces of the AFLW competition. Emma Race, who moderated the discussion, is an Our Watch Fellowship recipient and a member of the Outer Sanctum podcast team.

ER: Patty, in the late 1990s your Ballarat footy team disbanded and you joined the Darebin Falcons. What impressed you about the club?

PK: I saw it as a club with an inclusive and respectful culture. The Falcons were one of the first demonstrations of feminist leadership and governance I saw as a young person and it sparked something in me. We were women excited to play footy.

They were a group who didn’t worry about how people looked, where they came from, how many tattoos they had or how bad their mullet was

ER: Why were queer women able to lead a space like this?

PK: I suspect this had to do with growing up and not being as impacted by the gender stereotype of being feminine or feeling pressure to behave in a certain way to seek approval from men. Also, knowing you are different, you grow up with a heightened sense of compassion and understanding of people who are seen as different. You grow up understanding what discrimination is and how important it is to create the space for other people “just to be”.

ER: The Falcons were a powerful club in culture and professionalism. What contributed to that power?

PK: They were a group who didn’t worry about how people looked, where they came from, how many tattoos they had or how bad their mullet was. None of that mattered. It was all about what you brought, how you behaved and treating each other with respect. As a women’s only club there was no scrutiny or worrying what the men thought. This was always a club where you were just free to be. It was compelling.

ER: Would women’s football have survived from the 1980s onwards if queer women didn’t keep it running, populate the teams or create a community out of it?

PK: No, I don’t think so. It’s fair to say that queer players were over represented in the playing group.

ER: Julia, it took you a while to get to the Falcons nest but when you did, you were addicted. Why?

Julia Chiera: I grew up as one of five sisters in a Catholic girls’ school where women talked to each other in certain ways. The catalyst for that tone and those conversations was often to get the attention of men. I came to this place and all these women were connected through footy, a game that I loved. I was blown away.

ER: What are the benefits of a women-only football club?

JC: When you don’t care about external opinions or fitting a stereotype it is powerful. When you do it en masse, it creates a culture.

ER: Seven years after you started playing football, we would see a lockout at Princes Park as the AFLW launched. How much do you credit the work of queer women to get female footy to that moment?

JC: It wouldn’t have ever happened without the queer women in football keeping the game alive for female players. The women who played and administered female football from 1980 to the early 2010s created the connection and the community. We may not have been visible to the mainstream footy world, but we were visible to one another. We talk about “if you can’t see it you can’t be it”; that doesn’t need to be on television, it can just be across the room, or across the field.

From 2010 or so when women’s sport was gaining momentum across codes, this group of women had kept women’s football going. There was a big cohort of players that were ready to go. I just don’t think it could have happened without them. This was highlighted in the first AFLW draft when 10 players from the Darebin Falcons were selected, including the No 1 draft pick Daisy Pearce.

ER: How did that first AFLW game make you feel?

JC: I thought about it a lot that first season. I grew up always wanting to see myself reflected and I never did. Suddenly there were all these queer players out on the field and in the paper and I thought this is so powerful. My 14-year-old self got some healing through that season.

ER: In Samantha Lane’s book, Roar, female footy pioneer and Bulldogs general manager of women’s football, Debbie Lee, talks about hiding her sexuality because she felt it would create another hurdle to get people on board with women’s footy. You have worked inside an AFLW club. Does it remain a hurdle?

JC: Every player approaches it differently, and they may be more or less open depending on the environment and the immediate audience. Some are open about their sexuality on social media without doing a press release. So, if you are looking for it you will see it, but if you’re not, you won’t. Players don’t know if they will risk sponsorship, opportunity or safety if they are overt about it. Where Patty’s generation was invisible, my generation was out but homogenous. I see Darcy’s generation as more open, fluid and beyond labels.

Julia Chiera and Darcy Vescio of the Falcons during the VWFL Premier Division grand final in 2014. Photograph: Kate Dullard

ER: Darcy, you came to women’s football after playing in boys’ teams in Wangaratta. What were your early impressions?

DV: It was like walking onto another planet. I had been the only woman in Wangaratta who could look comfortable with a football. This was a whole space I didn’t know existed. The only representation of footy I remembered back home was when it was a highlight on The Footy Show of a girl getting swung by a pony tail or something that looked equally bad.

ER: How did it feel seeing women running the club from the board to the field?

DV: That was a really important part of my education about women’s football. Seeing women making all the decisions and getting it done was empowering. Being invited to be on the committee was a big deal. To be honest, I think they asked me because I had handy graphic design skills. It was the first time I had been in the room where the decisions are made and at the Falcons, every decision was made by a woman.

ER: With women’s football in the mainstream via the AFLW, it is the first time we have seen so many openly same-sex attracted professional sports people in the code. How do you reflect on that huge cultural shift?

DV: The Pride games create an opportunity to reflect on that. As a playing group we all march into that together. I think, like with a lot of things about AFLW, we won’t know the impact we are making or how we are influencing things until we are finished playing.

ER: You were a vocal supporter of marriage equality. What are your thoughts on the power of the female footy voice?

DV: AFLW has provided us with a platform we never thought we would have. I have learned from Patty that “if we can, we should”. It is a privilege to have a platform. A lot of people have a platform and don’t use it and a lot of people don’t have a platform and should.

ER: The Pride game is a chance to celebrate and recognise the importance of an inclusive football community. How important is the visibility of pride to the evolution of football?