Recently the AFL released statistics showing that women now make up just over 30% of Aussie Rules players Australia wide. This has come off the back of the recent introduction of the AFLW, the national women’s competition and also, the increasing pathways put in place to allow girls to play uninterrupted from their Auskick days all the way through to senior competitions.

Traditionally, in Queensland especially, there has been a point where girls had to stop playing as the boys were getting too big/rough/generally boyish to play in a combined team. This led to girls losing ties to the game from the age of about 12 and often not finding it again due to a lack of opportunity.

At some point though someone in the male-heavy administration HQ at AFL house must have brought up the idea that there was an opportunity to really increase stagnating junior numbers by pushing for more female participants. Even though the AFLW is laughably underfunded, the exposure to a national audience and the push at grassroots level has seen an explosion in women either coming back to the game or giving it a go for the first time. Which brings me to the local aspect.

What’s Happening Now

We are in a funny period in Queensland, particularly outside Brisbane, where the bulk of the senior women’s teams that are popping up are populated predominantly by women who have never played the game before. In a couple of years, the younger players will be replacing them, particularly at higher levels. For now, we have soccer players, rugby players, and mums that just need an outlet coming together to play a game many have never really seen before. It’s glorious.

Down in Palmwoods, the Hinterland Blues Football club is home to one of the first Senior women’s teams on the Coast. They are known as the Sapphires though I’ve often considered Diamonds to be a better name. Mostly because there are a number of rough ones in there (I’m friends with most of them so I can say that) but also because those rough ones are far more valuable than meets the eye. They are, for all intents and purposes, pioneers of the game in Queensland and on the Coast.

The Beginning

When they started in 2017, they were a genuinely motley crew who mostly didn’t know each other. They couldn’t kick a football and would throw it away in a panic if they were getting tackled. Hardly winning a game that year, they had such a good time doing it that they came back in 2018 and made it to the finals. They are still a motley crew but now they can kick, know what a handball is and are generally the ones doing the hard tackling.

But that isn’t the best part. It’s good, for a club that hasn’t had on field, for a few years, a senior team playing finals as a shining light. The best part is what they bring to the club as a group.

I’ve played football on and off for twenty-ish years and it is easy to forget sometimes why we play. Yes, because you’re good at it, or your mates play, or you get paid, but I haven’t seen men play with the same unbridled joy as the women do. They cheer themselves onto the field, run out to a theme song and laugh when they make a mistake (after some swearing).

Team Bonding

Watching them bond over the shared experience of learning how to play and then sharing the joy of winning for the first time was a privilege. That joy gets diluted the higher the level you play as the focus moves to winning as the main priority. For these women, they hit the sweet spot in terms of a mix of success and sheer fun for playing a new game.

I’ve also found it interesting to understand why they find so much enjoyment. I’ve been around sport all my life and the thing that I always come back to is the bond that playing a full-contact team sport brings. Not to say that female dominated sports aren’t physical. I’ve played enough indoor netball to know women are tough, but a sport where you are allowed to tackle another person to the ground and even bump someone without the ball is another kettle of fish.

It’s the bond of needing to rely on your team-mate to have your back. The satisfaction that comes with a good tackle and also the self-belief that comes with getting hit, getting up and getting back into it. It all adds up to a new and refreshing experience for women who perhaps grew up looking at “boys” sports and being told that it wasn’t for them.

The Future

I have a friend who was the inaugural captain of the Sapphires. She had never played before but had been around the game for her husband and kids, helping out on the committee and in the canteen but never on the field. When given the opportunity to play she took it with both hands. It turns out she wasn’t a bad kick at goal.

One day she will be able to show her daughter all the photos of when she led the very first Senior women’s team for the Blues. By then it will likely be a very different landscape with a full national competition and parity in junior boys and girls participating, but for now, it is nice to salute the pioneers who are making that reality possible.

The Sapphires train Tuesdays and Thursdays from 6 pm at G Rae Oval in Palmwoods. Everyone is welcome to join the family.