Christine Finnegan, left, and Peta Searle of St Kilda FC. Credit:Vince Caligiuri Over in Victoria’s central highlands, St Kilda supporter Sarah Rees’ hairs also raised — for different reasons. Rees has spent 17 years fighting to protect Victorian forests and their threatened inhabitants, including the Leadbeater’s possum, the official state emblem. In courtrooms and parliamentary chambers, she’s locked horns with state-owned logging agency VicForests and its biggest customer, Australian Paper, which she accuses of “causing extinction of wildlife”. Long struggle: Sarah Rees at a logged area of Toolangi state forest in 2011. Credit:Wayne Taylor Rees’ first impulse was to issue a tweet “renouncing my support” for St Kilda. But her heart wasn’t in this tactic.

St Kilda is a famously progressive club, having pioneered the first gay pride game and appointed Searle as the AFL’s first senior female coach. Rees also had “deep sympathy” with the Southern Saints, St Kilda’s women’s team. Despite a rapidly-swelling audience for women’s football, female players have fought to earn a small fraction of male salaries. At reportedly around $1 million a year (Finnegan wouldn’t confirm this), Reflex sponsorship would help usher the Southern Saints into the AFLW. So Rees tweeted: “What do you do when a female footy team needs sponsors but the few choices they have have aligned them to product causing extinction of wildlife and destruction of native forests?”

On social media, other Saints fans were asking the same question, and the Knitting Nannas of Toolangi were crafting a response. In 2013 the Nannas faced court, charged with “carrying out an activity” - knitting - in a “public safety zone” - an exclusion area around logging sites. Formed to witness intimidation of people protesting logging of Toolangi Forest, the Nannas themselves became targets. In 2015, they filed police reports of threats by loggers, one of whom allegedly drove his truck to intimidate them (VicForests apologised for its contractors).

Karena Goldfinch, centre with St Kilda colours, and her fellow Knitting Nannas in Toolangi Forest, with trees saved after campaigning by ecologists and environmental groups. Credit:Mal Padgett But when she learned of the Reflex sponsorship, one Nanna, photographer Karena Goldfinch, cast on in Saints colours and enlisted others to yarn-bomb Victoria’s logging coupes with “No, Reflex, No” stitched in red, white and black. It recently emerged that VicForests is logging against recommendations of the state government’s Flora and Fauna Scientific Advisory Committee. Studies by the ANU and Melbourne University find that industrial clearfelling is rapidly destroying Victorian ecosystems, degrading and decreasing the state’s water supply, and increasing bushfire risk. Scientists are disputing industry claims made for the benefits of reforestation after logging, and urging VicForests to source pulp logs from plantation estates, which yield greater annual volumes than native forests.

A 2011 protest against Reflex paper at Toolangi state forest. Credit:Joe Armao But in February, federal Assistant Agriculture Minister Anne Ruston warned the Senate against scientists “for the rubbish that they put out in the marketplace, believing that the word ‘professor’ or ‘doctor’ before their name somehow gives them some sort of legitimacy to say things”. She accused environment groups of engaging “in a campaign to mislead the Australian people”. Seven years have passed since Reflex UltraWhite’s use of “high conservation value” forest saw it stripped of its international Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification. Since that time, Fairfax has reported a “long-standing concern within the government about the viability of Australian Paper”, with the company having “failed to hand over $10 million that VicForests said it was owed”. Australian Paper's plant near Morwell in 2015. Credit:Jason South

A secret government deal to give discounted native timber to Australian Paper was described by an unnamed industry figure as “an exercise in corporate socialism”. The company continues to have a legislated fixed supply of timber at a fixed price. Over three weeks I urged Australian Paper’s head of marketing Annie Walsh to respond to these concerns - in all, five phone calls, four text messages and four emails, to no avail. In an email, Finnegan said Walsh had dismissed the protesters as “a small group of people that agitate”. Nine out of 10 Victorians support protection of central highlands forests, according to 2014 polling by the Victorian National Parks Association. In a 2017 Wilderness Society survey of more than a thousand Morwell voters, almost 70 per cent supported transitioning Australian Paper out of native forests. A clearfell logging fire near Mount Baw Baw on April 21. Credit:Chris Taylor The creation of a Greater Forests National Park in the central highlands has support from many public figures, including Sir David Attenborough and Saints ambassador Jason Ball. More than 2200 councils and organisations have signed the Ethical Paper Pledge not to use Reflex paper. Some corporates have taken action without a pledge.

One of these is NAB, a major AFL and AFLW sponsor. In 2012, Rees, the Wilderness Society and NAB’s sustainability officer Rosemary Bissett toured Gippsland forests. Bissett and her colleague, NAB’s head of sustainability Nicola Murphy, then consulted with “experts on Victorian ecosystems” to gain “a thorough understanding on the supply chain,” said Murphy. Their research saw NAB switch from Reflex’s UltraWhite to its newer line of 100 per cent recycled paper. Aiming for a win-win While Goldfinch was sharing knitting patterns for ‘No Reflex No’ football scarves so others could wear them to games, an alliance of women had drafted an invitation for the Saints to tour Toolangi Forest. 'A better deal': Sarah Rees.

Rees was “working on getting a better deal for the Saints”. She’d spoken with corporate women and started conversations with Australian Paper executives to shift sponsorship from general branding to 100 per cent recycled: “You have to allow for their worldview, and acknowledge the generosity of Nippon [Australian Paper] in targeting a group in need.” Finnegan had told me that among sponsors, “the conversation is turning towards women”. Australian Paper “suggested their interest came in the women’s space. Women still perform a lot of administration jobs and buy stationery so they [Reflex] are really passionate.” To this, Wilderness Society's Victorian campaigns manager Amelia Young responded that Australian Paper might “pay off its debts to Victorian taxpayers” before “splashing out money” to virtue-signal. (Government sources were asked to respond, but didn’t.) “It’s very unfair that pioneering sportswomen aren’t told beforehand how their image is being used in a sponsorship deal with a Japanese company that’s destroying Victoria’s native forests and driving endangered species into extinction,” Young added. March 2018: Clearfelling in the Royston Range area, about 100 kilometres from Melbourne. Credit:Chris Taylor

When I put this to Finnegan in an email, St Kilda’s head of media David O’Neill called me. He told me she wouldn’t be answering more questions. But Rees said the AFLW is driving ethical issues into the spotlight. "However this plays out," she added, "we all win."