The AFL has clarified its stance after league football operations manager Steve Hocking suggested the AFL was “all ears” to possibly renaming the men’s competition ‘AFLM’ in the future.

The fourth AFLW season commenced on the weekend, with four new teams — St Kilda, West Coast, Gold Coast and Richmond — expanding it to a 14-club competition.

Asked on Saturday on The Outer Sanctum podcast how long until AFL headquarters commits to formally renaming the AFL competition ‘AFLM’, AFLW boss Nicole Livingstone said after a long pause: “That’s a very good question. Can we take it on notice and take it back to AFL House?”

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Round 18

Hocking then added it was something the league may consider down the track.

“A lot of what we’ve touched on here is just tradition. There’s a whole range of things that we’re unpacking that have just been the way they have been because of 160 years of football — and I think that’s OK,” Hocking told the ABC.

Jesse Wardlaw of the Lions and Lauren Bella of the Suns. Picture: Chris Hyde/Getty Images) Source: Getty Images

“I don’t think we need to necessarily be looking over the fence at one another and saying whether we need to add another initial to something.

“But if in time it’s something that emerges, we’re all ears at AFL.”

However the league on Tuesday clarified its position, saying it had “no plans” to change the name of the competition.

“We had a great first round to season four of the AFL Women’s competition,” the AFL said in a statement.

“The AFLW has built its own powerful identity in the community and we will continue to promote its message and celebrate the league and women’s football.

“There are no plans to change the name of the AFL competition.”



Livingstone said she already intentionally referred to the longer-running competition as the “AFL men’s competition”.

“It’s actually a really interesting thought process, because when I’m internal I do take the time to say ‘AFL men’s competition’ when I speak and I say ‘AFLW’, because I know that the AFL is the ‘NSO’ (national sporting organisation),” she said.

“But my thought process — and we met with the high performance managers of the men’s program, all of this stuff Steve’s leading — to try and make sure we agitate ... and remind them that they’re actually looking after women’s programming as well.”

Livingstone said equity in footy was something the league would continue to work towards among all parts of the industry.

“You know what? I want them to be able to see 75 athletes in their building: 45 men, 30 women ... so they’re not seeing the gender of it and we want to do that with coaching and we want to do that with umpiring,” she said.

“I don’t know, maybe we need to think about, eventually down the track, is it just ‘AFL’ — and there’s a men’s competition and a women’s competition?”

The 2020 AFLW season will have eight home and away rounds and three weeks of finals. There’ll be five weeks where both the AFL and AFLW will run concurrently, with the AFLW grand final to be held in Round 5 of the AFL season.