The century-old WAFL is set for one of its biggest shake-ups, with the traditional colts-reserves-league format to be interrupted by the arrival of a new women's league in May.

Seven West Media can reveal five WAFL clubs will field teams in the inaugural WAFL Women, or WAFLW, competition this year — Claremont, East Fremantle, Peel, Subiaco and Swan Districts.

Optus will help bankroll the WA footy revolution, becoming the major sponsor of the expanded 10-team WAFL competition and WAFLW. Optus will replace McDonald’s as the WAFL’s official naming rights partner.

The women’s fixture is yet to be finalised, however it will begin on the first weekend of May and culminate with a televised grand final staged as a double-header with the WAFL preliminary final in September.

All women’s matches will be played at WAFL venues. Competing clubs have already indicated some reserves and colts games will be shifted to a separate day to allow the women to play as curtain-raisers to league fixtures this season.

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WAFLW games are set to feature before WAFL matches involving West Coast's new reserves side. West Coast will also partly fund the new women's competition.

South Fremantle have been granted a provisional licence to join the WAFLW next year, while a promotion-relegation system could be introduced whereby clubs in the WA Women’s Football League could earn a spot in WAFLW. The WAWFL will continue with two divisions, reserves and under-18s.

The WAFLW competition will be played under the same rules as the national AFLW and will be the key recruiting ground for Fremantle and West Coast’s women’s teams.

WA Football Commission chief executive Gavin Taylor described the new women’s competition as “the last pillar” of the State’s female pathway and said it would help reinvigorate the WAFL.

Camera Icon The WAFLW will replace the WAWFL as the state’s top women’s football competition. Credit: Phil Barnes/Supplie

Taylor said the small number of teams would help condense the women’s talent pool and ensure a high standard.

“We see this as a really exciting development for the pathway of female football and we also see it as a really exciting development for our WAFL clubs. It’s really breathing new life into the WAFL for 2019 and beyond,” he said.

“For female athletes now, they get the opportunity to look up through that pathway and know that includes an elite State league WAFL women’s competition, which is at the doorstep of then entering into the AFL women’s competition.”

Taylor said the prospect of men and women double-headers was an “exciting opportunity”.

“There’s lots of exciting opportunities of how we integrate this competition into the 100-year history of the men’s WAFL competition. But the feedback I’m getting early is that there’s just a real air of excitement across our WAFL clubs about this opportunity,” he said.

“It allows the clubs to engage with a new audience and really develop that new audience and deeply engage with the community.”

The boom in women’s footy is placing pressure on facilities and a fund has been set up to make WAFL change rooms ‘female-friendly.’