I remember the smell of the short grass and the sensation of the leather ball in my small hands. I remember running and kicking for distance, the thud of the ball on my boot bringing an unusual satisfaction. I recall the crowd and I recall that time I evaded an oncoming tackle and kicked perfectly to a leading forward. My adversary then was a big, burly bloke from Richmond – and there was me, a kid half his size, dominating on the field! I was a dreamer and these were the figments of my football imaginings. My parents had a friend called Jean who gave me a Sherrin when I was two. Maybe it was her fault.

North Melbourne's Emma Kearney readies to kick against GWS Giants during an AFL Women's match in Sydney earlier this year. Getty Images

Most of my family barracked for North Melbourne. My grandpa was born on the kitchen table in that suburb and his old man, Bert Phillips, a mad North man, was a conductor on the 59 tram that ran past their home and up to Airport West. This route wound conspicuously past the Windy Hill ground, home to the loathsome, uppity Essendon Bombers. On Saturday afternoons he’d quietly tune into the footy while on the job to find out if the Bombers had won or lost. If they’d lost, he’d wait until the tram filled at Windy Hill with forlorn fans and, with great false sincerity, say to them, “Who won?” His glee at the Bombers’ failings got handed down through the generations, and my ancestral legacy gave rise to my North-only, no-room-for-others heart.

I missed out on the era when North Melbourne played at Arden Street Oval, but only just. Dad and an uncle or two would take the cousins to the Melbourne Cricket Ground or Princes Park a few times a year. I remember wearing white pants with blue and white hoop socks up to my knees, a VFL-badged woollen North jumper with Wayne Schimmelbusch’s number 20 on the back, and some blue and white ribbons in my pigtails.

I played with other kids as often as I could, and bribed my non-sporty sister to play with me. If no one was around, I’d kick to myself, always practising the dummy on that burly Richmond bloke. Sometime late in primary school, one of my mates said I was good at sport. She was a gun at Little Athletics and I admired her sporting prowess immensely. She knew stuff.

Her comment helped me realise I could mix it with the boys at their recess, lunchtime and after-school footy games. Playing school footy complemented my passion for watching the big boys fly. It was the 1980s, and I think I was the only girl playing. I never felt odd or different, though; I was included just as any other kid who could play was. If you could play, you were in.

I’d have pretty good battles with Ben, one of those leap-year kids born on February 29 who went to my school. He was good, and I wanted him to know I could match him. One day, we were playing really close to the school boundary and I tackled him to the ground. In my mind it was textbook. I won the free. As I got up, I noticed my grandpa walking past. “That’s a bit rough, isn’t it?” he said warmly. I laughed, knowing full well he wouldn’t have said it to a boy. His message was born in care, but also a culture that liked easily discernible roles for boys and girls, men and women.

The author in action for Melbourne University. Robert McKechnie

His message has been repeated to me in countless ways, through countless means, throughout my life. I continued to play. It was the best sport ever. I was half-decent at it. And I’m not sure I could have stopped even if I’d tried.

When I got to year 7, they put me in a dress. I didn’t have anything against dresses, but it turned out I couldn’t kick a footy in one. Well, I could, but my undies showed, and the boys at my new school got more joy from pointing this out than from playing footy with me. So I scarpered from the lunchtime competitions and sat instead with a bunch of girlfriends on the floor of the canteen, each of us shifting awkwardly to ensure our undies weren’t showing.

Many sports were available for me to play, including tennis and cricket, but not footy. I found satisfaction instead in watching North and kicking a footy with Dad – until the day he broke his leg trying to take a speccy over some imagined Bombers player. My best mate Sam, from a mad North mob, suggested another way to get involved was to join the club. I didn’t know much about memberships, but by halfway through year 7 I was a proud Junior Joey North member.

Sam and I started attending every match, our plastic membership cards clipped at the gate, the number of clips on your card a measure of your dedication to the cause. I’d dropped my hoop socks by then, but still wore my woollen Schimma jumper. As I outgrew it, my emblem of fandom became a navy duffle coat with Johnny Longmire’s number 35 emblazoned across the back.

Sam and I took a footy to the games, kicking it after matches, sometimes with her brother or dad. A good netballer, Sam lacked some finesse in her kick – which didn’t matter until the day a stray drop punt sconned then opposition leader John Howard as he emerged from the MCG.

Through our teenage years we moved beyond merely going to games to attending North social events, buying merchandise and sometimes going down to Arden St to watch training. We traded footy cards, travelled interstate for a few games and created scrapbooks of our favourite players. During one Family Day at the club, Wayne Carey approached me to ask if he could join in the kick-to-kick I was having with Sam’s brother. Carey had just become North Melbourne captain and I had a serious crush on him. I gave him a few tips on his mullet and, in exchange, he told me, “You have to work to get in front.” What a moment.

Carey, Longmire, Glenn Archer, Anthony Stevens, Corey McKernan, Micky Martyn and big Mark “Fridge” Roberts set up two North Melbourne premierships in our time: 1996 and 1999. In the 1996 grand final, Sam and I sat with her family in an MCG front row and watched North rise from 24 points down early in the second term to beat Sydney by 43 points. Sam hadn’t washed her North scarf in years, so we put the win down to that.

I played cricket during this time, too, meeting my friend Chloe at a wonderful club in Brunswick. Despite her unfortunate love of the Bombers, we had a lot in common, including a desire to play footy. Outside her house in Essendon, we used the light poles as goals in determined one-on-one contests. At my place, we drew handball targets on the backs of doors. One Saturday afternoon, when Essendon legend Tim Watson’s house was up for auction, we convinced my mum to take us past for a look. He had black and red Bombers socks hanging on the line and at one point appeared with that trademark grin. Chloe’s love of all things Timmy softened me on Essendon, but only a little.

When I was 24, Shannon, a good mate from cricket, urged me to join her for a training run with Melbourne University Women’s Football Club. I had no idea it even existed and had no hesitation in saying yes. Turned out there’d been a women’s league in Victoria since 1981, and the Melbourne University team, called the Mugars, had been formed in 1996 by a few tremendously committed women who simply wanted to make a space for women to play the game. There were limitations, though: the Mugars weren’t able to train at Melbourne University as the two men’s sides and the baseball club were given preference on oval use.

The Mugars’ coach, Bernie, greeted me when I arrived at a nearby oval and told me to do three laps. I nearly died. I’d been playing cricket and the most running I’d done was to get into the pavilion at afternoon tea time to ensure first crack at Mrs Calvert’s zucchini slice. But dutifully, three laps I did.

Then I trained. With a footy and some actual footballers. At a club. Which played matches against other clubs. Which was recognised by a league. I was out of my skin with excitement. Bernie gave me jumper number 49 and told me I was to play in the firsts that weekend against St Kilda. I got little sleep the night before and could barely touch my breakfast. My childhood dreams returned in a rush.

I broke my finger in the warm-up, was in surgery three days later, and saw no more of the season. When I got to the hospital the nurse said, “You don’t look like a footballer.” Ah, that old nugget.

I returned to the club the following year. Bernie had retired and she gave me her lauded number 25 jumper. I remember running onto the ground for my first game at the age of 25 and feeling that I knew the game already. It wasn’t arrogance; I’d watched so much men’s footy that I instinctively knew how to make space, where to run, how to cover the “fat side” in defence and how to get rid of my opponent in a marking contest. I made a great bunch of friends that year, played a decent few games at centre half-forward, and felt alive.

Through footy I learnt how to lead, how to listen, how to fail, which battles to pick and which to leave alone.

There really is something special about football clubs; a camaraderie and mateship I’ve not felt to the same extent in other sports. I suspect it’s to do with the sheer number of people in a team, and the effect of body contact. Your safety is literally in the hands of your teammates. And of course there’s the social aspect: the sponsor pub, the sponsor pub T-shirts, the cheap meals for club members, the infamous end-of-season trips.

I played 160-odd games with the Mugars over nearly 16 years. I was lucky to be a part of three premierships, captain my club, represent the state, serve on the committee, and do a little coaching. I’m tall and would swing between centre half-forward and centre half-back. Marking was my strength and I took Carey’s advice often. I have close mates from footy. I have teammates who are not close, but whose arms I fall joyously into at a reunion, an anniversary – and sometimes, a funeral. I’ve had two significant partners from the Mugars.

Through footy I learnt how to lead, how to listen, how to fail, how to be courageous, which battles to pick and which to leave alone. I learnt about equality and its lack, disadvantage and the levelling capacity of sport. I learnt about friendship, cliques and gossip. I learnt that many women don’t like to yell out on a footy field as they’re afraid they’ll be seen as aggressive. I learnt that women can overcome image issues through understanding that their body is powerful. I learnt that for some women, football is about survival. I learnt, too, that the club was a family – for some, literally; for others, an extension of their own.

At any given time, that club’s members were male, female, trans, queer, straight, short, tall, round and rake-like, young and old. There were engineers, bakers, nurses and coppers, scientists and shelf-stackers, funny types and quiet ones, leaders, carers, refugees, mums, Indigenous women, musicians and Olympians. Before women’s footy became a thing, in the long years before 2017, when the AFL launched its women’s code, the news that I played football was always greeted with surprise. This was inevitably followed by two questions: “How many lesbians play the game?” and “Is it full tackling?” For what it’s worth, in my experience: lots, and yes.

Emma Kearney playing for the Mugars – her two front teeth were knocked out during the first game she played with the team. Supplied

I retired at the end of last season, at the pushing-it age of 41. As I reflect on the abundance of riches footy has brought me, two things stand out. Mateship, and this: nine years ago the Mugars formed a partnership with the North Melbourne Football Club. I was thrilled to see that the club I grew up adoring was ahead of the game, and being appointed liaison between the two clubs remains one of the great experiences of my football life. North Melbourne’s women’s team has just entered the AFL Women’s arena, captained by my friend and ex-teammate Emma Kearney. I well remember Kearney having her two front teeth knocked out in her first game with the Mugars. Her new team will further dislodge the precepts of what a footballer looks like. It will demonstrate to young girls that football is available to them at the highest level.

I still dream about playing footy. Last night, I dreamt that I was in the changing room, not far off game time. I’d put my boots on and was visualising what I might try to achieve on the field when I realised I didn’t have my uniform. No guernsey, no shorts. Just boots and a hollow sense that I couldn’t play. I’m a bit wiser now than when I was a kid. I know that time and place is everything.

I know, too, that change is possible. My partner is 10 years older than me. She also loves footy and, as it turns out, dreamt of the same things I did. The nuns at her school confiscated her footy, telling her it wasn’t “lady-like”. She was devastated. Her school also educated current GWS Giants vice-captain and that club’s 2018 best and fairest winner Alicia Eva, albeit some 25 years after my partner. They grew up in the same suburb and even had the same tennis coach – a quarter of a century apart.

Recently they met and quickly discovered their shared cultural heritage. Well, nearly. One stood on the grass, decked out in a Giants uniform, sweaty from a gruelling match; the other, ever the spectator.

Eva, now 28, is among the first women to have completed the football pathway now available to girls, from junior Auskick right through to senior AFL. My partner told me recently that when we met, she’d been drawn to the fact I played footy. This mad and beautiful game has a way of bringing gifts most unexpected.

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