Fifty three thousand and thirty four. That is the number of spectators who flocked to watch the Adelaide Crows dominate Carlton at the AFLW grand final on Sunday, setting a new attendance record for a domestic women's sport game in Australia.

The previous record also belongs to AFLW, with 41,975 having watched Fremantle beat Collingwood at Perth's Optus stadium last year. Before that you need to go all the way back to 1929, when 41,000 witnessed a women's exhibition game of Australian rules football between employees from a department store and a pyjama factory.

How far things have come for women's sport — particularly women's football — even if it's belatedly.

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To echo Carlton's Darcy Vescio, this was not exactly a case of living the dream. For many fans, players, media and administrators alike, the attendance figure was beyond wildest dreams — demonstrated by the AFL setting a "hopeful" goal of 30,000 after 13,429 made it to the same ground the week before to see the Crows crush the Cats.

At the time, the AFL thought 30,000 would be a "massive endorsement" of AFLW in the wake of the Tayla Harris scandal.

But fans are passionate and nearly doubled that figure at Adelaide Oval to see the Crows win 10.3 (63) to 2.6 (18).

Fans gleefully exceed head office's internal expectations again and again. After such a strong show of support for AFLW, the question many were left asking after the season finale was — where to next?

Adelaide's Erin Phillips and her father after her injury in the AFLW grand final on Sunday. ( AAP: David Mariuz )

'An icon. Full stop'

For one player in particular, Sunday's grand final was a bittersweet case of a lifelong dream realised.

Erin Phillips had openly spoken about her desire to play in a grand final at Adelaide Oval, emulating the feats of her father Greg who played in no less than eight premiership-winning teams with Port Adelaide.

"To play in front of this crowd means so much to us, and is amazing for women's footy," said the winner of the medal for best on ground — her second in three seasons of AFLW.

For the two-time premiership captain to go down with a suspected ACL injury in the third quarter of her team's triumph, however, was the cruellest possible blow on a day otherwise so special.

Still, she won the medal for the grand final's best player — as she also did in Adelaide's 2017 premiership.

Post-game, Carlton coach Daniel Harford described the 33-year-old as an "icon of Australian Rules football, full stop".

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If there was a positive to take from the injury, it was that the Adelaide Oval crowd rose as one in recognition of that fact, and gave her a standing ovation.



The Blues players also ran to Phillips's side as she was stretchered from the ground, in a touching show of camaraderie from the opposition.

But in what's becoming a concerning trend for the AFL, she wasn't the only player to injure an ACL. The Crows' Chloe Sheer also sustained a suspected ACL injury as well — her second at only 19 years old — about a minute after she took a spectacular mark.

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Where to next?

Given the dramatic and emotional history of AFLW (albeit short), it is unfathomable to think that its fourth season will be played in the year head office initially planned to introduce its national women's competition — 2020.

Seen retrospectively, and combined with Sunday's record-breaking attendance figure, AFLW is tracking well ahead of expectation.

But, as reported by Caroline Wilson on Friday, "a number of women footballers" — as well as fans — are frustrated by the seven-week season. This year, AFLW needed just two extra weeks to ensure a fair fixture in which teams played each other once. This would also have negated the need for a conference system which saw sides as dominant as the Kangaroos (five wins, two losses) miss out on finals despite finishing with a better record than Carlton.

Despite the unpopular system, head office has held out, while Nicole Livingstone has forecast another year of conferences given AFLW's limited "window" (set by the AFL, it should be said) and "cost".

AFL's head of women's football, Nicole Livingstone. ( AAP: Daniel Pockett )

Surely, budget cannot be the sticking point for what is fast becoming a cultural movement that has seen three years of unprecedented rises in the number of girls and women playing Australian rules football post-AFLW.

According to Wilson, the AFL has since floated the idea of having a joint collective bargaining agreement which would see the fully professional men's players help subsidise AFLW to fast-track the players' transition to full-time athletes.

This move would seemingly recognise the great disparity between men's and women's sport in terms of pay, resources and more, and is a smart and bold method of trying to level the playing field.

The proposal is not dissimilar to the agreement currently active in cricket, with Australia's women cricketers receiving an historic pay rise in 2017, with total player payments rising from $7.5 million to $55.2 million.

It was on the back of that deal that WBBL this year became the fourth-highest rating domestic sporting competition in Australia, while players have consistently credited the increase in wages and resources as contributing to the smashing of a range of on-field records in WBBL04.

Crows players celebrate after winning the AFLW grand final on Sunday. ( AAP: David Mariuz )

Stronger together

Reportedly, however, the AFL players' association is worried that introducing such a deal in a football context would be a "negative" for male players, because it means the "subsidisation of one playing group to another playing group".

On the contrary, such a move, which no doubt asks the well-paid men of AFL to take a small hit, is precisely the kind of revolutionary deal that could fast-track the professionalisation of AFLW for the benefit of all.

The response of the AFL players' association does bring to bear the question of whether a combined body representing both men and women is a conflict of interest, and whether the women of AFLW need their own union to represent their vastly different needs.

If the weekend's numbers are anything to go by, the weight of public momentum is behind them and a fully-professional women's league.

Dr Kate O'Halloran is host of Kick Like a Girl on AFLW radio and writes a weekly column on AFLW for the ABC.