When I was appointed a Guardian Australia sports editor in 2017, I wrote a letter to our members commending the changing landscape of women’s sport across the country. I singled out the arrival of the AFLW as a revolutionary wave, its outstanding viewing numbers forcing a serious rethink by those who believed audiences weren’t interested in a national women’s league. I also argued that it was serendipitous that I should land a professional role in sports journalism during the same period, pointing out that the evolution of women in sport is not simply about women having a public platform on which to play the sports they have always loved, but about simultaneously growing the capacity of women working in media, and in leadership roles within those sports: women coaching, umpiring and involved in sports administration.



At the end of the second season of AFLW, all signs point to this important step towards gender equity having fallen off the agenda at best, or having been derailed entirely at worst. With the departure of the only female coaches in AFLW – the premiership coach Bec Goddard and Fremantle’s Michelle Cowan – Caroline Wilson argued on 3AW that the game was at a “crossroads”.

Sign up to receive the latest Australian sports stories every day

“There is a cultural divide,” she said, “that has nowhere near been broken down since the advent of AFLW.” Wilson was of course referring to a gendered divide: a divide whereby men are provided sustainable professional sporting opportunities that women are not – even in a competition dominated by, sustained by and grown by women.

On Tuesday, Carlton appointed its new AFLW coach: Daniel Harford. Harford previously played AFL for the club, as well as at Hawthorn. Before his appointment at Carlton he worked as an assistant AFLW coach at Collingwood and, before that, at Balwyn and St Kevin’s Old Boys. Without any slight on Harford intended, he has followed a very well-worn pathway for men who have played AFLM: progressing from playing, to grade coaching, to assistant coaching, to a senior coaching role. Importantly, Harford also has a role at media outlets 3AW and RSN, who have agreed to balance his coaching with his media work. In other words, with those opportunities combined, Harford is able to commit to the short AFLW fixture without any impact on his career progression, or monetary income, outside of that timeframe.



The Anzac Day specialist: Matthew Banks and his three-game AFL career Read more

In that regard, Harford fits well with the existing coaches in AFLW: all of whom are now men. Michael Stinear, coach of the Demons’ AFLW side, also has a role as men’s development coach at the club. Wayne Siekman not only coaches the Magpies’ AFLW side, he is also a Next Generation Academy coach at Collingwood. Craig Starcevich, who is the Lions’ head coach, is also the AFL Queensland’s female high performance manager. Alan McConnell, of the Giants, is the men’s director of coaching as well as AFLW coach. And, finally, Paul Groves, Western Bulldogs premiership coach, was on Thursday offered an “expanded” role at the club that includes VWFL duties and an assistant coaching role with the men’s VFL team.

In contrast, as Bec Goddard left Adelaide she revealed that she had asked the Crows for a full-time football coaching role at the club to support her intensive work as AFLW coach, a role which was not sustainable alongside her leadership position in the Australian federal police. But, according to Wilson, the club could not find a coaching job for her during the AFLW off-season, despite her willingness to be involved in the men’s department.

This is also despite the fact that Goddard won a premiership in her first season as head coach of a team that combined players from two different states and conducted team meetings via Skype. She is also the club’s first premiership coach in 20 years. Wilson went on to suggest that Goddard, like many women eager to get a foot in the door of the elite AFL coaching realm, would have been willing to take a pay cut for the privilege. Yet no coaching position or funds could be found to keep her.

The Adelaide football club, and Goddard’s manager, Tim Lawrence, have since claimed that this is because they could not fit Goddard’s wage under the “soft cap” clubs are allocated for spending on AFLW. For whatever reason, the clubs with men as head coaches have managed this conundrum. If this is a barrier for the Crows, who claim they would have loved Goddard to stay, however, the AFL must step in to ensure that women are not the victims of an industry that is not properly equipped to support the retention of women in leadership positions.

After Goddard’s departure, Michelle Cowan of the Fremantle Dockers also announced last week that she would quit the role of head AFLW coach. While it would be inappropriate to speculate as to why, Cowan has stated that she was happy to have more time with her young family. Clearly, the AFLW head coach role is an intensive one that demands much of those in the job – despite its short duration.

Seemingly, for women like Cowan and Goddard, who don’t have the benefit of full-time jobs at either their club or in sports media, the balancing act is too much. Goddard, for example, had maxed out her leave with the AFP after a two-year secondment in Adelaide, and was left with no choice but to return to Canberra after being knocked back by the Crows.

As Wilson has accurately stated, the AFLW has effectively become a women’s competition run by men – the impacts of which extend beyond just the lack of opportunities for women in coaching and leadership. As I wrote at the end of season two, the game is also being “modified” by the men running it, against the will of the women and girls involved in it.

In fact, the AFL is trialling “anti-density” rules in the VFLW, including rules such as five forwards needing to be in their team’s front half of the ground at all stoppages, a 6/6/6 rule for centre bounces, where all six forwards must be goal side, and so on. It hopes that it can then introduce those rules into the AFLW in season 2019 and beyond, to ensure an “open free-flowing style of play” it believes the competition lacks.

AFL to review its bump rules at end of season Read more

Yet women did not fight so long for a national competition only to have it modified by men who do not understand what it’s like to never have had the privilege to pursue sport as a professional occupation, or do not understand what it’s like to be on the outer of a boys’ club.

The AFLW, as it stands, has become another outlet for men and boys to progress their careers off the back of women who are desperate to maintain the limited look-in they got to the world of AFL when AFLW launched in 2017. To borrow from Wilson once more, what we have is a group of women who were, with the advent of AFLW in 2017, “lauded as heroines, added an amazing breath of fresh air to the entire competition, and a lot of them at the moment are feeling a bit like chopped liver”.

With the introduction of two new teams in 2018, the AFLW will also gain two more male coaches: Paul Hood at Geelong and Scott Gowans at North Melbourne. One can only hope that the AFL, and each club with an existing male AFLW coach, is also cognisant of providing equitable and sustainable opportunities for women to progress their careers in AFL leadership. Otherwise, the AFLW is at risk of being a women’s competition run by men, for men.