General AFLW comments and articles

Was going to be a big jump in quality for season 2… right?

Suspect comms are in the works, so I’m going to stay Mum on this one for now.

My understanding is that the VFLW squad will be at the season launch event though…

Keep in mind that these girls are not profession footballers. And most haven’t even been playing that long.

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Do they not go and play in the VFLW comp after?

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Not all of them. As far as I know Phillips is still a WNBA assistant coach, Brazill also plays for the pies’ netball team, Harris had a professional boxing match earlier in the year. A cursory google shows me Duffin’s been playing WBBL during the AFLW pre-season and McCormick’s going to miss the first game of the season because she’s playing a W-League game.

I’m unable to find out if the various volleyballers and players from other Olympic type sports have quit those sports to play AFLW. Probably they have.

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I think I saw there are 109 players doing both AFLW and VFLW.

Fair enough. So that would be a little under half of the competition, or much more likely almost all of the Victorian players.

After the last 5 years I barely have an interest in the AFL, so no.

That’s their choice though.
They have a perfectly viable option to choose to play local footy and opt not to.

Unless they get paid well in their other sports and cannot justify giving it up. Or their other sports are for world competition sports and they want to do both, but the other sport is during winter.

This.

I’m not watching over an hour of football to see 5 goals kicked and about 10 misses from inside 30 that any local league would kick relatively easily. Some of the kicking skills are below standard for under 16’s. That being said the tackling is far better than I expected, some hard hits there.

A part of me thinks it would have been better to build the game from the bottom up a bit more and develop the skills further before jumping into full blown AFL. That being said it’s good for women and the crowds are pretty amazing considering the lack of skills on display so good on them and I’ll probably watch more once the skills improve dramatically. An Essendon team would also help.

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Not sure if its Carlton or Collingwood, tall women used to be a javelin thrower she represented Australia.

Sure, with the caveats that @Catherine_Lio raised, and my original post did say the rest play local football. My assumption was that those competitions don’t provide the same speed of skill increase that a full time professional environment would. Which, to my original point, still means that the assumption some people were making about how quickly the skill level would improve was flawed. I think it’s going to be a situation where you can look back on the first season and see how much the overall quality has improved in ten years, not two.

More players playing all the way through from kids to seniors, more quality athletes who in the past would have been pulled into sports with better (read any) development pathways, potentially some players earning enough to do it full time if the commercial viability/sponsorships improve. It’s all just going to take a lot of time. Which is fine, that’s growing a sport.

Also worth noting that our VFLW team’s preseason is on par with the VFL teams this year, in that they are doing a full program.

A lot of these AFLW players, particularly the ones from other sports, would never have done a preseason for football before last year, and even then it was an incredibly short preseason.

Agree with SplitRound - it’s going to take time for the skill level to get professional, and there is going to need more money, more preseason time and possibly a longer season proper to really get it to reach another level.

Worth remembering that a lot of these girls, as I was, were told at 12 that they could no longer play football.

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I watched the whole game last night and thought it was mostly disappointing with poor skills.

That said there is lots of courage and hard tackling. Mostly the kicking is what is the major weakness, no denying how hard these Women go in the collect the ball.

You have no idea how many hipsters are going to these AFLW games. Many who have had no interest in football all their lives.

Marking was also not great, except for a couple of hangers.

Do you tackle like some of those players? If so, bet the Board are worried!

I don’t see the skill level getting much better to be honest for a very long time. It’ll take decades. I’m a better kick of the footy than 95% of the AFLw players, you either have it or you don’t and most of the players last night could barely kick 35 or have any sort of composure. It was like watching 44 David Myers just hack it forward aimlessly . I could be wrong but there wasn’t a goal kicked In the second half last night was there? That’s ridiculous. The intent and effort is there but the skill level is if your honest with yourself - terrible.

But it’s not about pleasing people like me, like someone above mentioned. It’s about giving young girls something to aim for, about giving women the same opportunity. if my daughter wanted to play footy I’d be stoked for her and 100% support a decision to try and aim for that. It’s great for women, great for young kids, there are more positives than negatives but it’ll never appeal, for most, to the every day male footy watcher

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I’m a shutdown back pocket player. I’m not allowed to tackle (I play AFL9s - netball with kicking), but you will never get the ball without me breathing down your neck… Equally as intimidating.

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