Not what I meant: moreso they’re playing eighties footy while the umps are modern. This lead to multiple horrendous calls where the player legit trying to get the ball got punished: for trying to mark and getting run over, for trying to stop the ball going out of bounds, two players diving onto the ball and arbitrarily one gets punished, for being cannon balled into the legs. If you’re punishing endeavour in a current women’s game you really look like you hate the game.
(That last example wasn’t a specific problem of this kind of game, but was just about the greatest example of “taking the legs” I’ve ever seen — and it takes a fair bit to convince me of the merits of that knee-jerk rule alteration. It was truly bizarre a modern ump would instead call it as “in the back”.)
There’s no way a world with 1) this league and 2) free-to-air coverage is a worse short or long-term result for women’s footy than not having those two things.
There are lots of flaws, yes, but it’s also the best way to get women’s footy up to speed.
(Is that why the AFL and Seven are doing it? Let’s be kind and say maybe.)
It’s kind of like when you watch a school team who’s been dominating all year who end up playing some big final on the MCG. The endeavour is there but it’s just too farking far from one end of the ground to another
35m arcs would be good.
The moment we switched was when the Collingwood player had a shot from the boundary outside the fifty after the siren.
‘She won’t be able to kick 50 metres, surely?’
‘It’s actually more like sixty, she has to kick over the mark, and she has to clear the players in the goalsquare.’
‘What’s she doing then?’
‘I dunno. She won’t make the goalsquare. Actually, she’ll be lucky to make it to the point post.’
Kick does not make it to the point post by a considerable margin.
‘What else is on?’
Many football games overseas play in front of overwhelmingly male audiences. Here, women form 40% of a typical footy crowd – somewhat higher for Australian rules football, slightly lower for rugby league.
4.9 million Australians 14+ almost always watch the AFL Grand Final on TV—and women comprise 41% of this ardent fan base, the latest results from Roy Morgan Single Source show. ‘Almost always’ viewership of the AFL Grand Final is a little more gender balanced than the NRL Grand Final, where men outnumber women almost two to one.
The latest findings from Roy Morgan reveal that the proportion of Australian women aged 14+ who support an AFL team slipped slightly from 35.6% to 33.8% between 2012 and 2015, as did the proportion who watch matches on TV (down fractionally from 34.0% to 33.4%).
On a brighter note, there were modest increases in paid-up club membership among Aussie women (from 3.1% to 3.6%) during the same period, as well as in attendance of AFL matches (admittedly, an almost negligible growth from 9.8% to 10.0%).
But while the overall proportion of women who support an AFL team has declined, nine of the league’s 18 teams have actually seen their number of female supporters rise over the past few years. Fremantle Dockers experienced the largest growth by far, gaining an additional 70,000 female supporters since 2012, which puts it in sixth position overall for number of female fans.
At Mooroolbark we had 2 grounds we used in juniors. One was a postage stamp that couldn’t be more than 80m long (I can kick about 55-60m and get and can reach the other forward “50” comfortably kicking out from full back) and the other was about 2m shorter than the MCG at the time (around 2000-2001).
Unsurprisingly scores were a lot higher on the smaller ground.
Last nights game was better, … and by a fair margin.
When I said similarly skilled to many urban/rural leagues, it was the GF from last year still in mind, … and I saw it again in their re match. By contrast, the Coll v FCFC game was more like the reserves in those comps, there really was a stark contrast.
I was thinking about them playing on a slightly smaller ground during the game too, but landed on 40m arcs, and a 40m centre square, … so grounds about 80% of the MCG in size would do, … and then they could play longer. I reckon the QTR’s are so short right now as to actually be insulting to the girls. Felt they could easy play out 20 min qtr’s when there’s no time on.
Yep - there’s simply not enough elite talent to spread to the amount of teams they have now let alone allow for forced rapid expansion.
A state of origin type concept at least would have maximised the support so that people who already have club loyalty wouldn’t have to choose to either ignore the comp or somehow follow a team they hate. Even for SA, would Port supporters ever go to watch Adelaide women?
Port are probably a bad example.
You need established clubs for buy-in, and Adelaide were always a better choice than Port.
It does make the GC team seem really friggin’ stupid, though.
Crows got the nod over Port due to their partnership with the NT.
Heaps of new teams in Adelaide and participation is growing but the standard is still really poor and the depth just isn’t there yet. Will take 10-15 in SA atleast before we start to see marketable improvement. I know some of the local netball clubs have fought back by paying players aswell to try to stem the player drain
They tried a State of Origin game, … it was just Victoria, … against ALL the other states put together, … and it ended up shitloads to virtually zilch.
The extra 20m the men get on their kicks makes a massive difference to defensive structures. If blokes couldn’t kick 55+ you’d see the zone come back in force quick smart.
16 a side would make it a significantly better game I think, maybe even 14 (take all the flanks out).
