Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Saturday night before last a very excited crowd filled VU Whitten Oval in Footscray to watch the AFL Women's All-Stars game between the Western Bulldogs and the Melbourne Demons. My daughter estimated that the crowd at the ground was 'about a million', but official counts suggest that about 6½ thousand people came out. The television audience for the game did top one million viewers, and they saw the Dogs beat the Demons 14.6 (90) to 6.9 (45)—finally. Even more impressively, in Melbourne the game averaged 387,000 viewers, 40,000 more than the best men's regular season fixture. The game's success highlights the tremendous potential the new eight-team women's league has when it kicks off in February 2017.

It was a thrill for me to be able to go through the footy record with my daughter before the game, knowing that this would be the last women's exhibition game and that we would be able to watch Steph Chiocci, Ellie Blackburn and Katie Brennan in Dogs colours week after week next season.

The establishment of this league is a testament to the hard work of many women, but Whitten Oval paid special thanks on the night to the Western Bulldogs' Vice-President, Dr Susan Alberti AC, a true champion of the Western Bulldogs' new club new slogan: 'Three teams; one club. Be more Bulldog'.

Extraordinary strides have been taken in recent years to advance the women's game in Australia but there is still a distance to travel. We need to see an enduring, fair and equitable pay agreement for the players if we want the game to thrive in the long term. The Women's All-Stars game showed that the demand is there from the fans, and if the AFL invests in the players and invests in our women then the community will support it.

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