The AFL’s newest team, the Tasmania Devils, launched on Monday night, drawing on its rich football history in a blaze of myrtle green, primrose yellow and rose red.
Diversity is vital for developing the AFL, but the league needs to consider the structural and cultural barriers to attracting this diverse talent in the first place.
The AFL is searching for a new CEO amid ongoing reports of systemic racism, a lack of meaningful support for the AFLW and insufficient action on head injuries.
Jacinda Barclay, an AFLW player who died last year, has had her brain donated to concussion research. In general, women are understudied regards to their long-term brain health.
The AFLW has come a long way in a short time. But amid calls for even faster expansion, more games and a longer season, it pays to remember that in footy you shouldn’t go too hard, too early.
Online trolling is a workplace health and safety issue. The AFL must expose and sanction those responsible – anything less would not only be morally debatable, but also legally questionable.
The league’s new policy for transgender footballers is contradictory and places an unfair burden on athletes to track testosterone levels and performance results over a two-year period.
Despite participation rates in women’s sport growing exponentially in recent years, the number of women in coaching positions has remained frustratingly stagnant.
Elite female athletes are leaving their chosen sport to pursue a career in AFLW. But what skills do they possess that allow them to be successful footballers with limited AFL experience?
The decision to exclude transgender woman Hannah Mouncey from the AFLW may breach anti-discrimination law, and contradicts the AFL’s public position of embracing diversity and inclusivity.
Football has changed dramatically in the 35 years since Richmond last had a chance at the Grand Final. But while footy is now ‘an industry’, the arrival of the first women’s league is to be celebrated.
Research Fellow, Institute for Health & Sport, member of the Community, Identity and Displacement Research Network, and Co-convenor of the Olympic Research Network, Victoria University