Women's Australian rules football
Female-only form of Australian rules football / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Women's Australian rules football (in areas where it is popular, known simply as women's football or women's footy or women's AFL), is the female-only form of Australian rules football, generally with some modification to the laws of the game.
Highest governing body | AFL Commission |
---|---|
First played | 1917; Perth, Western Australia |
Registered players | 530,166 (2021) |
Characteristics | |
Team members | 16 per side + 5 interchange (differs to men's 18 per side + 4 interchange) |
Type | |
Equipment | Modified ball |
Venue | Australian rules football playing field (Australian rules ground, cricket pitch or similar sized field) |
The first Australian rules football matches involving women were organised late in the 19th century, but for several decades it occurred mostly in the form of scratch matches, charity matches and one-off exhibition games. The first all-female matches began early in the 20th century, and regular competition first emerged after World War II.
State-based leagues emerged between the 1980s and 2000s: the first was the Victorian Women's Football League (VWFL) formed in Melbourne in 1981, with others including the West Australian Women's Football League (WAWFL) formed in Perth in 1988 and the South Australian Women's Football League (SAWFL) formed in Adelaide in 1991. The AFL Women's National Championships were inaugurated in 1992.
Women's football was professionalised in the 2010s with the establishment of a national league, AFL Women's, that commenced its inaugural season in 2017, with eight teams formed by existing Australian Football League (AFL) clubs: all 18 AFL clubs have fielded women's teams in Season 7 (the second season of 2022).
The highest level of semi-professional competition, the AFLW, attracts a large audience of more than one million attendees[1] and over two million viewers,[2] and has managed to maintain its high levels of interest despite moving to primarily ticketed and subscription broadcasting models in 2021.
The AFLW competition is the most attended women's football competition in Australia, and one of the most popular women's football competitions in the world. With an average attendance in 2019 of 6,262 a game, it has the second highest of any domestic women's football competition. The record attendance is 53,034 which was set at the 2019 AFL Women's Grand Final which, prior to the 2020 ICC Women's T20 World Cup, held the record for the most attended fixture in Australian women's sport.
With 119,447 Australian adult and 66,998 youth female participants in 2023 it is the second most played code among women and girls in Australia behind soccer.
Women's Australian rules has also grown rapidly outside of Australia since the 2000s with 530,166 players worldwide in 2021: the Women's International Cup has been run since 2011, and players from around the world have made it to the highest level of the sport, include Laura Duryea, Clara Fitzpatrick and Cora Staunton (Ireland), Brooke Walker (New Zealand), Danielle Marshall (USA), and Kendra Heil (Canada).