In August 2015, the AFL announced that it would launch a women’s competition in 2017, well ahead of the launch initially proposed for 2020. All eighteen AFL clubs were invited to tender applications by the end of April 2016—thirteen clubs applied, and the eight successful bidders were announced two months later. The new competition was branded the AFL Women’s league (AFLW). Sue was invited to be a member of the inaugural AFLW Football Advisory Group. In further recognition of her efforts towards establishing a women’s league, she was named ambassador of the AFLW Premiership Cup.
Much earlier, it had been Sue’s solution-oriented approach that had helped bring women’s involvement in the AFL a step closer. When approaching the AFL with her case for a women’s game, Sue first met with Dorothy Hisgrove, who was general manager of people, customer and community at AFL headquarters in Melbourne. Leesa Catto provides an insight into the media strategy: ‘Sue met with Dorothy and afterwards said, “She’s doing a good job and working incredibly hard to try and bring women’s football to the forefront, but maybe she needs some more resources and some support”. Then when she approached Gillon, she didn’t say anything negative. All she did was raise the topic of how people can help the AFL with the women’s comp. It was the way she portrayed the message that got through’.
With good timing and brutal honesty, Sue spoke to Melbourne metropolitan newspaper The Age about the action that needed to be taken to make women’s football a reality. On 24 April 2015, under the provocative headline ‘Susan Alberti Says AFL Not Doing Enough for Women’s Footy’, Samantha Lane wrote, ‘The pitch was that the women’s football brief was worthy of a dedicated executive post in the AFL, rather than being part of a broader portfolio’. Sue was then quoted as saying:
Let’s just say I believe that far more could be done. The recognition that these women deserve right here and now is just not happening. I go to lots of schools with my work, primary and secondary, and everywhere I go I’m getting the impression that not enough is being done.
There is no doubt that Sue ruffles feathers, and not everyone at AFL House was happy with her activities, with some annoyed by the media coverage. But, as Leesa states, ‘Sue’s an agitator but she’s not rude, she’s never disrespectful. She treats people fairly and that’s the way she puts her point across. She does it in a way that people have to listen and she’s very skilled at that. As a woman in the building industry, she’s used to operating that way’. Likewise, in the competitive world of football, it was a sustained combination of fair and fierce that would soon bring results.
As the AFLW began preparing for its inaugural season, the 2016 AFL finals were approaching. The Western Bulldogs had performed consistently during the year, ending the home-and-away rounds in seventh place, but they faced solid competition going into September. Every finals club was in with a chance, with Hawthorn, Sydney and Geelong all broadly considered strong contenders for the flag.
On 29 August, a contributor to the sports-focused website The Roar reported on the exciting final series that lay ahead:
A local derby, two grand final rematches from 2008 and 1998, and a sudden-death elimination final between last year’s beaten grand finalist, the West Coast Eagles, and the Western Bulldogs, will highlight the first week of the finals series. Hawthorn’s thrilling one-point win over Collingwood on Sunday locked in the above schedule, with the three-time reigning premiers to start their bid for a fourth straight flag in a blockbuster qualifying final against the Geelong Cats … you could confidently bet that the winner of this qualifying final goes on to win it all on October 1.
But it was the Bulldogs who steadily battled their way through to a preliminary final, grinding out wins over the West Coast Eagles and Hawthorn along the way. With the club facing a game against Greater Western Sydney at GWS’ Sydney home ground, Spotless Stadium, a small group of diehard fans travelled north to watch the Doggies play—including, of course, Sue and Colin. Ros Casey remembers that while there weren’t many in the usual group of ‘corporate types’, they all found each other at the ground and formed a knot of vocal support. The thrilling match ended in victory for the Western Bulldogs, the sealer being a Jack Macrae goal with five minutes to go.
Ros recalls with a wide smile, ‘There were about ten of us Bulldogs supporters, and after the siren, Sue shouted, “Let’s go down to the rooms!” None of us had any real idea where the rooms were, but we followed Sue and headed off in what looked like the right direction. We found the stairs where Bulldogs fans were all crowding around to go down to the change rooms. As we approached, people turned, saw it was Sue, and the crowd just parted. It was like magic! The word went around like wildfire—“It’s Sue”—and we were all just waved through this clear path as people stepped back. It was amazing’. Ros says that when the group reached the entrance to the change rooms, ‘there was Gary Kent, the CEO, holding his arms outstretched to block people coming through into the passage to the rooms. He saw Sue and just lifted an arm for her to pass under and we all just followed along like ducklings after the mother duck’.
Sue feels she probably won’t ever fully recover from AFL Grand Final day, 2016. She describes the lead-up to the game: ‘I decided to join a coterie club breakfast at the Park Hyatt with all my family and friends. We hired a minibus, wearing all our colours, with the flags out the window—red, white and blue—like a bunch of yobbos. We sang the team song about a hundred times between Toorak and the Park Hyatt, with the windows open of course. So much nervous energy!’ Sue adds, ‘There was none of the corporate stuff for me that day. I wanted to be with the real people, which I hadn’t done for years. I’d been closeted away!’
Before the first bounce, Richard whispered conspiratorially to his little sister, ‘We’re going to win this’. Sue slowly came around to his view: ‘The first couple of quarters went by and I was watching the other team. Sydney was tiring and [full-forward] Buddy [Franklin] wasn’t firing. Sydney tiring, Buddy not firing—that sounded good in my head! There was an attitude that I hadn’t seen from the Bulldogs previously … The tenacity, the desire. I could sense it, and I could sense the tiredness of Sydney. Richard was still being really positive. I don’t really share that with him—he’s always positive. We’re the opposite, I’m always the negative Nellie. But we were getting the edge on Sydney and it came to the last quarter. It was about ten minutes in and it was touch and go. But I thought, “These blokes believe in themselves. They can do this”’.
At that point, Sue turned to Colin and said she was going down to the ground, but her sense of direction deserted her: ‘I wanted to go and wait on the boundary with Peter [Gordon] and the others. But I must have been nervous, I must not have been thinking. I headed in the wrong direction!’ Injured player Mitch Wallis walked up to her and said, ‘Sue, where are you going?’ According to Sue, when she replied that she was going to the rooms, ‘Mitch grabbed me by the hand like a son and a mother. I’ll never forget that; it was beautiful. I must have been down to those rooms a million times. Of course I knew where the rooms were, but this day I got lost. Mitch took me to the rooms and up the race and there was Peter. The game was intense but he didn’t say a word. Peter’s not one to show his emotions’.
Sue continues: ‘There was about six minutes to go and there were only a few points between us. But Sydney was tired and our boys were pumped. I’ve been around football long enough to know when a team is tired and our boys seemed to have something going through their veins—they had it. And then of course the siren went. And we’d won. First time in sixty-two years’. Sue’s eyes are wide, full of wonder, and she speaks as though she’s still surprised, the same quality you find in children to whom the fairytale still hasn’t ended.
‘I had an official pass to go on the ground and the security guy let me out’, says Sue. ‘I was absolutely numb. I didn’t know whether to cry or to cheer. David Smorgon saw me and I burst into tears and David put his arm around me. “Enough of that”, he said.’ Sue laughs and shakes her head: ‘All I could think of was back to my childhood and the cheer squad and everything they go through to get to every game. Everything they do. The army. I went straight over to the cheer squad to thank them. And of course they were all crying. They were just beautiful. Then I went straight to the doctors. I thank the doctors every week, the doctors who look after our boys. We’d had a lot of injuries during the year. The two doctors were just beside themselves, beautiful men. I wanted to thank them, they were crying. Then Roughie [player Jordan Roughead] came over and he picked me up and spun me around. I had my handbag over my shoulder. I thought I was going to fall! Then he gently put me down. He’s ten foot tall and I’m five foot. He put me down and said, “Sue, did you have a good afternoon?” I’ll never forget that moment. Someone from the Herald Sun did a cartoon subsequently, as a gift for me, privately, of Roughie whizzing me around, him with his number twenty-three and me with my handbag and my coiffure hairdo. It was just a beautiful moment. He was all covered in sweat but it didn’t matter’.
Sue’s pretty grin lights up her face. The imagery of the day is obviously still crystal-clear and she is relishing every detail: ‘I shook so many hands. The tears really started to flow and I was looking at all the people in the crowd. Some of the people were really old. We’d been waiting a long time’.
Sue says, ‘Colin and I were away for the next couple of days, but when I came home to Mount Eliza, guess what I saw? We always had the Australian flag flying, and Colin had organised to have the premiership flag raised. So the Bulldogs flag was flying at our home. I never thought I’d see that in my lifetime’.
Kate Jenkings credits her aunt with giving her son, Will, a belief in magic. ‘At the time that Will became fully aware about football, around the age of five’, she says, ‘the Bulldogs were getting into winning formation’. According to Kate, Sue and Richard ‘exploited this confluence of events’, claiming Will as a Bulldog and enjoying games vicariously through him: ‘They were the same age as Will when the Bulldogs last experienced sustained success’. Kate describes how Sue invited Will to many major AFL games, and on several occasions took him with her down into the players’ rooms: ‘The finals season ticket to the Bulldogs premiership 2016 was the highlight! He lapped this up, like any young boy would’. Laughing, Kate adds, ‘Not content to limit Will’s experience of the game to the dress circle and trophy cabinets, Sue also encourages Will to go to games at the Whitten Oval—sitting on the benches, with the thermos, hot pies and rug. This is where, of course, Sue and Dad compete to be the loudest’.
Kate says, ‘When the grand final day came, Will was convinced and in no doubt at all that the Dogs would win. Why? Because the aunt who always delivered told him so. Will found that even if Santa Claus isn’t real, there is still magic in the world, and his aunt could make it happen’.