As the Western Bulldogs proudly flew a premiership flag for the first time since 1954, women were poised to enter Australian Rules football at the elite level for the first time in the sport’s history. Sue says it was almost poetic that two of her dreams reached fruition in the same year, but she would be the first to recognise that both were achieved through many years of hard slogging by countless committed individuals. As the well-known saying has it, ‘Success has many parents’.
Kate Roffey, a director of the Melbourne Football Club and long-time champion of women’s participation in sport, says the seeds of success were sown by the original female playing group of the VWFL: ‘The women who played and loved the game were the real drivers of creating the whole movement of getting women’s football going, people like Debbie Lee who had the attitude, “We will turn this into something”. Then what it took was someone like Sue to support it financially and leverage her connections to get it to the next level’.
Kate describes Sue as incredibly passionate and always supportive: ‘She believed enough in what the girls were doing to kick in some of her own funding, and I think her impact is about leveraging where she can, opening the doors. She’s not hands-on in terms of playing and coaching, but certainly is in going to talk to the relevant people … And women’s footy needed someone being obstinate and pig-headed enough, like Sue is, to keep knocking on the door, to say, “I’m coming again”’. According to Kate, ‘You almost have to start at that end point with Sue, because you realise it saves you having to open the door up another forty times!’ She adds: ‘And yes, I suspect there are probably people who run away when they see Sue coming, but I’m not sure how far you’d get if she wanted to pursue you!’
Kate also says that women’s football wouldn’t have ended up being discussed in club boardrooms if there hadn’t been women sitting on those boards: ‘Until Sue and other female club directors started asking about it and talking about it, women’s football wasn’t taken seriously. The women pushing for the females’ presence and perspective made a huge difference. Then it was Melbourne and the Western Bulldogs who started to really raise the women’s AFL profile with our exhibition games, and now it’s racing ahead’.
Stephanie Chiocci, the inaugural captain of Collingwood and a former Western Bulldogs player, says that people will never fully understand the amount of work that went on behind the scenes to bring women’s football into the spotlight, or just how influential were people like Debbie Lee, Jan Cooper and, of course, Sue Alberti. ‘Sue is definitely a pioneer’, says Steph. ‘She’s been the constant voice for the Bulldogs and for us, for women’s football. You can’t ignore her!’ She says that, ‘speaking on behalf of the VWFL, at the Western Bulldogs where I played, Sue is completely adored—we all adore her. She’d come down to the rooms and would always give us a spark, a bit of a lift. She was like having a twenty-third player on the team’.
Katie Brennan, the captain of the Western Bulldogs, reflects on the seeming contradiction between Sue’s appearance and her football nous. Whether or not the women who played in Sue’s teenage years exhibited the same intensity, there is no doubt in the young athlete’s mind about Sue’s form: ‘It’s hard to imagine now, with her perfect fingernails! But I’m sure they went in hard, although probably not with the big hits of today. Sue was right into the bash and crash and the tackling. I can imagine her being a bit of a mongrel in the contest, an inside mid or something like that, because she’s passionate and gritty. She has that Queen-like presence but I can definitely see her getting down and being the player at the bottom of the pack!’ Katie then considers Sue’s bond with the Bulldogs team: ‘Sue gets to know the girls, she’s in our huddles, she’s at training sometimes. You really feel her presence when she’s there’.
Katie radiates a strong sense of courtesy and a little awe about what is clearly a warm and trusting friendship with Sue. For all the closeness and the open conversations, there is also a natural boundary of enormous respect. Someone once asked Katie if anyone had given Sue a Gatorade shower. The answer? ‘Well no, you wouldn’t, it’s Sue.’
Katie Brennan was one of the league’s key players, branded as the ‘marquee’ players, who led the charge into uncharted waters. Another was Moana Hope, who is listed with the Collingwood Football Club.
Moana, or Mo, recalls first seeing Sue when she was about eighteen and playing in her local footy grand final: ‘I saw this woman with a designer handbag and she’d just put her handbag on the ground. I’m from Broadmeadows so I wasn’t used to seeing that. I thought she was the owner of the football league. Then I remember seeing her every year from that point on at medal ceremonies and presentations and so on. I didn’t know her name. I just knew her as the woman with the designer handbag and the driver’. Mo says that the opportunity to engage with Sue came at a club function at the Western Bulldogs: ‘I get pretty nervous about how I look at those things, particularly in front of super-rich people, because they’re judgemental. I was sitting on the floor and trying to make sure she couldn’t see me. I didn’t want her to see my tatts because I knew she was an important person. It was that time I found out Sue was vice-president of the Bulldogs. She told us about what had happened to her daughter and how she used to play footy herself. When she told those stories, I felt like there was more to her than meets the eye. So I went up to her afterwards and said hi and we just clicked. The more we hung out around football events, the more we clicked. We had a sort of connection. She grew up in a housing commission and didn’t have much, but she worked to get where she is. I grew up in a housing commission and I work pretty hard and am doing okay for myself’.
What became a mentoring relationship between Mo and Sue is charged with mutual delight, their interactions characterised by banter and loud laughter. Mo says, ‘I love Sue like a mum and I always call her my BFF. I aspire to be like her somehow, to get where she’s got to in life. I don’t mean necessarily with a driver, although that would be nice’. Mo continues: ‘I talk about Sue and her Dolce & Gabbana handbags, but she always corrects me and says it’s not even Dolce & Gabbana. Then she says some other even longer name that sounds even more expensive. But she does surprise me sometimes when she comes out with really cool runners on, or moccasins. I say to her, “Sue, you’ve got moccos on!” and then I find out they’re Louis Vuitton or something’.
During the 2016 AFL season, public broadcaster ABC TV devoted an episode of the documentary series Australian Story to Sue. During its filming, Sue suggested the crew meet with Mo and the documentary rapidly turned into a portrait of the unlikely friendship between the pair—Sue with her pearls, perfect hair and pampered existence; Mo with her full sleeve and leg tattoos, thrifty upbringing and thirteen siblings. Mo explains the background to one of the scenes in that episode: ‘When I kicked my hundredth goal [in the 2016 VWFL], Sue called me at half-time and said, “I want to give you $10 000 for that football”. I’ve never even seen that much money. But I really want to buy my mum a house and I am saving every cent to put towards the deposit. I surprised Sue by giving her the footy. They filmed me giving it to her on the show’.
The resulting episode, aptly titled ‘A League of Their Own’, had a big impact on the way people perceived the AFLW. Program editor Steven Baras-Miller rates that episode as the most enjoyable of his career, while producer Belinda Hawkins notes that Sue’s story was taken up by many different media after the show first appeared on the ABC. The program aired nationally on 29 August, a month before the AFL Grand Final that was to be one of Sue’s most cherished moments.
Prior to the launch of the inaugural AFLW season in early February 2017, the curiosity about women playing the fast and physical game of Australian Rules at the elite level was palpable. From speculation around match attendance, to injury forecasts and question marks about skill levels, it was the talk of Melbourne, the AFL’s self-proclaimed homeland. The seven-round competition, involving eight teams, would stretch over nearly two months of the Australian summer, finishing in late March.
The opening game between Carlton and Collingwood, at the former’s suburban home ground, exceeded the wildest expectations concerning attendance, with a crowd of 15 000 people filling the venue and forcing a lockout of more than 5000 others. The match was a great display of athleticism and entertainment, with players delighted by the roar of the fans and the good-natured enthusiasm surrounding the contest.
The following day it was the Western Bulldogs’ turn to play, up against Fremantle at the VU Whitten Oval. Callum O’Connor, in his capacity as AFL Victoria media reporter, wrote about the Bulldogs’ first game in the women’s competition:
The evening sun is ushering in a new era in front of over 10 000 people. The famous ground, waiting for the AFLW clash between the Western Bulldogs and Fremantle, has been broadcasting an excited babble for so long that you don’t notice it anymore. That is, until it stops. An hour before the first bounce, the EJ Whitten Stand gets to its feet in a whistling, cheering standing ovation. It spreads like wildfire as an entire stadium raucously responds to someone most of them cannot see. Susan Alberti has arrived.
In talking about the standing ovation, Sue might have changed colour under her immaculate powder foundation if she was the blushing type. Instead, she is ingenuous, almost childlike in her response, her eyes wide: ‘That was a surprise. I didn’t expect that. I was standing up, looking around and clapping, before I realised it was for me’.
Reflecting on that first round of women’s footy, Herald Sun journo Michael Warner says that the AFLW reminded people of how footy should be played: ‘There was no zoning and they really cracked in. It took people by surprise. The first game was always going to be interesting and I think that was one of the reasons it exploded. I don’t think people could fathom how hard they went in’. He also says that the game has clearly benefited from having more women at the board level, pointing out ‘that even ten years ago there were very few women on football club boards. We’ve gone from Sue Alberti being one of the first female directors thirteen years ago, to the Bulldogs now having four women. There are at least two directors on every board. Peggy O’Neal at Richmond is the first female president of a club and, in April 2017, Hawthorn appointed dual Olympian Tracey Gaudry as CEO in another landmark decision’.
If there had been any doubts about the market for women’s football, they soon dissipated when week after week the supporters voted with their feet, turning up in droves in club colours to cheer their favourite players. Families filled the stands, and the numbers of young girls signing up to play Aussie Rules at the local level swelled beyond the capacity of many clubs.
The prominent businessman Frank Costa, a passionate supporter and former president of the Geelong Football Club, which narrowly missed out on entering a team in the inaugural AFLW competition, describes the success of the women’s game as a sign that we’re ‘finally maturing and waking up, growing up, as a nation’. While he acknowledges that the speed of the uptake was unexpected, he is not surprised by the success of the women’s game: ‘You look at our [Geelong’s] membership right across the board and even though girls have never played football, it’s so close to 50 per cent female it’s not funny. I look at the pleasure my wife and my daughters get out of football. They love it and they’re as obsessed with Geelong as I am … Girls are just as keen as boys, every bit! And why shouldn’t they be allowed to play?’
The 2017 AFLW season culminated in a grand final between the Adelaide Crows and the Brisbane Lions on 26 March at Metricon Stadium on Queensland’s Gold Coast, in front of a crowd of more than 15 000. Adelaide prevailed by a single goal to win the highly prized inaugural AFL Women’s Premiership Cup.
Back in 1981, when the VWFL was launched, there were four women’s Australian Rules teams. By 2012, there were 100 000 women playing and officiating. Women also represented about 35 per cent of AFL club memberships, 40 per cent of match attendances and roughly 52 per cent of the supporter base. Linda Dessau was quoted in the Herald Sun at the time as saying, ‘We have thousands of women volunteering in community footy. And we have thousands employed directly or indirectly in the industry … it makes no sense to ignore women in making any decisions about the game’.
By mid-2017, there were about 400 000 women and girls playing football in community clubs around the country. The groundswell had started. As clubs put out the call for talent, women ranging in age from their teens to their thirties and forties turned up to give it a go. As the AFLW broke through a century of restrictions to become a legitimate force in Australian Rules football, women from myriad other sports flocked to be part of it. Lacrosse players, netballers and soccer players were naturals at the game, many of them prepared to switch codes to ride the wave of momentum created by the inaugural season. Meanwhile, cricketers and players of numerous other summer sports saw the possibility of a year-round involvement in sport. The pay for the AFLW was still miniscule in comparison to the mature men’s game, but everyone could see the potential. Even in its infancy, it was a professional option for women where there had been slim pickings at most levels of the majority of sporting codes.
The unbridled enthusiasm of men and women alike was a full and passionate acceptance of women in the sport. The impact of that first season was bigger than that of a mere football competition. It was as though women were being seen through a football lens for the first time, as equals in a culture marked by sexism. Fathers, brothers, sons and husbands were as proud of the women playing as the women were delighted by the opportunity to play. The acknowledgement of women was broader than just football; women became more visible in all spheres. And the catalyst was a game with a history of blokey behaviour and, in some quarters, entrenched misogynistic attitudes.
Sue was delighted with the number of families attending the AFLW games. She says the nicest thing that happened was when two little girls came up to her and said, ‘Are you the lady that helped start women’s football?’ As Sue describes, ‘When I said “Yes”, the older girl said, “At my school, we didn’t have a football team. We now have two teams”. This is the sort of change we needed to see and it was at that primary school level that I knew it hadn’t been happening. All the talk a few years ago wasn’t translating into any action for little girls like that. Now we have a future for our young players. Now, thanks to those amazing women, things are changing’.
Sue has an unwavering perspective on the realisation of the AFLW in 2017: ‘It’s about time. It is not a privilege for women to play football. It’s a right’.
The aesthetics of the AFLW certainly made for great television. The free-to-air TV audience for the first game, when Carlton played Collingwood, was nearly 10 per cent higher than the average audience for the men’s matches in 2016. And the number of people viewing the AFLW Grand Final was higher than for any Saturday afternoon men’s game in the previous year, including blockbuster clashes. Steph Chiocci noticed during that first season that some people were taken aback by the intensity of the women’s game: ‘People were surprised how seriously we take it and how professional we are. It’s business for us. It’s not just girls running around playing football’.
The media attention meant that Sue Alberti suddenly became highly visible, not just as the premiership cup ambassador, but as a key figure in the women’s football movement. While Sue acknowledged there were many, many people that created the AFLW, she was comfortable in that spotlight. Kate Roffey says, ‘Sue was willing to take on that role of being front and centre. She’s always well groomed and well presented. She’s measured in what she says, so she’s easy for the media to engage with. If someone’s a shrinking violet and doesn’t present well, then the media won’t gravitate’.
Kate says Melbourne player and now sports commentator Daisy Pearce had a similar experience in that first season: ‘At times it seems Daisy is the whole of women’s football, yet Daisy herself is the first to say there are 300 other players. Daisy’s sort of become the face of AFLW. The media tend to find a focal point and stick with that … and that’s fine. I say to Daisy, just make the most of it’.
As to the future, the players and the administrators recognise that there will be challenges as the game grows, not least in managing the speed and scale of that growth. Steph says, ‘Managing the growth will be a challenge, especially when you consider the amount of new teams being created across the country. Media coverage and getting into the prime time would be ideal’. But, she says, ‘Channel 7 and Fox Footy ratings were impressive this season. What’s been done so far is really, really good’. Sue agrees: ‘It will depend on the product. It’s entertaining, it’s fast football, it’s tough … we have a great product’.
A huge positive is that women are not yet part of what Katie Brennan terms ‘the football factory’. There is a lightness, a sense of independence and freedom, that characterises the AFLW, which sits beside an almost tangible feeling of gratitude. There is little doubt that a feeling of joy was a hallmark of the opening season. ‘There are certainly still challenges ahead as we continue to develop the depth and quality of the teams’, says Sue. ‘But it’s definitely heading in the right direction.’
Gillon McLachlan was delighted by the first AFLW season and at the same time is realistic about the future: ‘The next big issue will now be managing growth: which teams come in, what size grounds and how we promote all the women’s teams that come into community football. We’re in uncharted territory in many areas. But I’m not worried. All the hardest parts we’ve already gone through’.
Sue knows that the growing pains will include the move from semi-professional to fully professional: ‘One of the greatest challenges is for the women to combine work with the requirements of sport as a job. The majority of our women are paid only $8500 for the season, with marquee players earning more, starting at $17 000. It’s a stark contrast to the average male player salary of $300 000’.
Mo Hope comments that what she and the other players do is worth it, but hard: ‘The women are just excited that they’re playing at that level and that they’re being compensated. But it’s a busy existence. We all work full-time and everyone is trying to impress the coaches so we’re all training really hard. So yes, it’s hard with work. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t. I don’t get home until ten from training, then eat dinner at ten-thirty and I’m in bed at eleven. And I have to get up early for work’.
Mo runs her own traffic management business, employing several family members, so ‘early’ means getting up at between three and four o’clock in the morning. She takes this in her stride, again commenting that she is compensated for her time, whereas Sue does it for other reasons: ‘I do all the stuff that I do for the AFL and for Collingwood, but Sue is out promoting football everywhere she goes 24/7. She’s not doing it because she’s being paid to do it, or asked to do it. She just does it’. Mo adds: ‘I think her daughter has a lot to do with it. The reason I love football so much is because of my dad. The reason I’m so passionate is because of my family. Sue’s trying to make a difference’.
Regarding Sue’s efforts to create opportunities and provide pathways for women, what then is the connection with her daughter Danielle? Colin is emphatic on this point: ‘I can tell you that Susie does not support girls and young women to be replacements for the loss of her own daughter. She does it out of a strong sense of duty, humanity, charity and fulfilment. When she sees that she can have an impact, she acts. Her love for the girls and women she helps is a different love than what she has for Danielle. Danielle is cherished by Susie in many subtle ways each and every day. She is never maudlin but it is obvious and understandable that there will never be a replacement in Susie’s heart for Danielle. I am very proud of Susie’s ability to treasure life while coping with personal loss’.