Both the AFL and Channel Seven should be ashamed of themselves.
Less than a week before the second AFLW season kicks off, both of these organisations should be doing whatever it takes to continue to promote the women's league after what many have considered last season as an overall success. Instead, the AFL are giving off the impression that the AFLW is taking a backseat and are promoting this thing called the AFLX and Channel Seven are dumping the majority of their free-to-air games to one of their secondary channels, that being 7Mate. It is inexcusable and personally, both the AFL and Seven need to pull their head in.
If this is the AFL's way to develop the women's game even further and gather more support from the general public, then they are going about it the worst way possible. The only thing holding back the AFLW from going further is the AFL themselves.
Personally, I don't like the AFL's new concept that is the AFLX. For those unsure about what this is about, practically, it's a novelty format that is supposed to rival cricket's 20/20 Big Bash and Rugby's Rugby 7s. This new format is played on a rectangular field with seven players on the field and three more on the bench. All 18 teams will be split into three groups of six in a round-robin format. Each game is to consist of two 10-minute halves, with each team playing twice on their given night, as there are two pools of three teams in each group of six.
This new format is expected to bring in those that are new to the game, with rules such as 10-point supergoals from kicks outside the 40-metre range, no paid marks from backwards kicks and last touch out-of-bounds free kick rule, which is expected to make this concept thrilling, fast-paced and exciting for the casual viewer of Australian Rules. However, I find this a cheap and a frankly pathetic attempt by the AFL to make a little extra coin off the hard-working everyday man, woman and teenager (Kids under 12 get free admission).
What makes this even worse is that the AFL have decided to place this ridiculous concept in the middle of the AFLW season. February 15-17 is when round three of the AFLW season is due to commence and even though it overlaps just two games – Adelaide vs Western Bulldogs and Carlton vs Brisbane – it's pretty damn obvious that they gave very minimal thought – if they even had given it a thought at all – when the higher-ups decided upon a date for the AFLX.
There is no doubt a lot of people that will be interested to tune in to watch the AFLX on this weekend, and as a result of doing so, AFLW will lose viewers, particularly on the Saturday night when the two games mentioned above are to be scheduled in. The AFL have made it clear that they didn't want it clashing with the likes of the Big Bash League or Tennis' Australian Open, because it wanted the AFLW to get as much momentum as possible without distractions such as those events mentioned above. Yet, they brainlessly decided to place something untried in the middle of a season and could potentially stunt the growth of the women's game in years to come. It seriously boggles the mind how they can do this and get away with it.
Which now leads to Channel Seven, which aired live free-to-air games on the main channel, but by round five, all free-to-air games were moved to 7mate, despite the improvement of the game skill-wise, particularly in the back-end of the season. Seven will continue to air all their free-to-air games on 7mate for the upcoming 2018 season, which I feel is absolutely pure humbug. Between 350k and 500k tuned in to the opening two rounds of the season and when the matches were relegated to the secondary channel, it went down to about 200k and lower.
7mate may still be a free to air channel, but it doesn't get the viewers Channel Seven does, so it should be imperative that the AFLW should get as many viewers as possible, but Seven doesn't see it. Instead, they opt to promote silly reality tv shows, and what's worse about it, is that it looks apparent that Seven doesn't care about it. I haven’t seen any advertisements about the upcoming games to be broadcasted and we are less than a week out from the rematch of Collingwood and Carlton at Ikon Park – a match that filled up every possible seat in the place.
I can understand why Channel Seven won’t broadcast the women’s game on their main channel. Over the past 12 months, people have been complaining about the lack of skill and the lack of scoring that was involved in the AFLW in their first season. My message to those is simple - get over it, let it develop as it should be and stop being so damn ignorant. The women’s league was never going to reach the standards that the men’s game has had for years among years in just one season.
As the old saying goes - 'Rome wasn't built in a day'. The AFL wasn't built in a season and neither will the AFLW, so I urge a little bit of patience with the women's league as they enter in their second season - I sense that they'll be better as the years go by.
Despite this, these women are incredibly fierce competitors who still leave nothing in the tank and skill-wise there are signs that the AFLW is in good stead but they need the support from everyone possible for the league to be in good stead for the foreseeable future – keep in mind that six teams will be entering the league by 2020, so it’s imperative that the AFL needs to get behind the women’s league and that is something they have failed to do so in 2018.
The support, the growth and the momentum of Women’s football is not going to happen if the AFL decide to promote some cheap knock-off version of the real game, call it ‘AFL’s version of 20/20 Big Bash’ and plop it right in the middle of the AFLW’s second season and it’s not going to happen if Seven broadcast most of their games into one of their secondary channels and hardly promote these games on the television.
AFL CEO Gil McLachlan apologised to the thousands that were locked out of Ikon Park this time last year. This year, he should be apologising to the thousands upon thousands of AFLW fans like myself for dumping all the momentum women’s footy has going for them at the moment and replacing it with something as ludicrous as the AFLX and leaving us all frustrated at how everything has been dealt with.
Furthermore, I don’t think he’s said a damn word about Channel Seven dumping most of their scheduled broadcasts onto a lesser station - It makes you wonder if he actually does care about where the AFLW is going. In my eyes, Gil’s really made a mess of this and there is nobody to blame but himself.
The AFLW deserves much better than what I can only describe as disgusting treatment to a league that is continuing to rise at such a rapid rate, whether the non-believers like it or not.