I promise I'll stop writing about the women's AFL very shortly. The season's over - yay Adelaide - but there is still so much to be said about how the experiment, if you want to call it that, has changed the face of women's sport, indeed sport in general, indeed changed the perception of women overall, in this fine nation of ours.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
What's prompting this week's column is the fact that it's the "Rainbow Round of Sport" from April 6-9. It's an initiative I'm a big fan of, one which aims to kick LGBTI prejudice out of all sports. Many of our elite sporting teams are on board. The Brumbies are big supporters, Essendon, GWS Giants, the NRL's North Queensland Cowboys, and I'll be wearing my rainbow laces for my fourth grade hockey game as well. I did say elite.
But let's get back the AFLW. When journalist Angela Pippos was in town recently for a Women in Sport forum, hosted by ACT Minister for Sport Yvette Berry, we got to talking about all the, what male sports journalists (and, yikes, was I being prejudicial just there?) might call, "human interest" stories. Pippos' documentary League of Her Own, was an insightful film which followed three players in the lead up to the AFLW draft.
I said to her afterwards that I think it's important that women write about sport (even if they're not officially in the sports department! Ha!) because they tell different stories, from a different perspective. She agreed. Indeed she said one of her favourite stories from the whole thing was the fact that the League now had its first openly gay couple and when the story broke no one batted an eyelid. The game didn't implode, there were no protests, no one really noticed at all. Samantha Lane's story is one of the best sports stories you'll ever read.
Thank you very much Penny Cula-Reid and Mia-Rae Clifford.
Don't know who these pioneering women are? Cula-Reid's story is a fascinating one. She was the face of a landmark Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal case that saw females win the right to play against males beyond age 12. Her role in the establishment of the AFLW is probably highly under-estimated. Anyways, this is a love story, as much as a sports story, and when she first laid eyes on Clifford at footy training she was smitten. Six years later the pair are engaged, playing the AFLW for opposing teams, Cula-Reid is with Collingwood, Clifford with Melbourne, and on the weekends they run around together for the St Kilda Sharks.
Their club coach at the Sharks is Shaun Smith, the former Melbourne player who got his start in Canberra playing for Ainslie as a talented schoolboy.
"Penny and Mia are a wonderful couple and theirs is a wonderful story," Smith says.
"Penny is our captain, a great leader, a very strong character, and Mia leads by example and gives everything she's got every game.
"To me their sexuality is irrelevant. Here at the Sharks we don't care if you're gay or straight as long as you can play football."
At the Sharks, who had 13 women playing in the AFLW, and just happen to be sponsored by my girlcrush Susan Alberti and her Medical Research Foundation, there are three teams across different divisions,catering for the elite to those who just want to kick a footy around with some mates on a weekend.
"We've got girls of different sexualities, all shapes and sizes, different races, different skill levels," Smith says.
"But everyone gets a game."
And that is what I love about the whole Rainbow Round initiative. The whole idea that everyone gets a game.
At the end of the day, or the start of the match, or at half-time, or when the final whistle blows, it shouldn't matter whether anyone is gay or straight, or indeed any definition of anything that defines us beyond what we do on the field.
Indeed, that's what I love about sport. Is that for 90 odd minutes we're just a centre half back, for a goal defence, or a second rower, or a prop, or an aging strike forward with rainbow laces in her shoes, hoping that some young thing gives her the ball at the top of the circle with only the keeper to beat.
We're not anyone's mother, or partner, or brother, or daughter, we're not lesbians, or transgender, or sexually fluid. We're just who we are doing something that we love.
Wouldn't it be great if we could take that concept beyond the confines of a sport's field and apply it to life?
You can collect your free #rainbowlaces from any Medibank branch, Rebel or AMART sport stores or order online at www.rainbowlaces.net
