The local football match between South Morang and Sunbury at the weekend had all the makings of a good sport story and we would have run it, whether the players were men or women.

I'm pretty sure we would have, anyway.

AFL Victoria is investigating why coaches for South Morang's women's team decided to call it a day in the third quarter, but sources from within that club say the whole story has been overblown.

There was some rough play; sure, a couple of concussions. But the sources insist there was no brawl.

They say coaches called time on the game because it was getting late, tempers were flaring and the umpires were in danger of losing control of the match – waiting for an ambulance to arrive and take one of the players away had delayed it by an hour.

As an explanation, that in itself does not do much for the image of the women's game, but that's the problem when you are the female minority in a traditionally male environment, the bad behaviour of a few can so easily be seen as a reflection on the whole.

Violence between women can provoke a strange reaction among some of us, who see it as amusing, a curiosity, even sexual, when really it is no different to an on-field fight between men – ill-disciplined and increasingly outside the accepted norms.

Likewise, tough and courageous play among women who are not afraid to attack the ball and tackle hard is as worthy of respect as when the same qualities are shown by men.

With a national AFL women's league launching next year, it is worth all of us who love the sport – journalists and fans – examining how we really feel about women who play our brilliantly brutal, physical game.

This week I got to interview some of the footy-mad teenagers who make up the Victoria's Metro Youth Girls team, an elite group of AFL hopefuls who train at Richmond's headquarters on Punt Road.

I told them about how the principal of my small Catholic girls' school had put a stop to one teacher's plan to start an AFL team, thinking that these future stars would struggle to imagine such regressive thinking existed just a little more than a decade ago.

Not so – they understood that as young women hoping to make a career as footballers, they stood on the cusp of something new.

The co-ordinator of their program told me she wanted the girls to know that their bodies are powerful and robust, not delicate, not breakable.

She told me the girls are following every announcement about the women's league and cannot wait for their shot at the big time.

As journalists we are writing more and more about female footballers, because they're skillful, athletic and good to watch.

We will be also critical of women's teams, or players, when criticism is due, even if the sport would rather shut those conversations down.

Many Australians are not used to seeing women play a contact sport, and inevitably as we all go on this journey, mistakes will be made and commentators will say the wrong thing.

Then there will be the dinosaurs who never quite accept that women and girls have no more need to be protected than men and boys, and have no less right to be acknowledged and admired for what they can do on the footy field.

But for the rest of us, let's remember that the actions of a handful of women players does not reflect on all of them, any more than it does for the men.

Let's remember a bunch of brilliant girls down at Punt Road are listening, and think before we speak.