Inaugural AFL Women's match: Eddie McGuire, you should have locked it in

There had been a lot of tick-tacking in the lead-up. Tying up broadcast rights with Fox Sports and Seven, agonising over whether there would be enough interest in the games to propel people right through round games, then finals.

All that uncertainty about popularity seems so quaint now. Almost one million people watched Carlton flog Collingwood on the telly on Friday night. And that's not including those who saw the game in real life, those who were locked out and forced to listen to the cheers from outside the ground, and those at pubs around the nation.

I was one of the million. I was sitting on the couch in the dark, beaming at the television, blown away by the athleticism and history. I was also thinking I need to ditch my team, the Sydney Swans, because it doesn't have a women's team. Other fans, such as the members of the Outer Sanctum, the glorious footy podcast, are opting for two teams. Emma Race was born into Hawthorn but her women's team is Carlton; and I hear some Sydneysiders are ditching the Swans for the GWS Giants, which now has a women's team.

But yep, December 8 was the day the clubs also officially received the playing schedule. The thing is, that final published schedule on December 8 was just a formality. In March last year, the AFL announced that the women's games would be played in February and March. The minutiae of this timing would be irrelevant except for one terrible, horrible, no-good coincidence.

On the evening that the Collingwood AFL Women's team made its debut, Collingwood's president, Eddie McGuire, was doing something else. He was commentating on a boxing match between two men whose glory days were in the past, instead of being ringside for the future of sport.

McGuire, famous for faux pas after faux pas, is the man who thought it was funny to say he would pay $50,000 to see legendary fierce football commentator Caroline Wilson stay under a pool of iced water and charge an extra $10,000 for "everyone to stand around the outside and bomb her". He later apologised in a very limp way.

But let's be clear. His stated position on the women's league is one that's very supportive but it's how we behave in our day-to-day lives that reveals who we are. And what McGuire's behaviour said was this: I value two has-beens more than the entire Collingwood AFL Women's team.

The AFL has confirmed that the timing of the first round was not made public until December 8 and the timing of the boxing match was set in October last year, so it looks like the boxers and McGuire had clear air. Except for that annoying announcement in March last year, which made it clear the women's games would begin in February.

Why did Eddie choose two old guys over the Collingwood women?

It can't be the money. He reportedly earns $1.3 million a year from his work with Channel Nine. He owns a mansion in Toorak valued in the early ten millions. He's on Melbourne Triple M's breakfast show. He has some kind of a contract with Fox. The man's not short of a quid. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with rolling in money unless it detracts from moral and ethical decision-making. Unless it shows you're disloyal. Then it's a problem. Eddie really is everywhere.

He chose to throw his support and presence behind a sport with a dodgy history; behind a sport with a long association with violence (and that's not just what happens in the ring); behind a sport which is far less popular with women than it is with men; behind a sport which has an association with the underworld. Not that Eddie is connected to any of those elements.

Brunette Lenkic, the author, with Rob Hess, of Play On! The Hidden History of Women's Australian Rules Football, describes McGuire's decision to be absent as peculiar, considering what she describes as "the huge public appetite for the women's game". Emma Race, of the Outer Sanctum, said: "He said he was so excited but he wasn't there .. that's not a great look."

On Monday, the AFL's chief executive, Gillon McLachlan, said he understood McGuire's absence. "He was on another channel," he said. On Saturday, the Collingwood Football Club released its own statement, not mentioning McGuire once. But its chief executive, Gary Pert, was wildly enthusiastic about the game.

He said: "I was pleasantly shocked by how many fans turned up and, elsewhere, watched ... Carlton won the match but football was the real winner. Friday night might just be the biggest sports story of 2017."

And who was missing from that story? Eddie McGuire, Collingwood's president.

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