The Australian Sports Commission will work with the AFL to create clearer guidelines on transgender athletes after Hannah Mouncey's AFL Women's draft hopes were dashed.
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The sports commission has already been working with the Human Rights Commission for 12 months to develop policies for national sporting organisations.
Mouncey was ruled ineligible for the AFLW draft with the AFL concerned putting Mouncey in the semi-professional environment would unfairly "accelerate her development and increase her physical size".
The AFL based its decision on the Victorian Equal Opportunity Act, which states that athletes can be discriminated against based on their sex or gender "if strength, stamina or physique is relevant".
The AFL says it took into account the maturity of the AFLW, it's player cohort and Mouncey's circumstances.
Australian Sports Commission director of culture and leadership Merrilee Barnes admits work with the AFL may not result in a "hard and fast" policy on transgender players.
But preliminary talks with the Human Rights Commission are aimed at finding clarity for national sporting organisations because there are "so many grey areas".
"They've invited Hannah to apply for the draft next year so that's a good thing, it's not like a blanket ban," Barnes said.
"We're happy to work with the AFL actually. We're going to extend an offer to the AFL to work with them on this over the next 12 months if that's how long it's going to take to develop clearer guidelines.
"We're actually in preliminary discussions with the Human Rights Commission ourselves on the development of some federal guidelines for national sporting organisations for trans and intersex participation.
"We're already in those discussions because we know there's a lot of confusion out there in sports.
"That's why we started these talks with the Human Rights Commission 12 months ago, we need to help develop some clarity for sports and hopefully we can talk to people, transgender advocates and athletes, try and get some discussion going.
"It might not come to a hard and fast policy, because there's variations and we're led by international federations in a lot of cases.
"We want to make sure that our Australian sports have some sort of guidance at the national level so that's why we want to do something. It's a very confusing area.
"We know that there is an argument out there about whether an individual is transitioning from male to female and wants to participate in female competition obtains any physical advantage over other female participants, that's the debate out there."
The Australian Sports Commission has a member of protection policy - which is required for all funded and recognised sports - with a clause on transgender participation.
The clause provides guidance on the subject of transgender participation in sport and encourages sporting bodies to commit to promoting an inclusive environment.
In a somewhat contradictory stance the AFL has cleared the way for Mouncey to continue playing in an AFL-sanctioned competition in Canberra.
The ACT Human Rights Commission put together inclusion guidelines for clubs in the ACT, developed in conjunction with Active Canberra and Play by the Rules.
The AFL has cleared Mouncey to compete in community level competitions because football at that level is based around participation, inclusion, and involvement.
While Mouncey has been blocked from playing in the AFLW, she is eligible to represent Australia in European handball as a female, having already done so as a male.
Handball Australia has adopted the IOC transgender guidelines as endorsed at the IOC Consensus Meeting on Sex Reassignment and Hyperandrogenism in November 2015.
But as a non-Olympic sport, the AFL does not need to use the same guidelines - which is why the Australian Sports Commission is keen to develop some sort of policy.
