By Kaye Dixon
At seven years old, when visiting the city from Mallacouta, Sal Rees practised drop kicks with her grandfather in the backyard at Coburg. Her grandfather, Henry Flogg and her father, Don Rees, played football for Brunswick.
Sal, now 25 years old, plays in the Victorian Women's Football League for the Fairfield Falcons. Sal and two team mates, Kris Gardiner and Janelle Crib, were part of the team of 22 chosen to play for Victoria.
Women usually constitute 30% of spectators at the Big League, but now women are playing, not just watching. The Victorian Women's Football League was started in 1981 with four teams from around Melbourne. Now there are seven teams, including two from outside Melbourne. Just over 900 women, ranging in age from 13 to 44, have been part of the league. Despite lack of publicity, funding and facilities, women are demonstrating that Australian Rules for them is here to stay.
The Victorian team was drawn from four of the seven teams in the VWFL — Ballarat Lions, East Brunswick Scorpions, Rowville Cobras and Fairfield Falcons.
In late July, the Victorian team played its second official interstate match. The sun shone down on the women at Edwardstown oval, South Australia, as, surrounded by the blue hue of the Adelaide Hills, more than 2000 spectators roared from the sideline. Men and women of all ages were told to stand back on the asphalt as the tension mounted and South Australia led by one point before the last quarter.
Coach Bernie Marantelli fired up the Victorian team: "Let's be mean and desperate with the ball. Let's put in 20% more."
The crowd was behind South Australia, but in the last quarter Victorian voices rose above the din. The Victorian side took numerous possessions and, with agility and grace, they took marks and kicked the ball flying through the goal posts. Both sides went in hard, tackling their opponents and knocking them to the ground. But it was a victory to Victoria.
Off the field, Kris Gardiner works as a waitress. Some of her work mates do not take her football seriously. "Some of the guys at work hang it on you, and call you 'wuss'. They have no idea women can have a skill level and play football as well. Sure we might be new to the sport and not as skilled, but they have
grown up with it. They've had it all their lives, while women haven't had the chance."
Colleen Vale, Fairfield coach and president of the VWFL, says women's football is simply a matter of equal opportunity. "Women shouldn't be denied access to any sport they want to have a go at. What's good about football is its speed, skill, grace and strength. I think women can do all these things as well as men."
Colleen's view is that football can be beneficial to women for a number of reasons. Firstly, she believes that women want to play contact sports. "Sport is segregated while women play non- contact sport and men play contact sport. Football allows women who want to use their body in that physical contact way the freedom to do it. It is a fantastically important thing for women to feel comfortable about their bodies, to know they can tackle somebody, to know they have the strength to stand up to somebody else's tackle. In some respects it is another form of self-defence training."
Another distinguishing characteristic of football is the large number of people in the team, says Colleen. Men have had a long tradition of being part of a group of 20-odd who play a game which is physical. This benefits their social development. Large numbers of women coming together as a team is not common.
"When I think about the Falcons, that's the thing that really excites me. We have 22 on the team each week and another 10 who are not playing. Then you have another five or six women who are doing official jobs around the ground ... you are looking at 30 women who are there to back up each other, encourage each other and understand each other, and that's a sort of strength.
"The Falcons walking into a pub together after a game, when they are on a high, don't have to be violent and aggressive, [but] they are a tight-knit group and that's threatening to anyone else."
Colleen says women have never had the development of their self- confidence that comes when they know that intellectually, physically and emotionally they are being supported by many other women at one time.
The Fairfield Falcons, a feminist team run by women for women, began in 1990. Kris, who plays rover, remembers her first game as the best moment in her two seasons of football. "First match I ever played down here wasn't anything spectacular, but I just felt I played a really good game. It's rare, I think, that I play a good game even though others tell me I do. But I remember the first match — I went all out and I was just there with the
ball all the time."
Colleen also remembers the Falcons' first match. "They got beaten by I don't know how many goals but they came back into the club rooms after that, and you'd think they had won the premiership. It was sort of like, wow, we have played our first game of footy ... any woman who goes out and plays her first game of footy comes back feeling so empowered."
Sal, who won most consistent player for the Falcons in 1991 and is registrar for the VWFL, says: "The most enjoyable thing about football is the whole day — getting there, playing with your mates, just going out and having fun".
But Sal's mum has a different opinion. "She thinks it's violent", says Sal. "She loves football, but she will not come and watch me play. She is scared I'll get injured."
The Fairfield Falcons have a non-violence clause in their constitution. "If I knock someone over in a game, I will turn around and pick them up. Out on the field we're talking, laughing, but when the ball comes, it's serious. Seems to be more friendly but just as competitive, but doesn't seem to be nasty", says Janelle, vice captain of the Falcons and deputy vice captain of the Victorian state team this year.
The Falcons' ground at McDonald Park, Northcote, is a facility for women's soccer and football in winter and women's cricket in summer. The Falcons were luckier than most other women's teams in having a local council that supported women's sports and provided them with facilities. Local governments generally are still not giving women a fair go in sport, and the great bulk of council amenities, such as ovals and stadiums, are almost exclusively for the use of men.
Consequently, women have had to depend on men's good will with the sharing of facilities. This has been very slow coming, and often men perceive women's teams only as a revenue source for them: women's football means more takings at the bar.
As a result, women's football teams have had problems establishing themselves. The Scorpions, which started in 1980 and are the oldest team still going, have had five different grounds and colours.
According to Colleen, a stable ground with good facilities is essential to the development of women's football. Supporters need to know from year to year where the grounds are.
Also the local newspaper needs to know, so it is able to follow the teams. Media coverage is something the women's league is
still struggling to obtain. Only about 2.5% of total sports reporting space is devoted to women's sport, and this figure has not changed over the past 10 years.
Without media coverage, attracting new players to the league is difficult. One of the ways the league hopes to encourage new members is by raising interest in schools.
Last year Sal went to primary schools and spoke to assemblies to let young girls know of the existence of VWFL. At one school, where she did a training and skills session, the girls were asking for her autograph.
The league see passing on skills to younger women as very important.
"I think women have the skills or can learn the skills", says Colleen. "They know about strategy, so they can easily play the game if someone teaches them how to kick and handpass. Then all the other things, which are attributes of other sports, get incorporated into footy, and they can play it just as well, with as much skill and probably more grace than men."