I love women's sport
The only thing you have to do to be a fan of any sport is to love it
Last Saturday night, the Matildas’ must-win quarter final game against France was the most watched sporting event in Australian sporting history since Lleyton Hewitt’s Australian Open Grand Final appearance in 2005. Not the most watched women’s sporting event – it beat all the AFLM Grand Finals and State of Origin games. It was the most watched sporting event in over a decade.
I have loved sport my whole life
It took me an embarrassingly long time to realise how much I love sport. All the signs were there: I’ve been a Hawthorn supporter in the AFLM since birth, I’ve watched the Australian Open every summer since I can remember and I tune in to every Olympic Games no matter the consequences for my sleep schedule. But I have always been such an unathletic person that it was a while before I realised that you can love sport without being good at it.
There was also a pretty big thing standing in the way of being able to unashamedly love sport when I was younger: the sexist comments I’d get from men and boys. I’m a lifelong Hawthorn supporter and happened to be a teenage girl during the three-peat premiership era from 2013 to 2015. I got asked constantly if I was jumping on the bandwagon, if I even knew anything about football – thankfully, once they listened to me talk about football for about fifteen seconds, they’d quickly shut their mouths.
Women playing professional sport is groundbreaking, history making
I didn’t realise how much it would mean to me to watch women play AFL in a national competition until I got off the train at Flinders Street Station on the evening of the first game in 2017 and was met by a sea of people trying to get on the tram to Princes Park.
The AFL had such low expectations for the AFLW that there were no tickets to the game. You didn’t have to pay. You didn’t even have to register or say that you were coming. Which is how over 20,000 people descended on Princes Park and the game resulted in a lockout with fans being turned away.
The following year, I discovered The Outer Sanctum podcast. It was hosted by six women, all Hawthorn supporters, who talked every week about the AFLW and whatever else was happening in women’s sport.
After going to that first AFLW game and listening to The Outer Sanctum, I was fully-fledged, head over heels in love with women’s sport. I’d watch women play anything. At the time, I couldn’t stand cricket and never watched it. But women’s cricket? Sign me up. I went to Manuka Oval and sat on the hill in full sun to watch the women's Big Bash.
Seven seasons later, when my beloved Hawthorn were finally invited to be part of the women’s competition, I got to experience that same rush of joy. It was a rough period in my life – my younger brother was going through chemotherapy for cancer – but as I watched Sophie Locke kick our first ever AFLW goal, right after she had just lost her mother to cancer, I felt like there must be some magic in women’s sport binding us all together in that moment.
Showing up for women’s sport
During the first lockdown in 2020, I tuned into a grainy livestream to watch FIFA announce the hosts of the 2023 Women’s World Cup. Australia had put in a historic bid to co-host with Aotearoa New Zealand. We were successful.
This memory popped into my mind as I walked up to the MCG at 5pm last Saturday evening. I had tickets to the AFLM but I’d arrived early to watch the Matildas play France on the big screen. I was worried that I didn’t know enough about soccer and hadn’t earned my right to watch the game. I was worried that the stadium would be empty and I’d be the only one there.
As I took the escalator up to the top deck, it revealed a view of one of the MCC bars. The AFLM wasn’t due to start for another two and a half hours but it was already absolutely packed full of people watching the Matildas. When the Carlton and Melbourne players ran out onto the field to start their game but the Matildas still weren’t finished, the bars stayed full and many people, including me, got their phones out to watch both games at the same time.
I loved seeing people show up for women’s sport.
The only thing you have to do to be a fan of any sport is to love it
The truth is that it never mattered whether I could name the Hawthorn captain or coach or if I went to games or when I started barracking for them. It does not matter whether I watched FIFA announce Australia and New Zealand as hosts on a grainy livestream three years ago or if I can name the Matildas starting line up.
Women and girls should never have to prove their love of anything. The only thing you have to do to be a fan of any sport is to love it. How you choose to do that is entirely up to you.
Even though I am no longer a teenage girl, men still say awful things to my face about women’s sport. They say them confidently and loudly and won’t listen if you try to engage them in conversation to the contrary of their opinions.
I’m excited to leave them behind. Screw them! Jump on the bandwagon! Everyone has to watch a first game or pick a team somehow. It’s not always going to be the ‘acceptable’ way – when you were a kid or inherited from your dad like a father-son draft pick. I give you permission to watch women’s sport, knowing as much or as little about it as you would like, and to enjoy it.
There has never been a better time to get into women’s sport than right now: the Matildas play England in a semi-final sure to break more records on Wednesday, the Diamonds just won an earth-shattering 12th Netball World Cup while fighting for better pay and the AFLW kicks off again in 18 days’ time.
The Matildas are the first Australian team – men or women – to make it to the final four in a World Cup semi-final. They are the greatest soccer players in our entire country. But it’s not even about the fact that they’re the greatest. It’s the fact that they’re doing what men and boys tell me is impossible – undoubtedly what all these players got told was impossible when they were young girls – that they are women playing sport on a global stage.