Kicking goals: The women tackling Masters AFL in Canberra

Posted on 13 July, 2022

It’s a footy family with a twist: a place for women over 35 who want to get out onto the footy field and kick some goals (both of the metaphorical and physical variety).

For many of us, the only time we would have touched a football was during gym class—cue flashbacks of teenage boys not believing in deodorant and desperately running the opposite way whenever the ball came near you—but across the country that’s changing with the QuickKick initiative getting women back on the field.

It only started last year when the AFL master’s group secured a grant from Sports Australia but QuickKick has already made its mark for the women of Canberra with over a hundred registrations.

For women aged over 35, it’s the chance to learn the footy skills that might not have been offered in your childhood and learn the difference between AFL, NRL and rugby (don’t look at me to tell you the difference, my knowledge stops at the shape of the ball). But for some of the women in Canberra, it is also a life-saving opportunity.

“As a trans woman that has faced so many barriers to participating in sport, I often talk to people and say that footy and the opportunity to participate in footy— at least for people in the minority—can sometimes be a lifesaving experience,” says ACT Women’s Development Officer Andi McGee. “There are so many benefits that can come from women forming a community around footy,”

Sessions run every fortnight in Ainslie and are free to attend (but make sure you register here). And for those who might be breaking a sweat at the idea of running laps and doing burpees don’t worry! It’s not that kind of training session.

“The QuickKick clinic sessions are skill development sessions, you don’t have to be super fit to be a part of them. They only go for an hour and we break up into small groups, so there’s not a lot of running, and there’s no contact,” Andi explains.

“It’s all about just giving people a bit of a sense of what the game is like. For those people that that may not feel like they’re fit enough, or are not fit at all, I just really encourage them to come along and give it a go and they’ll probably end up surprising themselves,”

“More than half of the ACT women that have registered are over 40 and to see these women exercising their athletic potential, their potential to pick up skills, and learn different things, that willingness to go ‘What more can I learn?’— I think that it’s brilliant to see that example of a lifelong journey of learning. I also see how strong, how courageous, how skilled, how clever and how funny this cohort is. It is a really important part of our community that as women we can see and be a part of the inclusion that is happening.”

And don’t worry, you won’t be getting tackled to the ground either—well at least not straight away.

“One of the things that that QuickKick does is it creates an access point that is all about minimising the risk, because everybody is concerned about the idea of contact. So this QuickKick initiative is really about creating an opportunity for people to develop their skills, and gradually experience what some of that contact looks like, to help break down some of the barriers that they might have internally,” explains Andi.

“It’s a really great opportunity for people individually to go, ‘Hey, you know what, I think I can do this’ and then they do. The sense of reward is really great.”

“At the end of each of these sessions that we’ve run, I’ve just been absolutely buzzing because the women have just been so happy. We’ll do a drill for kicking goals and when they get the goal, everyone’s high-fiving each other and laughing and I just get a whole pile of emails afterwards from people just saying how much fun they had, how safe they felt that was, how inclusive it was.”

Safe, fun and inclusive are the key messages being promoted by AFL Masters and Andi’s passion and drive brings that to life here in Canberra.

“I think it’s a matter of equity. It’s a matter of breaking down some of the thinking that’s happened in the past that said women really shouldn’t play footy. There’s this real love, this real sense of camaraderie, and we get together at the end of the session and I’m standing there and just seeing all these smiling faces, going ‘How good is footy?’”

It isn’t just the grown-ups who benefit from this program—it’s also helping create a lifelong journey for girls to carry with them, showing the young ones that women can be just as active and skilled as anyone else playing AFL.

“I think it’s really important to have that example of the courage, not to accept that you have to kind of become inactive as you get older. There is this lifelong opportunity to be active, to continue to grow, learn and to say that it can happen all through your life,” says Andi.