History
Australian Football had been played by men for almost half a century before the first women's football matches were played. Public attitudes and sexism generally prevented women from participating in organised football. However both world wars were a great liberator for women; as the men fought in the war, women were often called to perform many tasks typically done by men, including spectator sports.
Records exist of a football side in Perth, Western Australia made up of department store staff playing as Foy & Gibson's as early as 1917. Matches played in Western Australia were also recorded in 1918.
Following World War I, an exhibition match in Melbourne was held to show that women could play what had previously been seen to be a man's sport. The first women's match attracted a large crowd and interest. The umpire wore a dress.
Archives also show a charity women's match occurred on Bassendean Oval in Perth, Western Australia, 27 August 1944. It is unknown whether the game had been played continuously in the state.
Beyond this and occasional matches over the years, women's football was rarely organised, until the formation of the Victorian Women's Football League in 1981 with four teams competing at open level.
It was in 2000 that the sport began to rapidly grow, with the number of registered teams increasing by a phenomenal 450%.
In 2005, the VWFL celebrated its 25th anniversary.
There are now about 120 women's teams across the globe. Australian Football is becoming more and more popular with women and girls, particularly young women. In 2006, 22 years was the average age of players in the VWFL.
The first ever full international was held between the USA Freedom and Team Canada in Vancouver on Saturday 4 August 2007 in front of a crowd of almost 2,500.
The VWFL set an Australian crowd record in the 2007 Grand Final held on 19 August at the Preston City Oval in Melbourne.
Read more about this topic: Women's Australian Rules Football
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Both place and time were changed, and I dwelt nearer to those parts of the universe and to those eras in history which had most attracted me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Three million of such stones would be needed before the work was done. Three million stones of an average weight of 5,000 pounds, every stone cut precisely to fit into its destined place in the great pyramid. From the quarries they pulled the stones across the desert to the banks of the Nile. Never in the history of the world had so great a task been performed. Their faith gave them strength, and their joy gave them song.”
—William Faulkner (1897–1962)
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)