After a long 537 days without a footy crowd, the MCG was last weekend finally allowed to host half its capacity – 50,000 diehard Australian Rules football fans. On Thursday night for the first game of the first round of the new season, supporters donned their traditional colours – the yellow and black of the Tiger army, and the navy blue of Carlton – after the longest break from football in Victorian history. Supporter Luke, 21, was happy just to be there. “I don’t even go

“I never had any intention of [playing AFLW], I guess I just loved the game.” Andrea Gilmore started playing women’s football “just to keep the body ticking over” between Super Netball seasons. She started a pre-season with Claremont and “fell in love playing it then and there”. Now 32, Gilmore was among the older women in the recent AFLW Draft and one of a number coming from other elite sporting backgrounds. In the same draft, Richmond picked up Australian representative bas

“I was just at the point where I was unhappy. I’d come home and just burst into tears in front of my wife saying this isn’t how it’s meant to be.” Brett Deledio was an AFL champion. As a Richmond Tiger, he won the AFL’s rising star award in his first year, then two Jack Dyer Medals as Richmond’s best and fairest and two All-Australian blazers. But years of missing out on finals and a disappointing season took a heavy toll on him. “Year after year of missing out on finals –

“The big moment … was when Colin O’Riordan left Tipperary to go play at the Sydney Swans when he was 18.” Aisling McCarthy, a native of County Tipperary and a star of Gaelic Football, says her interest in Aussie Rules began in that moment. “When I got to see some of the clubs and play a bit of the game, that’s when I thought, you know what, if the opportunity comes up to play, I really do want to.” Currently back home in Ireland following the abrupt end of the 2020 AFL Women

How did you become interested in journalism? I was interested in newspapers and writing for as long as I can explicitly remember. There was a day when the Southern Aurora train between Melbourne and Sydney crashed. I was only nine and I remember hearing about it and then reading about it on the front of The Age the next day, and being fascinated by how this calamitous event that had happened one particular day could be on the front of the paper the next day with pictures, i

On a clear and sunny day early in 2018, a message is written in the sky: AFLW, it says. At a Catholic all-boys school in Melbourne, a group of mates in year 11 notice the vapour writing. One bursts out: “What a waste of time.” There are already two clear camps, each with a clear set of beliefs. One decides that women’s sport isn’t worth investing time or money into. The other values equal opportunity, knows that sport is an avenue to challenging the status quo and levelling