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Feature August 2008
Girls in the change rooms
by Greta Parry
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| Justin Jackson & Julie Fowler |
The blood, sweat and tears of grassroots footy are inexplicably tied up with masculinity. But for one country footy club, women provide more than just sandwiches.
It’s a Saturday afternoon in winter and the smell of Deep Heat mixed with sweat wafts from the change rooms of the Inverloch-Kongwak Football Club (IKFC). Throughout the day the change rooms play host to a constant stream of exhausted players recovering after a match and others warming up in readiness for the next contest. It’s where you’ll find communal showers, sports bags stuffed with dirty socks and jocks, and the male camaraderie that comes with playing Aussie Rules footy. It’s also where you’ll find primary school teacher Julie Fowler.
Julie
Julie, 26, began training the 18-and-under (thirds) and senior sides at the beginning of 2007. Her role involves rubbing down the players’ muscles, strapping any tender spots and attending to injuries. Julie volunteers as a trainer in part, she says, because her husband Justin Jackson plays football for the club. “I was going to play netball and then I didn’t end up playing, so I thought, ‘Oh, this is boring, sitting here in the car’.”
When asked to help out with training, Julie obtained her level two first aid certificate and gave up several hours of her time each week during the season. Julie is one of many women who perform countless duties around the club – some of which are stereotypically associated with men.
So what’s it like being in the (very) personal space of dozens of footy players? Julie admits that she was nervous entering such a candid male space. “It’s full on,” she explains, adding, “I’ve seen a few bums!” – but it wasn’t long before her apprehension disappeared. “You get over it ‘cause you’re so busy, and [the players] make it really good.” Barb Miller, who also helps out with training, puts Julie’s warm reception down to her outgoing personality. “[The players] enjoy Julie being in there because she’s such a character,” she says. Julie enjoys it too – so much so that she plans to continue training this season. “It’s really fun.”
Judging by the number of ‘thank-yous’ Julie received from the players at the club’s annual presentation night in September last year, the boys don’t have a problem with women in their change rooms. The sentiment is echoed by individual players. Justin, 26, has played football for the club since he was 10. “You don’t even think about it at all,” he says, summing up the response of many players who see the women as just doing a job. Even the younger players seem unfazed. 19-year-old Patrick Jobling, who has played for the senior side since 2004, has never had a problem with women in the change rooms. “It doesn’t worry me,” he says. “It’s just the same as having guy trainers.”
More than sandwiches
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| Barb Miller & Patrick Jobling |
Julie is not the first girl to venture into the IKFC change rooms. In fact, the club has a long history of female trainers from Yvonne Dennerly, who was a senior trainer for many years and remains an active member of the football committee, to current trainer Micky Morris. Though the role of trainer at the club is not exclusively female, Barb believes that the female trainers “seem to stick with it”, noting that “it’s been a lot of years since we’ve had male trainers in there on a full-time basis”.
Barb is a good example of the varied roles women play at the club, as she does training as well as the more traditional jobs of helping out in the canteen and washing players’ jumpers. In addition to working part-time and raising three boys (who all play footy for IKFC), Barb gives up her time on five days a week during the football season – a commitment she believes is fairly typical. But one suspects she’s being modest: Her dedication to the club and the vast amount of time she volunteered during the season resulted in her award for the 2007 Best Clubperson – one of the highest honours the club bestows.
Russell Miller, Barb’s husband and president of the club, describes the role of women as “vital”. “We couldn’t do it without them,” he states simply. The club has always appreciated the necessity of women’s contributions: In the past sixteen years, eight Best Clubperson awards have been presented to women. Which is not surprising, considering women fill positions in every area of the club, from treasurer to canteen manager.
More than footy
Why do women choose to contribute so generously to a sport that is stereotypically boys-only? Part of the answer undoubtedly lies in the club’s locality. Like so many country towns, the local footy club provides a core social network for its members. For many, involvement with the club goes far beyond the Saturday games – there are weekly dinners after Thursday night training, junior football matches on Sundays and numerous events held throughout the year including a ball, a trivia night and a country-and-western night. People initially enter the club because their children or partners play footy, but sooner or later find themselves a part of the vast community that surrounds it.
Kate Lindsay, 25, writes a club newsletter every home game, in addition to barracking “pretty hard” each Saturday with her two young children in tow. She joined IKFC just two years ago when her husband Mark began playing for the senior side, but she is already a permanent fixture at the club. Kate says that during winter – with Mark training twice a week, a game each Saturday and the newsletter to write – local footy “is a big part of our lives”. It’s also an environment she feels happy to bring her kids into. “I think it’s nice that we all get together in the [club] rooms, where all the kids are,” she muses, referring to the veritable childcare centre that the club rooms become during matches – complete with toys and Wiggles videos. And although she admits to being relieved when the season is over and her weekends are not so busy, Kate openly declares her feelings about life during the footy season: “I love my Saturdays.”
“People want to be a part of it because it’s fun,” says Barb, summing up the appeal of volunteering. She also believes that a sense of community plays a big role in the club’s allure, describing how, after the extended summer break from the season, “you look forward to going down and catching up again.” The inclusive nature of IKFC is something Russell hopes will continue, as he believes the club “should be a reflection of the community”.
passion for footy – the relationship between women and football
Joy Damousi, a professor at the University of Melbourne, is researching a book on the emotions at play among football fans and is particularly interested in how women interact with the game. Although Joy’s research focuses on Australian Football League fans, she has found that numerous female AFL fans first experience football growing up in country towns. “Some of the women we interviewed…had their first contact with football at a very young age because their brothers usually played for local clubs, and they became very active in running the football club,” she explains. “[Country footy] does provide an interesting way in for women to a male-dominated game, which other sports seem not to do.”
Joy also believes that rural communities rely on sporting clubs. “With the changing nature of communities, having something solid and continuous like a football club – people hang on to that,” she says, reiterating the strong relationship between community and local footy.
Joy acknowledges that the women she has encountered with backgrounds in country footy were usually involved at a domestic level only. As we have seen, this is not strictly the case at Inverloch-Kongwak. In addition to the conventional duties involving washing and cooking, IKFC women are quite literally hands-on in the change rooms. But it doesn’t stop there. The gender roles at the club are becoming increasingly blurred. Heather Withers, mother of a junior footy player, agreed to goal umpire several matches during the 2007 season – a job that garnered several reactions from opposing clubs’ umpires who had “never had to deal with” female footy umpires.
And then there’s the boys. Increasingly, males are encouraged to volunteer in the canteen – a traditionally female-only domain. “We put a family name [on the canteen roster], and we don’t care who comes, whether it’s the player, the player’s girlfriend, the mum, dad,” explains Barb, who hopes that the younger club members will grow up knowing that helping out in all areas is the norm. “Where there were specific female roles and male roles, now we’re crossing those over and you don’t need to be a woman to serve at the canteen window.”
For the love of it
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| Kate Lindsay |
There is no doubt that clubs such as IKFC provide a strong social network for men and women alike, particularly in country towns. But perhaps another reason for the high level of female involvement at IKFC is much simpler. It’s a reason that Kate articulates when she says, simply, “I love the game”. Barb agrees that footy is a crucial part of many women’s lives: “It’s in their blood.” This is not limited to Inverloch, or indeed to country footy. Joy says that some of the female AFL fans she has interviewed are “as fanatical as anyone you’ll find,” describing their immense commitment to the game and their team as “breathtaking”.
If IKFC is any indication, footy clubs are becoming increasingly open to some of their biggest fans. While women have always been involved in country footy at a domestic level, they are evidently moving closer to the forefront of the game. Gender lines are blurring, and it’s a trend Russell encourages. Even though it’s a footy club, he is adamant that “it’s not a boys club”. And it’s set to continue. “It’s a good thing,” Barb concludes, “It works out well.”
Football Sites
Inverloch-Kongwak Football Club Homepage
Victorian Women’s Football League
Inverloch Sites
Travel Victoria Inverloch information
Wikipedia entry on Inverloch
Further reading: Joy Damousi is co-writing Emotions At Play: Beyond the Football Boundary with Dr John Cash. It will be published by UNSW Press in 2009.
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Women in the AFL
Andrew Demetriou, CEO of the AFL, launched the “Respect and Responsibility” policy in 2005. According to the AFL’s website, the policy aims to promote “a safe, respectful and welcoming environment for women and girls across all levels of the football community.” Demetriou has told the AFL site that “we need to shift attitudes that have been embedded in the industry for a long, long time.”
Perhaps it’s working. According to the AFL website, 41% of their television viewers are female, while in 2007 there were 191,000 female AFL or club members. While these statistics confirm that the female footy fan base is strong, there is also evidence to suggest that women are becoming more prevalent at a higher level. In 2001, Beverly O’Connor of the Melbourne Football Club became the first woman in the AFL’s history to fill the role of vice-chairman. In 2005, Sam Mostyn became the first female to be appointed AFL commissioner. Female club board members are not uncommon, and there is even a regular female panellist on a top-rating commercial TV footy show (Samantha Lane on Channel 10’s Before the Game).
Although Joy Damousi acknowledges that women are less involved with the hands-on aspects of footy at the level of AFL, she believes their presence is still strong. “It’s amazing to me how much that voluntary labour of women is still very much a crucial part of AFL clubs.” The figures support this: 35,000 women volunteered in the AFL in 2007.
Girls footy: the final frontier?
Okay, so the girls are in the change rooms. What about on the ground?
Although Inverloch-Kongwak Football Club doesn’t have any female football players, other clubs in the Alberton league have some girls in the junior sides. Barb is quick to point out that IKFC would welcome any girls who were keen to play. “If they turned up, the junior coaches would welcome them; it wouldn’t be a big deal.” Barb’s son Ben, who plays in the fourths (15-and-under), says he wouldn’t have a problem with a girl in the team. He admits to being reluctant to tackle girls on opposing teams, though. “You don’t want to hurt them,” he says, highlighting the difference between the genders on the field.
League rules dictate that girls cannot play beyond the fourths, presumably for safety reasons. A desire to keep playing would mean a move to the Victorian Women’s League, which is based in Melbourne. Despite this, Joy Damousi believes that girls playing footy in local clubs will impact on the role of women in the future. “If women are also allowed to play in the competition, which is becoming more and more prevalent…that will completely transform the role women play in clubs,” she says. Time will tell. |
