Exactly

Knuckle-draggers on here seem to constantly miss this reality.

FFA paying the Matildas below minimum wage is a smell that's going to linger.

So, what did the womens final rate in Sydney? Still no ratings. 

The ratings show what we all know. AFL is popular in Melbourne and Adelaide. The final had a Brisbane club and only rated 68,000 in Brisbane.

Oh and that picture of the crow with lipstick and big tits. WTF is that!?!?

Scary isn't it! I think AFL were virtual signalling with a trans-gendered crow. 

Chill just ran up my spine....eeeew...

If the ratings show that, Id have to see what you have to say about A-league tv ratings and the respective popularity of the game in Australian states based on them.

Its worth noting that the AFL Womens Final outrated the WBBL final on metro tv - 360k to 339k (regional figures for the AFL womens werent released).

Lucky we aren't in Europe where 41% of male professional players earn less than 10,000 Euro which for the majority of them means they are earning less than the minimum wage in their country.  Goodness knows what it like for women players there.

68k rating for Brisbane on a Saturday afternoon is pretty good I would have thought.

I just noticed that Formula One Qualifying rated 74k in Brisbane.

of course AFL is more popular than the A-League in Australia. You'd have to be an idiot to think otherwise. I was pointing out the little interest outside the main AFL heartlands for what is the inaugural AFL womens grand final.

Call me misogynist but how can so many people honestly watch womens AFL? I gave it a go and couldn't last a quarter, it was incredibly poor (almost as bad as the lower half of the AFL)  

which is pretty close to the margin of error so pretty insignificant difference considering how much media the final got.

The gap has been closing steadily with each passing year.

I once calculated that if we can keep increasing our metrics by 1% every year, year on year, that we would catch the AFL in terms of ratings, broadcast revenue, sponsorships and attendances in 200 years.

It might seem like a lot, but in terms of human history, it's actually not that long to wait.

@ pippinu

You're doing your best to keep this thread at the top mate. You stand out like the dogs you know what's.

200 years?

If the current trends continue there'll be no one left playing AFL so good luck keeping your No 1 spot then

That's what I calculated, and it's pretty spot on, give or take a year.

Mr Football, ladies and gentlemen.

But if Egg Ball Rules declines by 3% year on year, then Football should pass Egg ball in about 25 years. not that unlikely when the gullibles realize that there really is no market for eggball outside Melbourne let alone internationally. 

If you look at participation rates, egg ball is already in lots of trouble. 

@ pippinu

And AFL has no one left playing in 35 years. Give or take a year. 😂😂

Football overtook aussie rules participation 100 years ago (nationally).

Do you have the evidence or did you just pull that from thin air? 

Well, certainly that's the case in NSW, which has always been the most populous state, so whatever happened there would generally pull the national figures in one direction.

The British Football Association was quite big in Melbourne right up to WWII, after which the various ethnic clubs from the post-war immigration boom took up the slack left behind by the British clubs (of which only a handful survived).

In fact, so large in number were the football players around World War I that Ian Syson posits that football lost more players to war than all other sports combined.

Yes that is what you say. but all that is mere hearsay and opinion.

Do you have evidence that Football had higher participation since 100 years ago? 

That wasn't the case. participation only 20 to 30 years ago was more for eggball but then came the steady decline and the steady Football expansion throughout the eighties, nineties and 2000s. 

Mainly due to Mum's not wanting their son's playing a blood sport...

In NSW, eggball has never even been on the radar. That's a Rugby State. 

And it's not whether more people play football or when more people played football - it's the steady decline in AFLs participation that will kill it. As pippinu states in his 200 year calculation - trends can't change therefore AFL must die. Shame really.

Yes I will surely shed a tear over the nostalgia. I will go to the beach, with a pack of hot chips so that I can throw amid a pack (flock?) of seagulls. 

I watch the AFL grand final with that Western team, still don't know what they are west of, I only watch the last 1/4 and was bored silly. Chips looking for seagulls.

And therefore, football has had the highest participation rate nationally for over 100 years.

Evidence please?

The point is that you are assuming market conditions and audience taste will not change and will always remain static. 

Think about all the people who doubted football would ever become what it is today. MMA, UFC, etc. 

Eastern Region Girls Football League to field a record number of teams in 2017

Toby PrimeMarch 29, 2017 11:40amTHE sleeping giant has been awoken.The Eastern Region Girls Football League will field 87 youth girls teams in 2017 — an increase of 135 per cent from 37 sides last year.In 2015 there were just 12 teams.
There will be about 1200 girls from under-10s to under-18s take part in the competition in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs this year.The competition is set to be one of the biggest girls competition in Melbourne this year, with rival leagues Western Region, Northern, Essendon District and South Metro Junior expected to field between 30 and 60 teams.

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/leader/localfooty/eastern-region-girls-football-league-to-field-a-record-number-of-teams-in-2017/news-story/62420776b1584af084f5d9484829a8df

Mods. Can we lock this thread now so afl supporters don't keep dragging it to the top over every, trivial little afl story??

This increase in demand for AFL facilities is going to make Soccer Fields harder to find.

A Recent History of Women Breaking Down Soccer's Gender Divide

By Jon O'Brien | March 29, 2017 | 12:17pm
Photos by Christof Koepsel, Getty, Erik S. Lesser, Laurence Griffiths, Eamonn M. McCormack, Mike Hewitt
SOCCER FEATURES
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A Recent History of Women Breaking Down Soccer's Gender Divide
The pre-season training schedule of a semi-professional Australian men’s soccer team wouldn’t normally attract much interest from even their most ardent fans. But South Melbourne FC – who play in the nation’s second tier, the Victorian Premier League – made international sporting headlines last month when they revealed they would combine their training sessions with South Melbourne FC Women.

The Aussie club’s decision—they’re both reigning champions of their respective leagues—isn’t the only recent development when it comes to the men’s game bridging the gender divide.


Embed from Getty Images
The most remarkable occurred last June when Chan Yuen-ting ended Hong Kong Premier League side Eastern’s 21-year wait for a championship win, becoming the first ever female coach to guide a professional men’s team to a top-flight title in the process. It was no fluke either. At the half-way point of the 2016-17 season, Eastern are again sitting pretty at the top of the table.

In fact, Chan is at the forefront of a small but promising wave of female coaches proving that soccer is more than a man’s game. The first female to coach a side competing in the highest two divisions of a European country, Corinne Diacre is currently enjoying her third season with French Ligue 2 side Clermont Foot. Appointed in the same year, Shelley Kerr guided Scottish fifth-tier team Stirling University to third place in the Lowland League’s 2015-16 season. Meanwhile former model Tihana Nemcic has proved to the press she’s more than just a pretty face, having managed Croatian fifth division team NK Viktorija Vojakovac since 2012.

These are small steps perhaps, but they’re still relatively significant when compared to the select few examples whom Chan, Kerr and Diacre could follow. In fact, the latter was only able to take the Clermont Foot post after previous coach, Helena Costa, resigned before she’d even taken to the touchline, citing a total lack of respect from behind-the-scenes.

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Former Italy striker Caroline Morace also quit in similar circumstances after just two games as the coach of Serie C1 side Viterbese in 1999, claiming that interference from the club’s President made her position untenable. Donna Powell even had to pay for her unlikely rise from turnstile operator to manager of England’s Fisher Athletic, with her brief one-game stint in 2009 deemed as little more than a publicity stunt for the struggling Blue Square South team.

Of course, the lack of coaching opportunities in the men’s game isn’t exactly helped by the lack of coaching opportunities in the women’s. A 2015 report [PDF] carried out by UEFA found out that a staggering 80% of managers in European women’s soccer are male (only 65 Pro Licence holders are female), while in the 2015 World Cup, just eight of the 24 competing nations were guided by women.

But the problematic lack of role models has sparked FIFA into an uncharacteristically progressive mode, introducing an initiative at the 2016 Under-17s Women’s World Cup which stated that every single team must have at least one female coach and medic in their staff.

Former Northern Ireland men’s coach Lawrie Sanchez’s assertion that the Premier League will have a female manager by 2022 therefore still seems a little premature, but at least there’s some hope.


However, when it comes to women actually playing on the same pitch as men, then we still seem to be in dreamland.

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In fact, the idea has gone nowhere since FIFA banned Mexican second division side Atlético Celaya from signing star striker Maribel Dominguez from WoSo side the Atlanta Beat back in 2004. This came shortly after Serie A’s Perugia’s reported interest in German international Birgit Prinz and Swedish forward Hanna Ljungberg, at which point FIFA announced that there must be ‘a clear separation between men and women’s football.’ Apart from Brazilian hero Marta and USA keeper Hope Solo claiming they have the skills to cut it with the men, the subject has barely made a ripple since.

Outside of FIFA’s jurisdiction, things are a little more encouraging. Last December Carolina Jaramillo became Mexico’s first female player in a professional men’s league when she stepped out for MASL Southwest Division side Atletico Baja in front of 250 fans at an indoor arena in Tijuana. And in 2015 a stunt on Spanish TV show El Hormiguero went viral when Espanyol’s Brenda Pérez—disguised as a man named Dani—ran rings around a male non-league team.

Right now, the best way for women to share the pitch with men is as officiators. As far back as the 1994-95 season, Wendy Toms served as an assistant referee in the English Football League, later making the step up to the Premier League and taking full charge in the Vauxhall Conference. Earlier this decade, Amy Fearn became the first woman to referee both a men’s Football League match and men’s FA Cup tie, while referee Sian Massey-Ellis recently received an OBE for her services to soccer on both sides of the gender spectrum.

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Sadly, all three faced sexist remarks from those who should know better during their boundary-breaking careers. Toms was mentioned in the same breath as an Alsatian dog by Gordon Strachan after an offside decision went against his Coventry side in 1999; Luton boss Mike Newell received a hefty fine in 2006 following a rant about Fearn in which he argued that women had no place in the men’s game, while Massey-Ellis was famously mocked off-air by Richard Keys and Andy Gray during the scandal which saw the veteran Sky Sports broadcasters deservedly lose their jobs.

But while many people’s attitudes on women in football are still stuck in the dark ages, there is one area of the men’s game where women have been making notable waves – the boardroom. None more so than Karren Brady, who became the youngest ever managing director of a football club at 23 when she joined Birmingham in 1993. Now the Vice Chairman of West Ham, Brady wasted little time in proving she could handle the opposite sex – ensuring that a player who commented on her breasts was quickly sold to a lower league team, and even offloading her striker husband, Paul Peschisolido, when the club needed a bit of cash.


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Brady paved the way for future female chief executives Carolyn Radford (Mansfield Town), Katrien Meire (Charlton Athletic) and Margaret Byrne (Sunderland), as well as celebrity chef Delia Smith, who, along with her husband, has owned a majority stake in Norwich City since the mid-90s. And then there’s the ‘Tsarina of Stamford Bridge,’ aka Marina Granovskaia. Dubbed the most powerful woman in the men’s game, Roman Abramovich’s senior adviser has reportedly been instrumental in several major Chelsea decisions over the years, including bringing back José Mourinho and signing Fernando Torres and Diego Costa.

Elsewhere, FIFA hired its first female secretary general last year, Senegal’s Fatma Samba Diouf Samoura. And in 2013, three women (Burundi’s Lydia Nsekera, Turks and Caicos Islands’ Sonia Bien-Aime and Australia’s Moya Dodd), were appointed to FIFA’s executive committee – although Sepp Blatter still couldn’t avoid putting his foot in it during their official induction (“Say something ladies, you are always speaking at home, now you can speak here.”)

That same year England international Casey Stoney became the first female member of the Player Football Association’s management committee. In 2012, Norwegian player-turned-official Karen Espelund joined UEFA as the first woman on its executive committee, while twelve months previously former Millwall Executive Deputy Chair Heather Rabbatts was appointed the first female director of the Football Association.

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The latter also played a part in the recent scandal involving another pioneer, the Premier League’s first ever female doctor, Eva Carneiro. In fact, Rabbatts was investigated for her criticism of the FA’s handling of the case, which saw José Mourinho face allegations of verbally abusing Carneiro after she ran onto the pitch to treat Eden Hazard during a game without the Chelsea boss’ permission.

Carneiro later sued the London club for constructive dismissal – eventually settling out of court in a deal reportedly worth nearly £5m. But the fact that the FA had cleared Mourinho of any wrongdoing in a separate investigation suggests that for every step forward the men’s game makes regarding gender equality, there are two steps back (in a 2014 survey two-thirds of women employed in the men’s game admitted to experiencing sexism in the workplace).

Perhaps the final word should go to Chan Yuen-ting, who on her pioneering achievement with Eastern remarked: “Once I took over as the head coach, lots of reporters said, ‘You are a female coach and you are only 27.’ It doesn’t matter if I am female or male, young or old. The important thing is that I have to do my job well.”

I honestly don't think that will be the case because football participation is so strong.

But what it does is strengthen the AFL's case in keeping what they have and getting local councils to put in extra dressing rooms to cater for females, which can only be a good thing.