WITH the AFL women’s league going from strength-to-strength, girls in Leeton will no longer miss out on playing the sport.
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As the football season approaches, AFL Riverina has announced there will be a girls under 16s Australia rules football competition this year.
AFL Riverina game development manager of southern NSW, Marc Geppert, was excited to help organize the competition in the MIA.
Matches will be played during the week so those that want to play netball and Aussie rules won’t have to choose one or the other.
Geppert said the overall goal was to bring options to girls with a path to the professional level.
“From March 1 we’re going to rotate an under 16s girls competition between Leeton and Griffith,” Geppert said.
“We had a competition last year in Wagga where a lot of the Leeton and Griffith girls travelled to Wagga to participate.
“The idea is we’re [still] going to have a competition in Wagga, the girls will have their competition in Leeton and Griffith and the two winners will play off at the end.”
The competition will span six weeks and the matches will rotate between the two towns on Wednesday nights, under lights from 6pm to 7pm.
The AFL women’s league kicked off this month and has been growing in popularity, with strong crowds at the matches each week across the country.
“With the national women’s league, the girls (in the MIA) can see there is now a pathway for them to aspire to,” Geppert said. “We need to get a community competition going and this is the first step.”
Following the recipe from programs in place in South Australia, Victoria and Western Australia, Geppert said AFL Riverina hoped to find a strong interest in the sport within the region among young girls.
“It’s new ground for us here in NSW,” Geppert said. “Obviously we’re in a very competitive sporting market down here.” The long range plan will be to contribute to the depth of the Leeton-Whitton Crows organization.
“The end goal is club competition,” Geppert said.
“We want to see Leeton-Whitton, Griffith, Narrandera and other footy clubs have attached teams and play in a mid-week competition for the girls.”