Western Bulldogs AFLW coach Nathan Burke has delivered an impassioned plea to the game’s administrators, urging the AFL to provide enough support to ensure the national women’s competition continues to thrive in dire financial circumstances.
Despite public assurances from AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan that the 14-team AFLW will continue next year, the women’s competition faces an uncertain future as the game tackles the biggest financial crisis in its history on the back of the coronavirus outbreak.
A Fairfax Media report on Friday suggested several AFL clubs that fielded AFLW teams in 2020 were seriously questioning whether they could continue to do so beyond this year.
But Burke said the women’s competition had come too far and was worth too much to the game from a marketing standpoint for the AFL to let it stagnate or fall by the wayside.
“They’ve got it to this point now and I think there’d be an uproar if they did anything to jeopardise that,” the former St Kilda AFL champion told AAP.
“What a lot of people don’t look at is what it has brought to local football and the amount of young junior girls teams actually playing the game.
“For me, it’s a marketing campaign to increase the strength and eyeballs on the game that has been an outstanding success.
“It’s more than just a competition for women to play AFL.”
The AFL is reportedly set to take greater control over club finances and spending as part of an unprecedented rescue package being rolled out.
Burke said there was not much fat to be cut from the clubs’ AFLW budgets.
“I’m hoping that we don’t see slashed budgets and all that sort of stuff,” Burke said.
“They’re not huge budgets, each club is $450,000 (per annum).
“When you compare that to the budget in the men’s competition, it’s a drop in the ocean.
“If they start slashing the AFLW then I think they’re probably looking in the wrong cupboard to try and find some savings.”
Burke, 50, had been involved with St Kilda’s VFLW side and coached Vic Metro’s Under-18 girls team before taking the Bulldogs’ AFLW reins this season.
He said the influx of ‘pathway players’ – those who had played football all the way through their teenage years – had improved the standard of the national competition this year.
Burke expected another significant boost when the next draft class enters in 2021.