BUNBURY is set to play host to a highlight of the WA football calendar when the Western Australian Football Commission bring the states’ all-star players to town.
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Each year, the Melbourne Demons and Western Bulldogs draft a women’s team to contest an AFL curtain raiser.
These match gives female players a chance to show their skills on the main stage ahead of the launch of a national women’s league in 2018.
To qualify for the draft, female players must participate in an all-stars game in their home state with this year’s WA match to be played at Bunbury Cathedral Grammar School on March 29.
WA Football Commission female football manager Alison Moore said the women are excited about their trip to Bunbury.
“The girls are very talented and keen to show off their skills,” Ms Moore said.
The match will be a highlight of a weekend-long celebration of the Centenary of Women’s Football in Australia.
With a nod to the rich history of this game in Western Australia, the two teams will be called The Kangaroos and The Wallabies – the same names used by the first two teams to play a competitive match in Bunbury back in 1921.
WATCH: A short documentary about the development of women's AFL.
Included on the program of events are women’s football clinics, the revival of the Gary Johnston Memorial Cup between Bunbury Cathedral Grammar School and Perth Ladies College and a satellite exhibition of female football memorabilia.
Western Australia has excelled in women’s football in recent times with 15 players from the state drafted into last year’s AFL exhibition squads.
Three of the players, Chelsea Randall, Kirby Bentley and Kara Donellan are among 12 automatic retained for this year by the two clubs with the rest of the players renominating for the draft.
West Aussie Michelle Cowan has been named as the head coach for this year’s Melbourne side with three other WA women named as assistant coaches.
Last week, AFL chief executive officer Gillon McLaughlan announced plans to fast track the launch of a national women’s league with the goal of creating an Australia-wide competition by the start of 2017.
Mr McLachlan told Fairfax Media that the league should ultimately view itself as a multi-sex competition.
“We’ve had spectacular growth in women playing football and we are very keen to get a women’s league up and running,” he said.
“It is the right thing for us and it is what our women players want.
“I’m challenging our team to be more bullish about the growth of women’s football because I want to do it earlier – women are integral to our competition."
Keep reading the Bunbury Mail between now and March 28 for more about the women’s Australian Rules Football centenary celebrations.