AFLW, AFL: where have all the women coaches gone?

"Can someone explain to me why Bec Goddard cant get an AFLW coaching job? It was with a sense of frustration and bewilderment that Gillon McLachlan posed that question at last weeks meeting in Melbourne of the 18 club chiefs among a series of concerns regarding the now-complete absence of senior women coaches in the game.

The so-called mystery of Goddards removal from the national womens competition just one year after she had coached Adelaide — a hybrid group of Northern Territory-based footballers and otherwise largely local players — to the first national premiership legitimately baffled the AFL boss.

Only six months ago Goddard was given a role working with Chris and Brad Scott and Ross Lyon coaching the international rules team against Ireland. Now she and her punctured ambitions are back in Canberra in her role as a sergeant with the Australian Federal Police and working as a line coach for the Canberra Demons in the NEAFL.

Adelaides chief executive Andrew Fagan did not attend the club CEO talks in Melbourne but his deputy Nigel Smart reportedly trotted out the company line that Goddard had wanted a full-time position to remain with the Crows. Goddard had been working on a two-year project in Adelaide with the AFP and that project was finished.

Carltons CEO Cain Liddle pointed out that only one woman applied for the Blues senior AFLW coaching role recently filled by Daniel Harford.

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At which point the questions should have kept coming. Such as why no other women felt motivated or encouraged enough to apply for a senior AFLW role.

McLachlan might have asked why Michelle Cowan, so highly regarded by Melbourne two years ago that Demons boss Peter Jackson had offered her a full-time coaching role, has quit Fremantle disillusioned and discouraged.

He may have asked why, out of eight AFLW coaches last season, only Goddard and Cowan did not hold full-time positions at either their club or state league, such as Craig Starcevich. Why wealthy clubs such as Adelaide and Fremantle, having also drawn significant sponsorship through their AFLW programs, were not prepared to sufficiently remunerate their senior women coaches and adequately develop them.

Or why Meg Hutchins, celebrated in Collingwoods first AFLW season as the clubs football operations manager, is now looking for a job.

Hutchins was demoted from that role after one season before being delisted a year later and is now playing for Hawthorn in the VFLW.

At 36, Hutchins' elite playing days may have finished but her supporters point to a lack of professional development at Collingwood and a level of disappointment with the experience.
Hutchins reportedly used annual leave and privately paid, during her time establishing Collingwoods football program, to undergo a player development course run by the AFLPA.

Like Cowan at Fremantle her role extended to development, welfare, property steward and any career-enhancement opportunities came only when demanded.

Hutchins disenchantment represents another opportunity lost for a strong senior female voice in the game.

McLachlan, who is a male champion of change, might also have asked why Peta Searle, front-page news four years ago when she became the AFLs first female assistant coach, has been virtually removed from the mens program.

Searle has remained at the Saints on a long-term deal to coach VFLW and oversee the clubs AFLW formation but there was some tension in that negotiation because Searle believed she had done her time in womens football and saw her future as a senior assistant AFL coach.
St Kilda did not.

Her stated ambition to enhance her development by spending time in Alan Richardsons match-day coaches box never came to fruition and similarly her time in the Sandringham VFL coaches box was not always embraced by the male coaches.

Cowans decision to quit Fremantle genuinely shocked outsiders after she had been offered a new two-year deal and close to full-time employment at the club. Like Hutchins and Goddard, Cowan saw no benefit in speaking in a negative tone about her AFLW experience.

But her supporters, and there are many at all levels of the game, say she was not embraced by Lyon and his coaching program. That Fremantle did not make it easy for the mother of two young children to fit in those commitments with her coaching role and that the lack of resources and the money offered were not conducive to those coaching demands.

Cowan, who would have coached Melbournes AFLW side and worked full-time with the Demons combining a coaching role at Casey had she not returned to Perth for family reasons, has worked for some years as a mentor of young women and a leadership consultant. Other senior womens football pioneers say she could not in all conscience remain with the Dockers and remain true to herself and her professional message.

That the AFLW has gone from two to none women coaches is surely an indictment on the game. The AFL, too, has gone from two to none with Cowans departure from Melbourne and Searles new womens role and near removal from the mens program.

That the AFL and McLachlan — while asking the question — have not stepped in to provide appropriate career opportunities for the likes of Goddard and Cowan after what they have achieved was called out by Lisa Alexander, the Australian Diamonds netball coach, in a recent conversation on The Outer Sanctum podcast. Alexander said AFL intervention should have been mandatory given their stated aims for the AFLW.

Equally disappointing is the background briefing from some AFL clubs granted womens licences: that some women coaches dont help themselves. That they are variously too demanding, pushy and abrasive and therefore not grateful enough for the opportunity they have been given. In the cases of Goddard and Searle a strong sense of self-esteem is too often described as an over-inflated ego.

There is a strong view among key AFLW trailblazers that the varying circumstances involved in female football require at least a proportion of women coaches or managers. That the complexities including managing players who are couples, former couples or competing against a partner, requires an extra layer of sensitivity.

There is also a view that the majority of the fledgling AFLW players wanted a male coach, which probably speaks as much to experience and the lack of pathways for women football coaches. It is encouraging that Carlton, which like Collingwood badly botched their fledgling AFLW program, have appointed a full-time female football boss.

And it is telling that the reigning premiers the Western Bulldogs boast a woman boss who works at the club full-time — Debbie Lee – and a senior male mentor who successfully changed his coaching strategy in year two after his players demanded it.

Samantha Lane raised the red flag in her recently published Roar — a powerful story, or series of stories — behind the AFLW revolution.

Exploring the dearth of womens coaches even before Cowan and Goddard had left, Lane quoted a senior womens figure: I fear that AFLW is starting to become a mans world in terms of leadership. I fear weve created a womens competition for women to play in and men to manage. The great hope that a national womens competition would create a series of pathways for women coaches and administrators has not eventuated. And the fact that women in the system or hoping to get back in are not willing to put their names to their disappointed views disturbing also.

As the AFLW continues to expand and enters its third season the fortunes of four off-field beacons Michelle Cowan, Bec Goddard, Meg Hutchins and even Peta Searle can no longer claim to stand solely as inspirational role models for young women. They stand as cautionary tales as well.

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