Thanks Thanks:  5
Likes Likes:  23
Page 1 of 3 123 LastLast
Results 1 to 15 of 45
  1. #1
    Join Date
    Jan 2007
    Location
    Wherever the dogs are playing
    Posts
    60,872
    Post Thanks / Like

    Western Bulldogs transform Whitten Oval into new home for women's football

    September 14, 2014 - 10:00PM
    • 6 reading now
    • Read later


    Caroline Wilson

    Chief Football Writer for The Age






    Looking forward: Western Bulldogs Women’s team and the Footscray Bulldogs VFL team members (left to right) Lauren Arnell, Lin Jong, Aasta O’Connor and Jason Tutt welcome the boost to Whitten Oval. Photo: Penny Stephens

    A $1.5 million upgrade of the Whitten Oval will transform the ground into the Victorian showcase for women's football, the fastest growing Australian Rules competition in the country.

    In a redevelopment which has been supported by the Victorian government and the AFL, the Whitten Oval investment has also strengthened the push by the Western Bulldogs to become the first AFL club to field a women's team.

    The move has reinforced the Bulldogs' vision to transform its once decrepit home ground into the centre of community and elite football in Melbourne's fast-growing western region. The Whitten Oval will also stage regular VFL games, VFL finals and is now likely to hold AFL pre-season NAB Challenge games from early next year.

    Women's training facilities has become a hot political issue leading into the forthcoming Victorian election. The Whitten Oval upgrade will include two new women's change rooms and new lighting which will allow the best female players in the state to train outside of working hours.

    Sports Minister Damian Drum, whose government has contributed $500,000 to the project, said he had been "blown away" by the skills at this year's second women's exhibition match staged by nominal Bulldogs and Melbourne teams selected through a second women's AFL-style draft.

    Further funding has come from the Maribyrnong Council ($500,000) while the AFL has matched the $250,000 raised by the Western Bulldogs through a members' driven campaign last season.

    The growth of the women's game across Australia was first significantly identified at head office by the AFL's first woman commissioner Sam Mostyn and has now become a strong focus of the league's only woman executive Dorothy Hisgrove, whose portfolio oversees community game development. The AFL now sees a genuine case for a national women's competition.

    Both the state government and the opposition were heavily represented at last week's Victorian Women's Football League grand final at Coburg with the state ALP opposition pledging $10 million to establish or upgrade changing rooms for women athletes across Victoria.
    Drum told Fairfax Media: "I'd say to footy fans who've never watched women's football you are missing out. This [Whitten Oval upgrade] will allow women's football to access AFL training facilities on an ongoing basis for the first time. It also enables the possibility of the Whitten Oval again hosting senior AFL football through the NAB Challenge.

    "The gap in the pathway for girls' footy has been somewhere for the elite to call home in a training sense, using the best facilities can help lift the sport to another level. Despite all the great facilities a lot of AFL clubs have now, they've been designed for use by a professional men's team to use in working hours, and for a variety of reasons this doesn't work for elite female footballers.

    "This is a great step in rectifying that and making elite women's footy something that young girls can aspire too, knowing that the facilities will be no different to that of an AFL team."

    While the Bulldogs staggered to a disappointing AFL conclusion in 2014, the club's VFL team - which has readopted the title of Footscray - will contest Sunday's forthcoming grand final at Etihad Stadium in its first stand-alone season. Footscray attracted an attendance of more than 7000 when it hosted a week-one VFL final at the Whitten Oval.

    Bulldogs chief Simon Garlick said the redevelopment in its first stage would see the VWFL Academy, which comprises the best 30 players across Victoria, train at the Whitten Oval on a weekly basis. The women's league, currently based at Carlton's Visy Park, boasts a premier division and five lower divisions.

    While the Bulldogs have been highly sensitive to the impression the club is looking to gatecrash the women's league by forming its own team, the move has been strongly championed by the club's chairman Peter Gordon.

    "We don't want to muscle in," said Garlick, "but we believe there are great benefits in having our own team both for the competition and clearly for us as well as for the western region community."
    Garlick said the Whitten Oval would for the first time provide female players - who previously arrived at training in their football attire - access to AFL-standard training facilities on an ongoing basis.

    Apart from NAB Challenge and regular Footscray VFL games and VFL finals, the Whitten Oval will host VWFL games, women's finals, Western Region Football League games and reinforce its place as the home of football for Maribyrnong College.

    The Bulldogs will also host regular girls-only Auskick clinics in 2015 and the Youth Girls AFL weekend.

    Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-new...#ixzz3DIHNVP7t
    FFC: Established 1883

    Premierships: AFL 1954, 2016 VFA - 1898,99,1900, 1908, 1913, 1919-20, 1923-24, VFL: 2014, 2016 . Champions of Victoria 1924. AFLW - 2018.

  2. Likes Bulldog4life liked this post
  3. #2
    Join Date
    Jan 2007
    Posts
    32,301
    Post Thanks / Like

    Re: Western Bulldogs transform Whitten Oval into new home for women's football

    Great news story.

    Lin has learnt a lot from ambassadorial work with the AFL. Not even Eddie could hold a logo on a footy on a better angle for the camera, his hands are not for holding the ball with intent to kick it, but exposure of the advertiser. I hope White King send him a box of free bleach for the professionalism.
    Rocket Science: the epitaph for the Beveridge era - whenever it ends - reading 'Here lies a team that could beat anyone on its day, but seldom did when it mattered most'. 15/7/2023

  4. #3
    Join Date
    Apr 2009
    Location
    Hobart
    Posts
    5,864
    Post Thanks / Like

    Re: Western Bulldogs transform Whitten Oval into new home for women's football

    Big Will & Doc26, where was the inside scoop?
    If you kicked five goals and Tom Boyd kicked five goals, Tom Boyd kicked more goals than you.

    Formerly gogriff

  5. #4
    Join Date
    Nov 2006
    Posts
    27,890
    Post Thanks / Like

    Re: Western Bulldogs transform Whitten Oval into new home for women's football

    Great reason to put a fence around the ground. And put a proper scoreboard into the ground.
    Have you been reading those Roddy Doyle books again, Dougal!?


    I have, yeah Ted, you big gobshite

  6. #5
    Join Date
    Aug 2007
    Location
    In renovator's dreams
    Posts
    6,241
    Post Thanks / Like

    Re: Western Bulldogs transform Whitten Oval into new home for women's football

    Brilliant stuff, what a great way to use the ground
    "You always own the option of having no opinion. There is never any need to get worked up or to trouble your soul about things you can't control. These things are not asking to be judged by you. Leave them alone" - Marcus Aurelius

  7. #6
    Join Date
    Sep 2009
    Location
    Western Preston
    Posts
    2,123
    Post Thanks / Like

    Re: Western Bulldogs transform Whitten Oval into new home for women's football

    Fantastic news. WO will now stand for the Women's Oval!

  8. Likes Twodogs liked this post
  9. #7
    Join Date
    Jan 2007
    Posts
    8,900
    Post Thanks / Like

    Re: Western Bulldogs transform Whitten Oval into new home for women's football

    Another example of the club looking outside traditional mechanisms for ways to increase revenue while also contributing positively to the community. Contrast this against MFC and to an extent NMFC, and we are definitely moving forward.

  10. Likes WBFC4FFC liked this post
  11. #8
    Join Date
    Nov 2007
    Location
    Wheelers Hill
    Posts
    4,200
    Post Thanks / Like

    Re: Western Bulldogs transform Whitten Oval into new home for women's football

    I love this as it paints us a progressive club who doesn't want to be spoon fed but is intent on making our own future success.

    Contrast that with Melbourne and the difference couldn't be starker.
    I thought I was wrong once but I was mistaken.

  12. Thanks Bulldog4life thanked for this post
    Likes N/A, G-Mo77, Twodogs liked this post
  13. #9
    Join Date
    May 2008
    Posts
    3,453
    Post Thanks / Like

    Re: Western Bulldogs transform Whitten Oval into new home for women's football

    This is good stuff on all accounts - the highlights on Foxtel earlier this year of the Melb/WB women's game were eye catching...the ball movement, skills and hardness of the contest was a real surprise (I don't mean that to be condescending - I played basketball at an OK level as a teenager, but rep girls my age I sometimes trained against owned me)

    Footscray in the VFL has been a resounding success - WO featuring more prominently is brilliant.
    Float Along - Fill Your Lungs

  14. #10
    Join Date
    Jan 2007
    Posts
    8,900
    Post Thanks / Like

    Re: Western Bulldogs transform Whitten Oval into new home for women's football

    Quote Originally Posted by always right View Post
    I love this as it paints us a progressive club who doesn't want to be spoon fed but is intent on making our own future success.

    Contrast that with Melbourne and the difference couldn't be starker.
    Spot on mate!

  15. #11
    Join Date
    Jan 2009
    Posts
    14,848
    Post Thanks / Like

    Re: Western Bulldogs transform Whitten Oval into new home for women's football

    Often wondered why every team doesn't have a women's league.
    I've got a novel idea that there should be a pre-game women's game.

  16. #12
    susie bulldog Guest

    Re: Western Bulldogs transform Whitten Oval into new home for women's football

    It is proposed by the AFL that by 2020 there will be a women's team at every AFL club. We now have 190,000 young women playing AFL football around Australia. It is the fastest growing female sport in the country. The WB are leading the way yet again.

  17. Thanks Twodogs, bornadog thanked for this post
  18. #13
    Join Date
    Nov 2006
    Posts
    27,890
    Post Thanks / Like

    Re: Western Bulldogs transform Whitten Oval into new home for women's football

    Quote Originally Posted by Remi Moses View Post
    Often wondered why every team doesn't have a women's league.
    I've got a novel idea that there should be a pre-game women's game.
    Like the reserves used to?
    Have you been reading those Roddy Doyle books again, Dougal!?


    I have, yeah Ted, you big gobshite

  19. #14
    Join Date
    Jan 2009
    Posts
    14,848
    Post Thanks / Like

    Re: Western Bulldogs transform Whitten Oval into new home for women's football

    Quote Originally Posted by Twodogs View Post
    Like the reserves used to?
    Groundbreaking idea, I know.

  20. #15
    Join Date
    Nov 2006
    Posts
    27,890
    Post Thanks / Like

    Re: Western Bulldogs transform Whitten Oval into new home for women's football

    Quote Originally Posted by susie bulldog View Post
    It is proposed by the AFL that by 2020 there will be a women's team at every AFL club. We now have 190,000 young women playing AFL football around Australia. It is the fastest growing female sport in the country. The WB are leading the way yet again.
    Thanks for that. Great to see women's football basing itself at Whitten Oval.
    Have you been reading those Roddy Doyle books again, Dougal!?


    I have, yeah Ted, you big gobshite

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •