There’s no denying that women’s football is one of the fastest growing sports in the country – and locally, there’s one club that’s leading the charge.
For the past seven seasons, Woorinen have been at the forefront of women’s football, having entered a team every year since 2015 in the Bendigo Junior Football League’s Under 18 Youth girls competition. With two premierships in that time, the Woorinen program has been a raging success on the field. But off it, there was one glaring problem – where do the girls go once they became too old to play?
That is no longer an issue at the Tigers, with Woorinen now entering a side in the CVFL Women’s competition this season. It now completes the women’s football pathway at the Tigers, with girls as young as eight now able to pull on the Woorinen jumper – and wear it all the way through to adulthood.
The opportunity for Woorinen to enter a team this year in the seniors competition came through the unfortunate disbanding of the Kerang women’s team. Woorinen have stepped in to fill the void, giving those who played with the Blues a place to continue their footballing journey.
“At the end of last year we had those two or three girls that were too old for youth girls and we were saying how sad it was that they were going to head off and never play for Woorinen again,” said Jason Murphy, who will be joint coach of the women’s teams and also coach of the youth girls.
“So that was sort of what drove it a little bit – we were like, well they should be able to continue on in our colours, but to complete that pathway now is pretty cool.
“There’s probably about six or seven players that haven’t come across from Kerang, but we hope they will come across to us eventually, we’d certainly love them to play for us.
“We just wanted to get it off the ground so they had the option to play footy this year really – normally if you have a year off, you rarely get players back.”
Former Woorinen youth girls player Katelyn Hazlett will join Murphy as joint coach of the women’s team.
The youth team has kept the bulk of their squad together after making it all the way to the preliminary final last season.
“We had 11 players in the original Pioneers squad, which was then cut down to five at the final announcement, which is pretty good,” Murphy said.
“That gives us some strength about knowing what we are going to be looking like – and particularly this year with Pioneers playing over the top of our season, we’re going to be losing those five girls almost weekly.
“That’s where those other six girls will need to be pick up the slack, as well as some of the young guns we’ve brought in.
“With the momentum we built last year, we’ve sort of only lost a couple of top age girls, so we have got pretty much the same team again.”
As for the journey that women’s football is taking, Murphy couldn’t be prouder to be a part of it – and implored anyone who isn’t already to get on board in 2023.
“Women’s footy is thriving at the moment,” Murphy said.
“The numbers are great, the energy is really good and we’re getting great support from the club – they are right behind it.”
“Tim Phillips, the new president, has been right behind us getting the women’s team up, so it is really exciting to be part of it.”
