MELBOURNE premiership defender Libby Birch has detailed her frustration at the ongoing Collective Bargaining Agreement negotiation, which has seen the AFLW pre-season commence without an updated deal.
As it stands, the previous CBA rolls over to cover the players' payments and conditions for the current pre-season, with any potential pay rises in the new deal to be backdated.
As expected, the major hurdle on the women's side of the inaugural joint CBA is around the number of rounds, with the AFLPA firm on its long-established goal of full-time professionalism and a 17-round season by 2026.
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The AFL has not publicly stated its position or plan for a gradual increase to the number of rounds (currently at 10 with an 18-team competition), but released its Women's Football Vision in 2021 with the aspirational target of AFLW players being the best-paid sportswomen in an Australian domestic competition by 2030.
"It's exciting because we started our pre-season yesterday, which is awesome, but there's the other side to it where we find ourselves in the same position year after year, where we've started another pre-season without a CBA or something locked in for the next year or the following year," Birch told ABC Melbourne radio on Tuesday morning.
"Scheduled at the moment is 10 games, and we've had 10 games over the past two seasons. We'd love to see a growth of one or two games each season hereon in, because our goal by 2026 is to have 17 home and away games, which makes sense, because we have an amazing collective 18-team competition now.
"We've done an amazing job to get there, but we'd love to see growth in the game continue."
The complicated and ongoing discussions around how to best develop the AFLW – which started in 2017 – has meant the players have often faced uncertainty around key dates, affecting those with work and study commitments outside of the competition.
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This year, the AFLW players know that round one starts on the first weekend in September, but not what day their team is playing, their opponent or whether interstate travel is involved.
AFL men's players who did not feature in finals started their pre-season under similar circumstances last year, with the fixture released around a month into pre-season in mid-December.
"It's what makes the position of everything quite difficult, because we're going through this transition of part-time athletes to full-time athletes, and a lot of us are working full-time," Birch said.
"The advantage of having more games and the reason we want to have more games is we want to play in front of our fans more, we want to have more visibility to everyone out there who loves AFLW, and [develop] our fan base.
"I think it's just such an important sport in Australia, and we've seen across eight years – I've been playing AFLW for eight years now – and it's grown so much. Just to see the amount of girls playing footy now, it's an important step for us, to make sure we're heading towards full-time professionalism by 2026."
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Birch's clubmate and men's captain Max Gawn threw public support behind the joint CBA recently.
Like AFL men's players, the women are expected to maintain fitness levels over the off-season, but their contract does not currently cover those months.
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"This year, we're taking a huge step in wanting to do this together. That means both the men and the women are standing by each other for both our CBAs, because we want to have a joint CBA for the first time in history," Birch said.
"The fans love AFLW, and basically, we want to see more of it. It's as simple as that. To be training all year as AFLW players but only have 10 games, and not see growth in that area, is slightly disproportionate to what I think we should be getting."
