SYDNEY has taken a significant step towards joining the AFL Women's competition in the future after launching a youth girls program as part of the club's academy system.
Around 130 girls aged 12 and 13 were inducted into the ground-breaking program – the first of its kind in the AFL – on Wednesday night at the SCG, with an initial 12-week elite training period to begin in late April.
The Swans are hopeful that the first influx of young female talent can form the nucleus of their inaugural AFLW team, with the club eventually aiming to increase participation in the youth system to more than 500 up and coming girls.
Swans chief executive Andrew Ireland told AFL.com.au the move was exciting for the club.
"We want to be seen as an inclusive club, so we think it's a logical step given the success of our boys' academy," he said.
"We also think it's a good step for New South Wales football, and hopefully it can lead to us having an AFLW licence down the track."
Criticised for not being a part of the inaugural AFLW competition unlike their cross-town rivals Greater Western Sydney, Ireland said the club's commitment to the League had always been hamstrung.
He said the lack of space at the SCG made it impossible to house a women's team, with academy and sales staff already working away from the club's home base at the SCG.
With the rugby codes dominating the landscape, decent playing surfaces are hard to come by for clubs at all levels of footy in NSW, but the Swans have looked at a number of proposals for expansion and could decide on a way forward in the coming months.
A recent decision by NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian to backflip on her plan to demolish ANZ Stadium, saving taxpayers around $500 million in the process, must surely work in the Swans' favour.
"We didn't bid for a licence originally because we don't have the facilities or grounds (to play on), but we think we can solve that problem in the next few years," Ireland said.
"One of the upsides of not getting an initial AFLW licence was that it focused the club, AFL NSW and the AFL, on the dearth of grounds (in Sydney), particularly in the eastern suburbs.
"For us, it's about finding a quality ground like Blacktown (International SportsPark) in the east, where if we get an AFLW team they can also have good facilities.
"We'd like to stay close to the SCG, but those opportunities are tougher in a big city like Sydney.
"The last thing we'd want to do is treat the women's team differently to the senior team, and having them at Blacktown or somewhere else just wasn't going to work.
"We want to develop the girls through the academy, get them a quality ground to play on, and get a better training and administration base for the club that can have the women as part of it.
"Hopefully when we've done all that we'll be in a position to bid for a licence."
Ireland said the success of the Swans youth boys' academy had been evident, with graduates such as Isaac Heeney and Callum Mills now important members of John Longmire's senior side, and that was the future he was hoping to see for the girls program.
"It's harder to develop talent in this market than some of the other states, and that's just a fact of life because of the competition from the other codes," he said.
"But hopefully by the time these girls are 18 and 19 years old and have been through a good system, they'll be ready to play AFLW.
"One of the things we've noticed with our boys' academy is that it's much more appreciated from the point of view of the players' peers.
"They're proud to be part of the academy and we're getting first choice quality athletes coming to our code, and we hope the same thing will happen with the girls."
