STANDING behind the boundary fence among 5,000 or so other fans, I watched on in excitement as Melbourne beat Greater Western Sydney at Casey Fields in round one. The nail-biting finish helped signal to me that women’s football was back. 

Some six weeks later, I found myself on the other side of the fence with AFL Media reporters, watching the Western Bulldogs beat Melbourne for a spot in the Grand Final. I happened to be a metre away from disappointed Demons captain Daisy Pearce as she led her team off the field after narrowly missing a Grand Final spot for the second straight year.   

I have been a fan of the AFL Women’s competition since it was launched and have tracked every detail of it thus far. But it wasn’t until I worked as an intern with AFL Media during the second half of the recently completed season that I was able to step behind the curtain. 

That experience – which included interviewing players, attending press conferences and tribunal hearings, sitting in on the recording of podcasts, and being asked to research topics and matters I had not previously even considered – certainly taught me plenty. And, importantly, I learned that not everything related to the competition is as it seems – or how people think it is. 

Watching players and coaches though the lens of television or how they’re represented in other media platforms can lead you to form pre-conceived ideas of what they may be like. I had developed my own perceptions about many of those involved in the AFLW and the game generally, but after meeting and speaking to some of them, I have had to rethink what I knew and thought about them and the new competition. 

The first interview I conducted was via the phone with Adelaide midfielder Ebony Marinoff. The main reason for the chat was to discuss the 21 tackles Marinoff had applied in the Crows' round-four draw against Greater Western Sydney. I had watched a lot of Marinoff in her first year, when she went on to win the NAB AFLW Rising Star award. Along the way, based on how she presented herself and how she had been presented, I had formed the view that she was all about fun and frivolity, her large personality overwhelming anything else about her. 

But as we spoke, I was surprised to learn how many more layers there were to her, including how professional she was, how seriously she took her role in the team, and that she had genuine leadership aspirations, despite her still being, at 20, one of the youngest players in the team. Yes, her cheeky humour still shone through in her answers, but the way she presented herself and represented her club took my respect for her to another level. 

A post-game press conference after Collingwood’s round-seven win against Adelaide provided an opportunity to hear first-hand from Pies coach Wayne Siekman. Based on what I had seen, read and heard, I had been critical of his leadership, believing it had somehow shaped the team’s poor early-season form. But listening to his open, honest, and often good-humoured take on the season and the competition as a whole was refreshing to hear. 

The suspension of Western Bulldogs skipper Katie Brennan for the Grand Final was one the biggest stories of the season. Her appearance at the AFL Tribunal and subsequent appeal provided an opportunity to see first-hand how the competition’s judicial processes worked.

As the week unfolded, I followed along as fans on social media reacted to the possibility of Brennan missing the Grand Final and criticised the AFL for being too harsh or for unfairly suspending my favourite player. The truth is, I would probably have been doing the same if I had not have had the opportunity to better understand what had driven the decision.

After listening to both sides present their arguments (and getting some insight from a reporter who has covered numerous AFL Tribunal hearings) I left the hearing realising that there was more to this than one person missing a game, no matter the magnitude of said game.

Although I felt incredibly bad for Brennan, I had been able to better understand the rules and the system that govern the competition. I also had come to understand how the tribunal arrived at its outcome. There was a logic to it all. Had I not understood that, I probably would have gone down the same path many fans did, using emotion and pointing to the supposed injustice of it all.  

We all have our biases. Every time one of my own team’s players tackles an opposition player, I often internally scream "BAAAAALLLLL". Emotions are a big part of the game and it can sometimes be hard to separate yourself from them. 

But to be a better journalist, I learned I had to broaden my knowledge of all aspects of the game and approach things more logically. In the past, I had watched games without paying attention to particular players and what they did for their team. I have now begun to better understand every individual’s roles and skills, and what they mean to their team.

There has been plenty of criticism on the AFL’s approach to the finer details of the women’s competition, and I have often found myself discussing the perceived deficiencies of the competition with family and friends.

I have often thought to myself, 'Why can’t they do better?' But having seen first-hand just a smattering of the things involved in running a competition and the implications of every decision or non-decision, I have way more sympathy for the clubs and the AFL than I might have previously had. We live in a society where people want something to be perfect for them right away. But we shouldn't forget we need patience, and we need to allow the competition to make mistakes and learn from them. We need to allow it to grow organically, especially on a national stage, and not just base our criticism on what we assume to be flawed choices.

Nobody should think the two-year-old AFLW competition is perfect. What it looks like in five or 10 years, in so many respects, will be vastly different to how it looks today. The easy thing to do if you're on the outside is to be critical, even if your criticisms are attempts at humour or smothered by your undying passion for a particular player or club. I know all about that approach. But the reality is this: being critical and offering supposed ill-informed solutions from afar won’t help. It will only hinder the progress being made.

Meg Saultry is a journalism student at the University of Melbourne. She recently completed an internship at AFL Media as part of her studies.