AFLW 2022: Nicole Livingstone’s vision for AFLW shaped by her own sporting roots

A passionate Carlton fan, Livingstone toured the Blues’ Princes Park home not long after claiming the 100m and 200m backstroke double at the 1987 Brisbane Pan Pacific Games.

Livingstone was a rising star of the pool. The Blues, with mullet-sporting champions on every line, were on the way to winning that season’s premiership.

The Olympian still cringes at the challenge she issued to Silvagni, fullback of the AFL’s Team of the Century, that day. It is a moment SOS has never let her forget.

“In 1987, when I was 16, I had just won the Pan Pacific Championships and I got presented with a No.1 guernsey by Adrian Gleeson and Tommy Alvin and Steve Silvagni,” Livingstone says.

“I got a tour through the facilities and I remember completely having a crush on Stephen Silvagni. I told him I could bench press more than him, thinking that was going to impress him. He still gives me grief about it.”

There was another moment on the tour that, with the AFLW now set to begin its sixth season, Livingstone remembers with interest more than three decades on.

“David Parkin (Carlton’s premiership coach) said to me, ‘Oh, look at those shoulders. If women’s footy was a thing, I would love to have you in the backline’,” she says.

“He said, ‘You and Tracey Wickham. She is a very determined swimmer. She would be great on the footy field.’ For me, it was like, ‘My God. David Parkin just said he would love to have me play for Carlton.’

“(But) it wasn’t an option, because by the time I was 13, I was on the Australian senior swimming team. I loved lots of different sports and I can still kick a footy, but I didn’t pursue it as a sport.”

‘Sometimes we’re building the boat while we row it’

Women’s footy is now very much a thing, with the 2022 season less than a week from kicking off.

In early December it was Livingstone who unveiled an ambitious blueprint aimed at making the AFLW the premier domestic women’s competition by 2030.

The AFL wants its players to be the highest-paid women in domestic competition.

It also hopes at least half of the 18 AFLW clubs will be coached by a female and that there will be equal representation and participation in community football competitions by 2030.

There is, Livingstone acknowledges, a significant amount to be done. But she points to the rapid progress the national competition has already made since its inception.

“Looking at where we started, we started in 2017, but we were meant to start in 2020,” she says.

“Then we went from eight, to 10, to 14 and now to 18 clubs. And all of that has been announced within five seasons of starting the competition. So everything we have done has been at a fast pace.

“Sometimes, we are building the boat while we row it. That is why the women’s football vision, as a guiding set of objectives, comes now at a great time.

“We have had two years of stop-start sport. We have seen record numbers of girls and women coming to Australian rules football. It has been a bumpy ride for them as well.

“Now is the time to double-down on the experience for girls and women at community level, to make sure we entice them and retain them as well, and that it becomes a lifelong involvement with Australian football, and that then they bring their families back.”

Not every long-range plan, particularly one with the stated ambitions of the AFLW, will come to fruition. But, as Richmond and Melbourne fans will attest, sometimes they come off with great success.

The growth in popularity in women’s football over the past decade has been staggering.

There were more than 2500 registered women’s teams across the nation at the end of 2019 compared to 205 at the start of the decade. That is despite some inherent challenges.

Livingstone notes only 35 per cent of football facilities across Australia can be considered inclusive, something she attributes to many dating back to the post-World War II era when women’s sport was not even an afterthought.

“Let alone having women umpiring. Or women coaching. None of that was considered,” she says.

“So with growth, there are always some growing pains. That is part of what this women’s football vision is about. It is about steering the industry to have a sharp focus on the things that are important for us going forward.”

‘We don’t have women coaching. We need to change it’

The fact every AFLW club in 2022 will be coached by a man is far from ideal for a competition where the stars are women.

Bec Goddard, who coached Adelaide to the inaugural AFLW premiership, has been appointed to the senior role at Hawthorn when they enter the competition late next year.

“To put a target on there, we want 50 per cent of these 18 coaching positions to be women leading the AFLW. We are not going to sugar coat this,” Livingstone says.

“Other than Bec Goddard coming in in season seven, we don’t have women in senior coaching positions. That is not good. We need to change it.”

Livingstone has held discussions with the NFL about a program launched last decade aimed at enabling women to flourish in traditional men’s roles.

The AFLW has instituted its own program in which six women will receive what equates to a full-time wage over two years to help build their coaching experience.

“There was questioning around, ‘Why isn’t it 18 clubs?’” Livingstone says.

“We want the clubs to pitch for this. We want them to be creative about what that experience for a women’s coach looks like. If it is just that every club gets one, where does the creativity come from? We want them to see what the clubs have got to offer with this.

“It will be a good problem to have if we get 12 proposals that are amazing. We would need to consider, ‘Well, we have these amazing women, how do we give them an opportunity?’”

Those opportunities aren’t just being sized up at club level. The AFL is determined to increase the number of women in senior roles at headquarters.

Livingstone cites the recruitment from North Melbourne of Laura Kane, the 31-year-old recently appointed the AFL’s general manager of competition management, as an example.

“She has been around football all her life. She has played it. She has been in community footy. She loves women’s football. But she is just as knowledgeable with men’s footy,” Livingstone says.

“Seeing Laura deliver even in the three or four weeks that she has been here, it fills me with so much confidence.”

‘Mum was the gentlest person, but get her to the footy …’

When Livingstone speaks of female players having “a lifelong involvement with Australian football”, she might as well be recalling her own formative years spent at Princes Park with mum Elsie, who died twenty years ago from ovarian cancer.

“I can remember as a kid, the peanut guys would have these aprons on and they would walk around the boundary with a blanket and you would throw money into it to raise money,” Livingstone says.

“My mum is no longer alive but you would never mess with her family, or her footy club. She was the gentlest person but get her to the footy and she would get into fights with people.

“If somebody spoke badly about the Blues, it was on for young and old. Those were the sights and sounds of my childhood.”

The use of suburban grounds offers a more intimate feeling for fans compared to the MCG, Adelaide Oval, Optus Stadium and so on.

And that is helping to attract fans, with those over 18 now paying to attend matches after entry in the early seasons was initially free of charge.

In 2023, for example, Essendon will play games at Windy Hill and Alberton Oval will be rocking for Port Adelaide matches.

The Swans, who have already signed an AFLW record of more than 3500 members despite being a season out from their debut, will turn Henson Park – home of rugby league’s Newtown Jets – into Australian rules territory.

“It is nostalgic. We talk about it being footy like you used to know it. We talk about women’s footy being up close and personal. You can hear everything going on in the ground because of these smaller venues,” Livingstone says.

“But we also talk about it being free range footy. You go to an AFLW match and, for older people, it reminds you of your childhood and going to the footy. But you are not locked into the seat you have bought. You can move around. You can socialise with people. You can put the picnic blanket out. I think people like that. They like the fact it is intimate and personal.”

Paying it forward

Livingston’s own return to the pool deck in a broadcasting role at the Tokyo Olympics also reminded how far that personal connection can extend when driven by champion competitors.

Her own inspiration for jumping into the pool, and claiming four gold medals at the 1994 Commonwealth Games in Canada, came from the likes of Michelle Ford and Lisa Forrest.

Now the 50-year-old admires the example set by Ash Barty, and Sam Kerr and the Matildas, along with Australia’s champion cricketers including Ellyse Perry and Alyssa Healy.

But once a Dolphin – she is No. 331 – always a Dolphin.

“I look at what we do with women’s football and I look at what we have done with the Australian Olympic team, and the swimming team in particular, and the women, and it fills me with pride,” Livingstone says.

“These are strong and fierce women who are determined to be the best athletes they can be. It was pretty awesome to see.

“Emma McKeon … I watched her grow up, I’d been around her whole life, so to see her do what she did was just incredible.

“And to be there with Susie O’Neill, and Susie and I are talking to Emma after her race, once you are an Australian swimmer, you are always an Australian swimmer.”

Livingstone notes that the performances of 2021 are stark in contrast to the disappointment that unfolded at the London Olympics almost a decade earlier.

“We look at London, 2012, when the swimming team was not getting on together, and that is really where it started,” she says.

“The presenting of the gold cap, bringing past swimmers in, explaining that you are holding this mantle for right now, but you don’t own the sport.

“The sport is always much bigger than you in this defining moment. To reconnect with the past, or stay grounded with the past, is really important as well.

“It is a little like women’s footy as well, recognising the pioneers who have got us to where we are at today. It is important, as we grow, that the AFLW players understand the fight and history that goes behind them.”

While aiming to boost the pay of women’s footballers, Livingstone stresses it equates to those who are playing domestic competitions, not sports with international representation.

She is confident future stars of the AFLW can develop a national identity, pointing to current champions including Daisy Pearce and Erin Phillips as examples of beloved players.

“We know exactly how many AFLW players are in that list of top 50 Australian sportswomen,” Livingstone says.

“The likes of Daisy, the likes of Erin, the likes of Tayla Harris, and we want to raise the number of AFLW players who are visible in Australian society, because I firmly believe that somewhere between grades four to seven, young boys and girls are inspired by something.”

‘Women’s football will find a way’

Omicron looms large again as the pandemic enters a third year, with Covid protocols in place and footy, like every other sport, still vigilant to the threat posed by the virus.

But Livingstone herself found unexpected pleasure during Melbourne’s most recent lockdowns – chasing the black line again.

While friends tried to entice her into the ocean after major operations on both knees, lap swimming remains her first love.

“I did both meniscuses and had some repair work done and it went into rapid degeneration in both knees. I held out for almost five years, with deteriorating knees, and then bit the bullet and had partial replacements last year. So I do have a new spring in my step, which is great,” she says.

“I went so far as to buy an ocean cap for the winter. But the thought process of seeing critters in the water and not seeing a black line, I can’t bring myself to do it.

“It is the one thing that really does give me joy. We spend our lives trying to find what we are truly great at and, for me, I found swimming.

“I may be a little slower and I may not fit into the same swimming costume these days, but it is still my happy place. It is my cone of silence, where no one can get near me or talk to me. I can just concentrate on breathing. I still love it.”

And as the AFLW’s latest campaign leads Australian football back into 2022, Livingstone is charged once more with keeping her other sporting love on track amid all manner of hurdles.

“I am optimistically cautious,” she says. “We are planning, as always, for any kind of scenario to unfold.

“We are confident, but I think the last two years have taught us to expect the unexpected. Our slogan is that football finds a way. Women’s football will find a way.”