Pick a side

I saw a clip on Facebook the other day. Some radio segment doing the rounds, a caller running down the NRLW, saying it's weaker than the AFLW, saying the players are only in it for the wrong reasons.

I watched it twice to make sure I'd heard her right.

Wrong reasons. What does that even mean.

Nobody's getting rich playing NRLW. Nobody's getting rich playing AFLW. These are athletes training full contact sport around jobs, around study, around raising kids, for a fraction of what the men earn, because they love the game and want to build something that didn't exist for them growing up.

If that's the wrong reason to play footy, I don't know what the right one is.

This isn't new

Women's sport has copped this exact criticism forever. Too slow. Too many errors. Not as skilled. Pick a code, pick a decade, someone's said all of it.

Usually the person saying it has watched about four minutes of the product they're criticising.

The research doesn't back it up anyway. Error counts, margins, competitiveness of the games. NRLW is often a tighter contest than the men's, not a lesser one. That doesn't make for a good grab on talkback radio though.

AFLW good, NRLW bad

That was the actual setup of the clip. Pick a side. As if there's only room for one women's competition in this country.

Not one caller's opinion about ball security. The framing that women's sport is a fight for attention between codes, instead of two different games both still climbing the same hill for funding, coverage and respect.

What they've both had to fight for

Every women's competition here has had to claw for the same things. Try getting a broadcast deal that isn't buried on some secondary channel, or a season that isn't just whatever gap's left after the men's fixture finishes. Crowds get compared to leagues that have had a hundred year head start, which was never a fair fight to begin with. And half the commentary out there still talks about how the players look before it gets round to how they play.

AFLW's crowd numbers have dipped since the early seasons. Broadcast numbers have dropped too. Nobody in league is running around saying that proves AFLW doesn't deserve a spot. Building something takes time, same as it did for every men's competition too.

I went back and checked the numbers twice on this one. NRLW isn't catching up to AFLW. On the two biggest measures there are, it's already ahead.

The 2025 NRLW Grand Final pulled a crowd of 46,288. The AFLW Grand Final the same year pulled 12,741. NRLW had almost four times the crowd, in its eighth season, against a competition in its tenth.

TV told the same story. The NRLW decider drew 1.03 million viewers, up 36% on the year before, a new record for the code. AFLW's audience has been going the other way for years. It launched averaging around 180,000 viewers a match. That number has fallen to somewhere near 53,000 in recent seasons.

Zoom out to the whole season and it's the same pattern. NRLW crowds are up 115% year on year. NRLW TV viewership is up 45%. AFLW's average match attendance is actually lower now than it was two years ago.

So next time someone tells you NRLW is the weaker product, ask them which numbers they're looking at. Because on the numbers that matter most, the ones that decide whether broadcasters keep investing and sponsors keep signing, NRLW isn't behind AFLW at all. It's out in front and pulling away.

What backing it actually looks like

Loudly. Not begrudgingly, not as a box tick, not bolted onto the men's fixture as an afterthought. The same way we back the men's competitions without thinking twice.

Every organisation running a GoodTip competition tips AFLW and NRLW alongside the men's comps, same points, same seriousness. There's no version of this where the women's game is the bonus round.

If you want the broadcast deals and the sponsors and the crowds to grow, people need to show up and take it seriously now. Not "I'll watch the men's and catch the women's if there's nothing else on."

One caller's opinion

She probably thinks she was just giving it. Fair enough, everyone's entitled to one. But there's a difference between having an opinion on a game and using it to tell women their sport doesn't deserve to exist on its own terms.

Two football codes, both growing, both still working out crowd sizes and scheduling and broadcast deals, both full of genuinely elite athletes. Not the moment to be picking a winner between them like it's a cage match.

Support NRLW. Support AFLW. Support the WBBL while you're at it, and the Matildas, and every other women's competition still fighting for a fair share of the oxygen.

There's room for all of them.