Culture, Not Just Talent, Is Deciding AFLW Flags
James Gallagher doesn’t often say something that ought to stop administrators mid-sip of their flat white, but his recent comments on the widening culture gap between AFLW clubs deserve exactly that reaction. The AFLPA chief executive’s observation, that the clubs getting the workplace right are starting to pull away from those that aren’t, is not a hot take. It is, on the available evidence, simply a description of what is happening on the ladder.
A league still finding its shape
AFLW is nine seasons into its life now, long enough that the honeymoon excuses are wearing thin. In the early years it was fair enough to put ladder spread down to list inequality, part-time programs and clubs still working out what a standalone women’s department actually looks like. Those explanations have a use-by date, and for several clubs that date has passed. What’s left, once you strip away the obvious stuff like talent id and list management, is the less glamorous business of how a club actually treats its players day to day.
Gallagher’s point, as I understand it, is that the clubs investing properly in person-first programs, the ones who treat their AFLW program as a genuine department rather than an add-on to the men’s operation, are the ones whose players are staying fitter, staying happier and, not coincidentally, playing finals football. It’s hardly a radical idea. Workplace research in every other industry has said the same thing for decades. Footy was always going to catch up to it eventually.
What ‘culture’ actually means in a footy department
It’s worth being precise here, because culture is one of those words that gets thrown around by everyone from club chaplains to breakfast radio hosts until it means almost nothing. In an AFLW context it tends to come down to some fairly concrete, measurable things: proper strength and conditioning staff rather than borrowed ones, genuine investment in rehab and injury management, clear and fair selection processes, consistent coaching tenure rather than a revolving door, and a general sense among players that the club sees their program as a priority rather than an inconvenience squeezed in around the men’s fixture.
None of that is mysterious. It’s the sort of thing any competent business would get right as a matter of course. But AFLW clubs are, in effect, newer businesses bolted onto much older ones, and the old business doesn’t always make room gracefully. You can understand why some programs have struggled to bed down a genuine identity when they’re still fighting for change room space and training slots.
The ladder is starting to tell the story
Look at the clubs who have been genuine flag contenders across multiple seasons now, and a pattern does emerge. They tend to be the clubs with coaching stability, with football departments that have resisted the temptation to treat the AFLW program as a place to park development staff, and with a reputation among players and manag ers for doing the basics properly. Conversely, the clubs who have cycled through coaches, had messy off-season departures or been the subject of repeated reports about player discontent have, more often than not, found themselves battling for wins rather than premierships.
I’ll declare an interest here as an Adelaide supporter, because the Crows have been one of the more consistent performers in the competition’s history, and it would be easy for a biased columnist to wave that around as proof of the theory. I’d rather not overstate it. Good list management and a strong talent pipeline in South Australia have done plenty of the heavy lifting too. But it would be equally dishonest to pretend the club’s reputation for a settled program and experienced coaching staff has had no bearing on it. The evidence, even allowing for my obvious leanings, points the same direction Gallagher’s does.
Why this matters beyond the premiership cup
The temptation is to treat this as a story about who wins flags, but the stakes are rather higher than that. AFLW remains a competition where plenty of players are still balancing football with full-time work or study, where pay has improved but hasn’t reached anything like parity, and where the margin between a sustainable career and a short, bruising one can come down to how well a club manages workload and welfare. A widening culture gap isn’t just a competitive issue, it’s a player welfare issue, and those two things tend to be more closely linked than club administrators always like to admit.
There’s also a broadcast and commercial dimension worth noting, because it usually is with these things. A competition where the ladder is genuinely contestable, where any team can win on a given weekend, is a far more saleable product to broadcasters and sponsors than one where four or five clubs have quietly separated themselves from the pack through superior internal management. If the AFL wants AFLW to keep growing its audience and its broadcast value, closing that culture gap isn’t just good governance, it’s good business.
What the AFL and clubs should do about it
This is where the league office has a genuine role to play, and it’s one that goes beyond issuing statements of support. Standardising minimum resourcing requirements across all eighteen AFLW programs, requiring genuine coaching continuity policies, and building in some form of player satisfaction benchmarking as part of licence conditions would all be sensible, unspectacular steps. None of it is expensive by AFL standards. Much of it is simply a matter of will.
Clubs, for their part, need to stop treating their AFLW programs as a reputational nice-to-have and start treating them as they would any other department expected to perform. That means proper investment, proper accountability when things go wrong, and a recognition that player welfare and on-field success are not separate conversations but the same one.
A fair test for the game’s next phase
Gallagher’s comments shouldn’t be filed away as a players association talking point and forgotten by next week’s news cycle. They’re a fair and reasonably measured description of where the competition sits nine seasons in, and they offer a useful test for every club president and football department as the next round of AFLW planning gets underway. If the ladder genuinely reflects culture as much as talent, as the evidence increasingly suggests, then the clubs serious about flags have a job to do well away from the selection table.
