MELBOURNE, June 15 (Xinhua) -- Australia's most popular football competition, the Australian Football League (AFL), has unveiled the eight clubs who will compete in the inaugural national women's competition in 2017.
The new AFL women's league will field four Victorian teams the Carlton Blues, Collingwood Magpies, Western Bulldogs and Melbourne Demons. New South Wales will be represented by the Greater Western Sydney Giants.
The Brisbane Lions from Queensland, the Adelaide Crows from South Australia and the Fremantle Dockers from Western Australia round out the final eight clubs who were granted licenses in their respective markets.
The AFL runs an 18-team men's national competition between March-September every year. Thirteen of those clubs lodged submissions for their own women's license, but only eight have been sanctioned by the AFL.
The five unsuccessful clubs Richmond, North Melbourne, St Kilda, Geelong and West Coast - were granted provisional licenses with a view of an expanded competition in 2018.
The eight-team league will play matches in a two-month season, over February and March, in 2017. The length of the season is expected to grow as the footballers are exposed to greater attention and coverage.
The AFL has finally joined the Australian soccer and cricket codes in providing a national stage for women footballers to play the sport they love. The AFL has long been a male-dominated sport. However, with a rise in female participation and female interest, the AFL landscape is changing.
Women footballers will now play at the national level for the first time in the famous Australian sporting codes history.
Over the past five years, the number of women and girls playing Australian football has doubled. Female participation has reached 25 per cent of the total number of Australians playing the game.
There were 163 new female teams established in 2015, with over 280,000 women participating in the game in across the country. The AFL believes this number will significantly rise again this year.
At the official launch in Melbourne on Wednesday, AFL chairman Mike Fitzpatrick said the women's league would be a major game-changer for the AFL.
"This is a truly defining moment in the history of Australian football. Our game is on the cusp on changing forever and for the better," Fitzpatrick said.
"The concept of a national competition has been put together in a short space of time but this day has been a long time coming."
While women footballers have occasionally been exposed to a national audience through exhibition games and curtain raisers in the past couple of years, that exposure - and resources and opportunities will only increase when the new national league gets underway.
The AFL is expected to immediately brief the eight clubs on player signings (including marquee spots) and drafting rules.
