Finley debuts Youth Girls Team
Just weeks after the AFL’s announcement to introduce a Women’s League, the small NSW town of Finley has debuted a Youth Girls team over the weekend.
Being based on the NSW/VIC border The Finley Spiders have joined the Victorian Shepparton District Junior Football League. On Sunday the Finley girls played the Northern Angels, where they happily walked away with tight 2-point win. Spider’s coach Jorja Daniel was pleased with the weekend’s result “I thought they played great, considering we’ve just chucked a team together the last one or two weeks. We also haven’t had the chance to have training, seeing it’s been so wet here.”
One of the Spider’s players Jessie Read, believes the win was thanks to great teamwork “I think we all get along really well, we were all good mates before The Finley Spiders, so now being team mates as well has just cemented that.”
The Spiders enter the SDJFL youth girls competition mid-season. President Chris Thomas had no hesitation restructuring the competition to accommodate the new club “Whilst they are joining the competition mid season the Board has no hesitation in accepting their Youth Girls team application.”
“We surveyed the other Youth Girls clubs and with their unanimous support the Board actioned their admission immediately and the fixture has been restructured to allow them in.”
Daniel who started the Finley team, says she couldn’t have done it without the support of the Finley Football and Netball Club “The club have been very supportive. They have sorted us out with everything we need. It’s great to have their support behind us and to know that we can choose what we want to do and know that the club will be behind us 100%.”
Thomas believes the new Finley team is extremely timely after the AFL’s 2017 Women’s League announcement “Finley’s inclusion is a great statement for the growth of female participation in the region and with the AFL national women’s competition now confirmed for 2017, there will only be more opportunities for women and girls in the future.”
Jessie Read is pleased that women and girls have an opportunity to be successful in footy “I think it’s great that AFL started a women’s league, it gives girls like us in Finley a clear direction of where footy can take us. We love our footy, so playing professionally is definitely a goal for some of us.”
