By Marcus Uhe
There’s a roar coming from James Bathe Reserve on Friday nights in the form of the Cardinia Tigers Junior Football Club’s inaugrual Under 10 Girls team.
The team’s debut season in 2024 started with just a handful of players registered to wear the yellow and black, but by May the numbers had grown exponentially.
It’s a triumph for the community, the emerging club’s committee, and the team’s head coach, Travis Mether, whose vested interest in the team saw him play a critical role in the recruiting process.
“Early on in the season we didn’t have a lot of success in drawing people in,” he said.
“My second daughter had joined and a friend of hers had joined, so I think we were up to four. “Then we went really heavy on social media, I did a letterbox drop around one of the estates with my daughters and did a lot of stuff on Facebook.
“We were so excited that we actually got nine girls listed, which was fantastic.
“That was for the first game, and on Little Demons day we had nine, and since then it’s skyrocketed.
“We now have 16 registered and I think we’re one of the biggest teams.”
Giving the side its own identity is the diaspora of backgrounds and cultures, with players of Pacific Islander and Asian heritages with a limited prior exposure to Australian Football getting a hands-on education in the sport.
But the learning curve goes beyond goals, behinds, kicks and handballs – clubs cannot function without the dedication and commitment of parents and volunteers, filling the critical roles on game day to allow the girls to take to the field.
“Because of where we’re located at James Bathe Reserve, it’s a very multicultural area, it’s very different to the other clubs around Pakenham,” Mether said.
“That’s what we’ve leaned into, we want new families that don’t know a lot about AFL that want to become part of the local community, to do that through us.
“It was so hard to explain the ins and outs of the volunteer roles and things like that – parents have to do first aid, assistant coach, goal umpire.
“Not only are we teaching the girls the skills that they need to play, we’re trying to get the parents to learn so that in a few weeks time, they can do goal umpiring.
“They’ve all got a passion to come and give something a go, and that’s been really good.
“That’s what we’re really looking for, that’s the niche of our club.
“We’ve got the Kaduna Estate and the new ones growing around, that’s who we are catering for.”
It presents its challenges for Mether as coach, but he said the experience has been “refreshing”.
The girls are attacking the games with the right spirit, and most importantly, enjoying themselves.
As the AFLW provides a vision and legitimises the prospects of a future in the sport, the girls are simply beginning their football journeys.
“They’re really learning on the fly and each week we reset because we’ve been getting an extra girl.
“We’ve had girls turn up who haven’t been to training and we said ‘here’s your kit, put it on and get out there.’
“They have armbands to say what zone they’re in at that age and one of the girls said ‘what does the armband mean?’ – we hadn’t had a chance to even explain it to her.
“Even though in under eights, nines and 10s you don’t really keep score and there’s no winner, normally people come and say ‘did we win?’, but I think a lot of the girls don’t even truly understand the scoring system at the moment – they just have a great time.
“The footy’s almost second to it and that’s what I like – the smiles on their faces when they come off, the vibe.”
