According to the spearhead of the Harvey Norman Women in League round, its 20th anniversary is not an appropriate time to start winding down the initiative, considering the current boom in the female game.
Harvey Norman Chief Executive Officer and former NRL director Katie Page is the brains behind the round, which began in 2007.
Since then, Catherine Harris became one of the ARLC’s foundation directors, a NRL club had its first female CEO in Raelene Castle (Bulldogs) and now with Lorna McPherson (Chiefs).
There have been female chairs of boards for the first time in Marina Go (Wests Tigers), Rebecca Frizelle (Titans), Lynne Anderson (Bulldogs) and Caroline Campbell (NSWRL), while all NRL clubs have female directors. Most also have females in the football department and coaching staff.
Countless community and regional clubs and associations are run by women.
There are now 12 NRLW clubs, which will expand to 16 in due course.
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So, hasn’t Women In League done its job directing attention to areas of the game that seemed cut-off to women?
According to Page, the round was not necessarily meant to drive ‘firsts’ for females.
She sees the round evolving year-on-year to create new awareness and action each time.
The photographic exhibition ‘The Captains’ commissioned by Page this year is an example.
It is on show in the foyer of Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art at Circular Quay and will draw in visitors from here and overseas – many who won’t know much about rugby league at all.
“But they will come in and see incredible images of our warrior women and they are just that,” Page told NRL.com
The WIL may have started 20 years ago, but its roots go back another decade to the post-Super League era, when sponsors were scarce after the turf war between News Corp and the ARL (Australian Rugby League).
Page said she had little interest in rugby league back in 1996-97 but she was getting feedback from her staff and customers that Harvey Norman should step in attach itself to the sport.
“We’re western suburbs people – that is our heartland,” Page said.
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In 2004, Page became the first woman to sit on the NRL Board because she had studied the game in the intervening eight years and wanted some further input.
“It was really obvious I had to find my place in the game, being the first woman etc, and it had to be that I was contributing to the game," Page said.
“Women were invisible, but they were everywhere.
“They were part of the game in every way, so I went to the board and said ‘we’ve got to do something’, so we started working on different parts of the game because 50 percent of your fan base is female.”
Page is not oblivious to the criticism that WIL round has served its purpose with women now having more power and traction in the game as female registrations keep climbing.
“I get that all the time – it never ends – so you’re going to have your naysayers all the time. You just keep going,” she said.
“If they’d said to me five years ago ‘It’s had its day’ then you wouldn’t have this today,” she said pointing to the giant screen on the MCA foyer wall with continuous photos of 12 leading NRLW players.
“It’s about looking at the game in different ways and this is a contemporary view of the game.
“It’s eight-and-a-half minutes long and the individual shots are just so powerful, so strong.
“And this is different to what the guys are doing. I am just a little cog in this big machine of so many women doing so many different things.
“So you’ve got to keep it going.
"We’ve got to keep making a contribution to the game because the women’s game will keep growing.”