Kyneton Football and Netball Club’s women’s team made the decision to break away from the club in the wake of what players describe as a “horrible, volatile environment”, while the club maintains it has always been as inclusive as possible.
Player and president of the newly formed Kyneton Women’s Eagles Football Club Natalie Korinfsky said the group of 35 women’s players decided to make a stand and go out on their own after claims of inequitable treatment and disrespect from the club had left them “completely distressed”.
This comes as players spoken to by ABC Sport from other clubs around the state claim poor treatment, inequitable access to resources and a lack of support from their football clubs.
It follows research by the Victorian government, which uncovered almost a third of women who play community sport in Victoria had considered leaving their club due to inequitable treatment.
“All we want to do is play football and be treated with respect, and if you don’t have those fundamentals, it’s impossible to stay in those environments,” Korinfsky told ABC Sport.
“You just think, how can you stay at a club that is like this?”
‘Broke the heart of most of our players’
Korinfsky said there was an underlying culture at the club which often made the women’s team feel unwelcome or unsupported. For example, a ‘pride’ sticker which was put up in the club rooms by the women’s team for their ‘Pride Cup’ game was ripped down.
“Now we don’t know who ripped it down, but that is the sentiment that is kind of running through the club,” Korinfsky said.
Members of the Kyneton Women’s Eagles Football Club at a training session. (Supplied: Sophie McLeod)
Korinfsky also said the women’s team would often come into the club rooms after the men had played and find blood, spit and faeces in the bathroom, which they would have to clean up. ABC Sport have seen images of this.
However, the catalyst for them finally deciding to break away was when the women’s team played in the grand final last year against Macedon, down the road in Woodend, while the club held their annual raffle draw at their home ground at the same time. This made it impossible for committee members or other people involved in the club to go along and support the women’s team.
“That pretty much broke the heart of most of our players,” Korinfsky said.
Co-captain Belinda Hateley said despite the success of the women’s team, hardly anyone from KFNC turned up to support them in either the 2023 or 2024 grand finals.
“If it was a men’s team, there’s no way that they would have had a raffle on at the same time,” Hateley said.
“That’s incomprehensible. That would be insane if they did that. So we’ve sort of just always felt that we’re not that important.”
Natalie Korinfsky says the players want to be treated with respect. (Supplied: Ties Urie)
KFNC said they were never informed of any misconduct against any member of the senior women’s leadership group, individual players or guests of the club.
“It’s disappointing to now be accused of these allegations in the media,” a statement provided to ABC Sport said.
“The club has always addressed any player welfare concerns that were communicated to the committee. We strive to be as inclusive as possible and have always addressed things when they are raised.”
The statement went on to say the club was strong supporters of women’s football and was committed to fielding a senior women’s team and continuing the pathway and enjoyment of their youth girls football team.
“Unfortunately, recent actions by the members of the Kyneton Womens Sports Club (‘KWSC’) suggest there is some form of vendetta against the club. There has been a relentless smear campaign causing significant reputational damage to KFNC,” the statement read, which added the ‘unsafe’ narrative directed at the club was “deeply offensive and insulting”.
Kyneton’s women’s coach Phil Hawkes, who has been involved in the coaching and administration side of football for more than 20 years, said he was not surprised that practically all the women’s players walked, but he thought it might have taken the club off guard.
“They [KFNC] thought only a few might leave,” Hawkes said.
“So I think that part of it was a big shock that everybody left and said, ‘No, we’ve had enough of this’.
“The resources not being shared as maybe they could have been, or should have been, the lack of support from the committee and the rest of the club in general.”
Fear others will follow suit
Korinfsky said five other women’s teams had contacted them since they split from KFNC, with the teams facing similar behavioural issues at their clubs.
Players from Kyneton women’s team during training. (Supplied: Sophie McLeod)
Jane,* a player from North East Victoria who wished to remain anonymous due to fear of backlash from her club’s board, said their women’s team were often on the receiving end of poor treatment from the club, which made it an “uncomfortable space” to be.
“We’ve had members go along to supposedly whole club preseason events and had some pretty dispiriting comments made about them,” Jane said.
This included homophobic rhetoric, such as the master of ceremonies making comments about how the female footballers were only there to pick up netballers, she said.
In the Change Our Game State of Play Survey, almost a third (28 per cent) of women who played community sport said they had considered leaving their club due to inequitable treatment.
In the report released July 2023, of the 670 Victorians canvassed, more than half reported gendered discrimination in community sport and 55 per cent said they had experienced or seen sexist language and jokes.
Kyneton Football and Netball Club coach speaking to players (Supplied: Ties Urie)
It also found women were 2.5 times more likely to report feeling unwelcome at their sporting club compared to men and 90 per cent of women said gender inequality was still an issue in sport that needs to be fixed.
“I’m not going pull the not all men line, but of course, some of the younger players in the boys and men’s programs are probably fine with the fact that there’s female football,” Jane said.
“I think most of the problems stem from the old boys, the ones that played in the 70s that have been hanging around the club ever since. So some of them are great club volunteers in the men’s program, but just have views that haven’t changed much [regarding women in sport].”
Women’s teams spruced for grants but don’t get fair access to facilities
A common issue amongst women’s players spoken to for this story was inequitable allocation of resources, including access to grounds and facilities, which government grants aim to fix.
As of July last year, funding from the Victorian government for community sport infrastructure has required local governments to have a gender equitable access and use policy or equivalent in place, and for progress regarding those policies to be shown over time.
Sarah Styles, director of the Office for Women in Sport and Recreation (OWSR), said the government implemented the Fair Access Policy Roadmap to support local councils and facility managers “to fairly allocate sporting grounds, courts, change rooms and other facilities, and provide safe, supportive and enjoyable environments for women and girls’ teams.”
Government grants aim to fix inequitable allocation of resources, including access to grounds and facilities. (Getty Images: Jason O’Brien)
Ros Spence, the Minister for Community Sport, added that the road map exists to hold councils to account “so all women and girls have the opportunities and facilities they deserve”, as the government worked to level the playing field for women and girls in sport.
However, Jane said while these policies sound great, implementation in communities is tricky. During preseason at her club, the men’s side booked the main training oval every night of the week, rendering it unavailable for the women’s side to use, which “completely flies in the face of fair access policies”.
Korinfsky said the Kyneton women’s team didn’t get “fair access to the ground” and had training sessions often put on “crappy nights of the week”, and were forced to train on Mondays when they had games on Sunday “because the boys always had priority”.
Similarly, Sarah**, a 32-year-old woman from Bendigo who wished to remain anonymous due to fear of ramifications from her club, said when her club’s main oval had been shared between the men’s and women’s teams, they would have issues of the men’s players running through the women’s drills.
“We’re in a small 50m arc of the oval and they’ve got the other three quarters and we’re still being intruded on,” Sarah said.
“It can be intimidating and it’s really frustrating … We have a number of staunch women on our team who will feel comfortable in saying, ‘Hey, you know, mind your manners, watch yourself’ but it’s kind of laughed upon. It’s not really taken seriously.”
Kyneton Women’s Team during a preseason training session. (Supplied: Sophie McLeod)
Since 2014, the government has invested around $750 million to support more than 1,460 female friendly community sport and recreation projects. According to the OWSR, as part of the acquittal process for a grant, the grant recipient needs to share specific detail and evidence of how funds were expended.
However, Jane said it had become apparent in the last year that her club was happy to spruik its female football credentials when it meant getting major grants, but they had no intention of honouring any increase in participation or access to resources for female football.
“There are some very savvy grant writers at the club who have discovered that you can leverage your female football program to benefit your men’s program,” Jane said.
Money not put back into female programs
It’s not just grant money that players are concerned doesn’t go directly into their programs either. Many felt money was brought in by the women’s team through sponsors or fundraising efforts, but went back into the club as a whole to use at their discretion.
This left them with little to no decision-making power over how they were run.
At Jane’s club, she said the only interaction between the women’s team and the board, who ruled the finances, was when the female program would “have to hold our hat begging” to buy footballs or get access to resources.
Kyneton’s women’s team training. (Supplied: Sophie McLeod)
A sticking point was that the women’s team had sourced sponsors for their program which the club then called “whole club sponsors”, with the money not used for the female program.
“So we’re sort of at a bit of a stand-off in terms of, do we go out and seek more sponsorship or don’t we, because we know that we’re not going to get access to it, even if we do,” Jane said.
“We don’t feel like we’re doing the right thing by businesses and organisations that want to sponsor female football as we can’t guarantee to them that their money is going to be put into female football.”
‘Right to play sport in a safe, supportive and equitable environment’
The Kyneton Women’s Team are now in search of a home, after being rejected by three local leagues.
The Ballarat Football Netball League and AFL Central Victoria both said the new club had missed a December deadline to join their leagues and the Riddell District Football Netball League denied their application for a standalone team.
The RDFNL said the KWFC application was rejected because of the failure to meet the RDFNL Statement of Rules criteria and the deadline for new clubs under the AFL Victoria rules and workshopped five different solutions for the women’s only club.
“It’s impossible to get out of them [football clubs] because we can’t get into a league standing on our own,” Korinfsky said.
“[But] we don’t want to stay in a horrible, volatile environment where nobody will help us to manage the issues at hand.
“But then they won’t let us leave either, or they suggest we just go to another club that has a similar set up, but doing this risks putting our team back in a similar environment and we just aren’t prepared to do that again.
“I think they don’t want us to set a precedent of women’s teams forming their own clubs.”
Kyneton women’s team training preseason. (Supplied: Sophie McLeod)
Korinfsky added the need to separate also came down to women’s football teams being very different beasts to male ones.
“I think that they have to be looked at with a different approach,” said Korinfsky, adding that all they wanted was a safe place to play football.
“It’s really around the systemic issues that prevent women accessing sport in a safe and equitable environment. We’ve got so much legislation, so many policies, we’ve got everybody talking the talk around this stuff, we’ve got AFL Victoria putting in action plans for women and girls to play sport, yet nobody’s addressing these fundamental issues on the ground that are preventing women from being able to play sport in a safe environment.
“We believe we have the right to play sport in a safe, supportive and equitable environment, and that’s what we’re doing as a club, and we’re just asking for a fair go.”
*Jane is a pseudonym as the source wanted to remain anonymous
** Sarah is a pseudonym as the source wanted to remain anonymous
