This footy club wants better for its women's team but is in a pinch

Country footy's female participation has surged since AFLW, but facilities are not built to fit them Fri 24 Jul 2026 at 5:51am Macedon Football Netball Club president Ron Rutledge says his club does things a bit like Ted Lasso. The "Lasso Way", inspired by the popular TV show, is a leadership style centred on kindness, personal growth and human connection, often over winning. "Our number one thing is 'thank you' and our number two thing is 'please'," Rutledge tells ABC Sport. "We're a very easy club to get on with … But we are in a desperate pitch now for our female participants." The club is in the heart of the Macedon Ranges in central Victoria, about 60 kilometres north-west of Melbourne. Founded in 1887 as an original member of the Riddell District Football League, its clubrooms contain cabinets filled with trophies won by generations of men's teams. The latest additions are the two premiership trophies won by the senior women's side. Six years ago, the club underwent a significant change when it established a women's team, followed by a girls' team. "A lot of people before me worked very hard on getting a junior program going for females, particularly in the AFL sense. It's been a netball club for many years, and that has continued to grow and grow and grow," Rutledge says. The senior women's team is again among the premiership favourites this season. But, like many long-standing clubs across the country, Macedon encountered a significant problem as female participation grew: its facilities were neither large enough nor suitable for the new women's and girls' teams. The Cats' home ground, Tony Clarke Reserve, is also used by the local bowling, cricket and tennis clubs. The football teams also train around the corner at JD Clifford Reserve during the week. On Thursday nights, the youth boys, youth girls, senior men's and senior women's sides all train across the two grounds. 'Made for men' Reigning senior women's club best and fairest winner Ruby Watts has played football since 2017, the year AFLW started. Now 21, she played Auskick as a child but stopped after a year because she "didn't like playing with the boys", which was then the only option available. She returned to the sport as a teenager when her local club, Gisborne Football Netball Club, established a girls' team. But she was forced to leave in 2024 when the club could no longer field a women's side. She joined Macedon with about six other players from Gisborne. The difference between the clubs' facilities was immediately noticeable. "At Gisborne it was fine. Like, the facilities are perfect, they're clean, they're nice, but the ones here are a bit… they're just old and they're mainly made for men," Watts says. "It's open urinals and just open showers, and it's just disgusting. There's one toilet with a door, so it's a big struggle. "We have to use it after the men's teams, and it's not their fault. Like, they clean it nicely, but it's still disgusting. It just smells gross and it's not right. In 2026 we should be doing better, I reckon." Watts says the club does its best to make sure the women's side is included, but understands sometimes it is constrained by a lack of space. At Thursday night selection dinners, for example, the women are encouraged to get their food first, while the men listen and cheer as the women's team is announced. The club has also had several pride rounds this year for the women's competition, in which the shared space gets decorated with streamers and posters. But during training beforehand, the women have only a small section of the oval to use if one is rained out. "There is quadruple the amount of them than there is of us. It would be nice to get half of the ground, but we don't need it in comparison," she says. The same imbalance means the men fill the clubroom on shared nights, while the women leave their belongings on nearby benches. By dinner, the men have showered and changed, while the women remain in their wet training clothes. "You can't walk on the ground without your socks getting wet, like we don't have a locker to put our stuff in. A girl, a few weeks ago, lost all of her clothes, because there's nowhere safe to put them," Watts says. "She literally lost her jumper, her pants, like everything. And she still hasn't gotten her clothes back, just because we have no locker or nothing to put them in, nowhere safe. "We put our clothes on the chairs and just along the fence and it gets nice and wet and dewy … Then the boys shower after training, but all of us girls have to go fully kitted, fully in our wet socks and everything. "The boys have comfy jumpers and pants on because they don't care, they'll shower around anybody. We don't have a shower to get changed in. It's different for us." Eve Moait, 19, plays in the senior women's side and coaches the under-14 girls. She loves the club and has embraced its Ted Lasso philosophy. A "Believe" sign hangs above the door to the home change rooms. "My junior girls love it, they think it's hilarious … They think it's the thing that won them their first game because they all tapped it on the way out and truly believed it," Moait says. Some of the younger players could not quite reach it. "They were actually really good jumpers, but we had some really, really small girls and they'd lift each other up to tap it. They're so sweet." Before training, she gets changed in her car and then heads onto the ground. She says the main club room is good, particularly since indoor artificial turf was installed, even if it's "terrible to clean as a coach". "But then when we come to the toilet side, the girls just don't want to go in there," she says of her junior team. "It's smelly because we come in on a Sunday after all the senior men have played the day before, and then all of the boys' teams have played the morning, so we come in during the afternoon at about one o'clock and it is disgusting. "It smells, and there's grass, and there's underwear, and pee in the corner. It is so gross." Moait often takes the junior players to a public toilet block 200 metres away, but says that can be difficult when she is responsible for all 18 members of the team. "It's also a very awkward age for these girls," Moait says. "We've noticed when they first come to the team, when they're at the very bottom age, so 11 or 12, they're typically fine. They'll go to the toilet, or try and avoid it if it's dirty, but it won't bother them as much. "But when they hit the upper end and they start going into that time [puberty], they just shut off when it comes to the toilet, be like, 'nah, don't want to', and it's like I can't provide them with much better, so it's frustrating. "There's no sanitary bin, it's dirty, and there's only one toilet there. It's not working for them, that's the problem." The push for an upgrade Rutledge has been lobbying the council and state government for help upgrading Tony Clarke Reserve, attracting visits from politicians across the political spectrum. Macedon Ranges Shire Council has allocated $380,000 in its 2026–27 budget to upgrade the change rooms. The council's assets and operations director, Dom Testoni, told the ABC: "The proposed project, valued at approximately $650,000, would bring the facilities up to current standards and better support the needs of the growing number of participants using the reserve. "While Council's recent application to the Victorian Government's Country Football Netball Program was unsuccessful, a number of funding avenues remain available. "Council will submit a new application through the Victorian Government's Local Sports Infrastructure Program, which is currently open, and will continue to pursue other state and federal grant opportunities as they become available." But Macedon Ranges Shire Mayor Kate Kendall said that funding "falls a little bit short". She described the facilities as "absolutely prehistoric" and in "such a dire state" that they deterred local girls and women from participating in sport. "We look at inclusion and a lot of people talk about inclusion, but if we don't have the very basic needs met, where people can go to the toilet safely and privately, then it's just, you know, a poor tale," Kendall told ABC Sport. Macedon MP Mary-Anne Thomas told the ABC she had visited the club and it was clear the facilities were past their use-by date. She said she had pressed the council to find a short-term solution while it pursued grant funding. Rutledge hopes portable change rooms can be installed while the club identifies a long-term solution. Victorian Animal Justice Party MP Georgie Purcell said the situation demonstrated the consequences of cutting the Office for Women in Sport and Recreation from last year's state budget. Purcell said the office was not merely symbolic and had provided important support to sporting clubs, particularly those with relatively new women and girls' teams. "It's not enough to just say women can play and think everything is going to magically resolve overnight. It requires commitment and work from the government," she told ABC Sport. "I think the big problem with women in sport, and what we confront now, is women worked really hard and clubs worked really hard to let women into the spaces, but letting women into the spaces doesn't necessarily mean that they feel welcome or supported, or that the facilities and access are there for them to feel comfortable and like they're taken seriously. "We say women are welcome in sport. We have women's sporting teams, but we just don't have the access or the facilities to allow those teams and club cultures to thrive." The Macedon way Rutledge says he feels he is letting down the club's women's and girls' programs. "I feel personally disappointed as president of the organisation. One of my commitments on the day that we had the election was that I want to make female participation one of our main goals," he says. "We define outcomes not necessarily as premierships, but as participation and doing things for the community as well. We are a community club and we're very focused on letting the community judge us rather than us judging them. "We've got a very powerful and energetic committee that works very closely with all parts of our operation… but we sit here tonight in a draconian position with our change rooms for our women." The women want better facilities and are not quiet about it. But they are not going anywhere. Even after Gisborne re-established its women's team, players such as Watts decided they would rather make the longer drive to keep doing things "the Macedon way".