Carlton captain Kerryn Harrington believes the demands of AFLW players across their footballing and professional lives have reached a “tipping point”.
The league’s top players - two per club - earn a maximum wage of $37,155 for the season, while 16 per club earn $20,239, for a season that spans 10 rounds before finals.
With insufficient salaries to live on or plan a future around, players have little choice but to pursue a career away from the sport and strive to balance it with the game they love.
“It probably reached that tipping point 18 months ago,” Harrington told SEN Breakfast.
“The reason being is I guess each season the expectation on the players continues to grow towards a fully professional league, as it should.
“The challenge for the players ongoing, and it becomes harder and harder each year, is having a balance between work and having a professional job outside of football, and trying to reach the commitments and the expectations that the football world holds.
“We’ve got 30 players on our list and I don’t think we’ve got one player on our list that doesn’t have something else outside of football. Whether it’s studying or working as a freelance person.
“I’m a physiotherapist myself, so I work 20 hours a week as a physio on top of footy as well.”
There are recent examples of players having stepped away from the game because they can’t juggle two careers.
St Kilda defender Bianca Jakobsson, who previously played for Carlton and Melbourne, took the 2020 season off to complete her Victoria Police academy training.
Premiership hopefuls Fremantle will this season be without forward Sabreena Duffy, who has booted 30 goals in 25 games and led the club’s goalkicking in 2020 and 2021.
Duffy won a promotion with the Department of Justice, and while hopeful of returning for the 2023 AFLW season, chose to focus on her professional life in the interim.
Harrington is familiar with the sacrifices women in sport are asked to make, as a former basketballer who spent a decade in the WNBL before her stint with Carlton.
The 29-year-old warns more careers will be impacted if women aren’t given the opportunity to compete as professionals.
“To be quite honest with you, the players are squeezed to the absolute max at the moment,” she imparted.
“I guess every year we say it gets harder and harder, but that tipping point is very close where we’re already seeing players having to chose between their careers and playing football.
“The novelty of playing football, I don’t think it will ever wear off, and I’m sure a group of men’s players would feel the same, but certainly as we get closer and closer towards that fully professional sport, the playing group is already training like we’re fully professional.
“We spend somewhere between 20 and 25 hours a week (training). The difference between us and the male group I guess is that we’re having to work somewhere between 30 and 40 hours outside of that as well just to maintain our life.”
The pandemic has presented a further challenge, with players who either contract or come into contact with COVID-19 required to isolate under the league’s health and safety protocols.
Multiple cases in both the Western Bulldogs and Brisbane Lions camps saw their scheduled opponents in Geelong and Carlton play off on Saturday night.
“It’s certainly a challenge,” Harrington affirmed.
“It doesn’t take away from the joy in playing football, but it is difficult and particularly with the times at the moment with things chopping and changing.
“Thankfully the lack of a Brisbane trip (on the weekend) didn’t really throw us that much, but I wouldn’t want to be one of the teams at the moment that has to try and make up a game mid-week around our work schedules as well."