AFTER their application to join the Central Victorian AFLW league was rejected earlier this year, a Castlemaine-based women and gender diverse football club is pulling out all the stops to ensure greater inclusivity in community football - including a new documentary about the club's journey.
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The Mount Alexander Falcons are a group of stubborn and defiant footballers, aiming to change the way communities engage with the popular sport.
But the idea has been brewing for a while.
In the depths of lockdowns last year, current club president Louise Conwell was feeling motivated to build something "monumental".
"We had some extra time on our hands because of COVID and we were feeling really disconnected from our communities," she said.
"We had this radical enthusiasm that came with that period of time."
The idea of creating a football club, specifically catering to groups that had typically been excluded from the sport in the past, was born.
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Ms Conwell said the idea was not to recruit from other clubs, but to create a whole new club, with new players - most who had never touched a football in their life.
"There's a fair bit of literature and a few studies about how women and gender diverse people have traditionally been excluded from club environments," she said.
"And we don't believe it's best practice for people to have to go to an environment that doesn't feel comfortable for them and carve out a space that is safe.
"We were really confident that if you create an environment that is safe and inclusive, that people would come."
Upon application to the CVLFW league, the club had 49 registered players. Of those, 82 per cent had no affiliation to another club, and none were registered with other teams.
Before the 2022 season began, the league rejected the Falcons' application on the grounds that it would be unsustainable.
The league said the reason was partly because the Falcons would have to compete with next door's Castlemaine women's football team - a new team that had applied at the same time.
Ms Conwell said the group was devastated, and the move was a missed opportunity for the AFL to get more people playing footy.
"I don't think they realised how good this would make the AFL look," she said.
"Pretty much all the players had never played before."
Despite the rejection, the playing group soldiered on, and the momentum has been building across the community.
Each week, more and more players are lacing-up for trainings and practice matches, and with a total of 70 participants, the club believes they will be accepted into the league next year.
"There are so many players now, and it really shows how much of a need there is for something like this in the community," Ms Conwell said.
"These people had nowhere else to go, and now they're part of something."
Now, player and filmmaker Mitch Dunn is creating a documentary about the club's journey, from its league rejection, to - hopefully - it's successful entry into the CVFLW competition in 2023.
The Castlemaine-based photographer was looking for a community project to complete as part of their filmmaking masters course.
"I wanted to create a project that had a visual outcome that really looked to challenge stereotypes and gender roles," they said.
Dunn walked out of the Castlemaine IGA in lockdown last year and saw a poster for the Falcons training sessions.
"The language they used was something I'd never seen before," they said.
"It said 'women and gender diverse people welcome, no experience necessary'."
Dunn initially went down with the intention of photographing some of the players, but ended up joining the club after one session.
"It was just so much fun," they said, "I'd never done anything like that before."
When the club was rejected from the league, the filmmaker realised they had found their project.
"I felt like we were at this really interesting point in time where women's footy was being encouraged throughout Australian culture and society," they said, "yet we were being told we couldn't play."
The process of filming the documentary has been particularly rewarding for all members of the club.
"I wanted to create something that highlighted the way women and gender diverse people use our bodies and what we're capable of," Dunn said.
"So I thought I could wear cameras on my body and just get the audience to see players smashing into me and tackling me, and trying to get a perspective of the game that no one's really seen before."
Dunn said the players embraced the opportunity to not only reflect on their playing abilities, but also on their personal journeys with football.
"Initially, I thought that people wouldn't want to be filmed," they said, "but it's been the total opposite."
"Now we're having interesting and quite profound interviews with players about what it is to be women and gender diverse people in this space."
Dunn said being a part of players' football journeys through the filming process has been eye-opening.
"One of the main themes that has come up with the players is self-belief," they said.
"The revelations that people are having about the capacity for their bodies to take hits, to compete in sport, to tackle other bodies and realise they're completely capable of doing those things that they've been told their whole life they couldn't do."
The trailer for the documentary is out now and the documentary is set to be completed by the end of the year.
For now, player registrations continue to roll in and a quiet love for football is growing in never before seen spaces.
Donate to the documentary here.
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