Jane Ryan and Alexandra Almond loved footy, but playing it seemed out of reach — until the AFLW

For women of a certain age, playing Aussie rules wasn't an option when they were children. It wasn't something girls did.

There was no infrastructure for it, no teams, no grounds, no acknowledgement that women might like to kick the ball, join a team or tackle an opponent. But this didn't stop them loving the game.

Alexandra Almond and Jane Ryan have loved footy since childhood but did not get to play until they reached their 40s.

«I can't get across to you how joyful it was to be able to pick up a footy and hand pass and kick to a teammate, practise it and be in that space where that's what we were focused on,» Ryan, 48, said.

Almond, 50, a designer from Melbourne, played her first competitive game in 2021.

The night before the game, a lifetime of waiting turned into anxiety.

«I had never been so nervous, never in my life. I was literally shaking,» she said.

«I rang one of my friends, who is not a football person, and said, 'I actually don't know what's happening to me. I can't sit down, I can't think, I can't do anything. I have to play football tomorrow. I'm terrified. Oh God, it's going to be awful.'»

Almond's dream to play started decades earlier, when she was given a football for her 11th birthday.

«It was all I wanted, but it never did me any good,» she said.

«The boys wouldn't play with me and the girls weren't interested. So the most I ever did with my footy was play kick to kick with my brother.

»I grew up in Bendigo in the 1980s and girls didn't play football or cricket or soccer or anything [like that]."

Almond played netball in winter and tennis in summer because her parents told her she had to take up a sport but she gave them up as soon as she could.

She was, and remains, a mad keen Collingwood supporter, being a