- She finds it quite funny that her father
actually set up a league just so
she can play football, but that was my goal,
cause my daughter loved playing football.
(hip-hop beat starting) (tiger roaring sound)
- [Presentator] Support the roar.
- [Everyone] One, two, three, Tigers!
(applauding and cheering)
(hip-hop beat taking off)
- I put out a feeler for the ladies at Derby
to see if anyone wants to have a scratch match
on a Friday night, and it was pretty good
cause we had 40-plus ladies
who turned up for that game.
(applauding)
Sort of blew my mind away.
Creating the female football league and
creating the Derby Tigers female football team
has been great for the Tigers and all,
because it's a one team town, the public
gets right behind us and it's evident
during our home games where we
just get a groundswell of support.
- Was exciting, at the start, because
it's the whole Derby community getting involved.
Most of us were, you know,
sort of just a little nudge and
whatever here and then, but yeah,
we learned how to tackle and
we got a good group of girls, local girls,
and yes, a good little sisterhood.
Like at the start, it was just about fun and
creating something for the women.
But now it's turning into development.
- Most of the time the leadership group is turning up,
so there's six in the leadership group and
then the rest sort of form
the rest of the group around there.
It works really well, I mean we've got,
I think our youngest player is 15
and our oldest is 44. I think having that age range
is really good cause you get that experience and
that wisdom, I suppose in the older players,
knowing when to slow it down, when to calm things down
and the younger players have that energy
and that zest to drive it.
(uplifting orchestral music plays)
- I have a bit of a laugh about it.
I'd say in the men's you turn 35
and you're out there in the paddock,
where the ladies, they can still play.
That's one of the great things
I see about the female side of the game
The joy for me was these ladies
bringing their kids down, kids just
running around the oval in general
when their mothers are training and
it's brought a family orientation back to the club
and that's where we are today, you know,
we're cruising along with all these great ladies
who are involved in the club.
(team chant)
♪ We're the Tigers of old, we're young ♪
♪ And we're bold, we're from Derby ♪
♪ Yellow and black, we're from Derby town ♪
(cheering)
(tranquil guitar music plays)
So in 2016 I came down to from Darwin
to coach the Derby Tigers men's team.
In those days there was only, you know,
the, the men's league, you know,
coming from a semiprofessional league
like the Northern Territory Football League and,
you know, being an indigenous person myself,
just seeing how the team was run, and, you know,
it was not a great place to actually be
because there was a lot of alcohol abuse,
the club was in debt and that's not a
fault on to, you know, the players
or the the community at the time. But,
the 2017 season we set out to install some discipline.
In that first year I went out to the sponsors
and talked to the CEO's of these corporations and
the year after we set out some rules and that,
and the club has gone on from strength to strength,
and that's what I set out to do,
you know, to build this club up.
(talks to the team) We're gonna give our teammates
every opportunity to score a goal, guys.
All I can see in the next five to ten years,
this will be a great league to play in.
As someone who was there from the start,
who created this, I probably can't wipe
the smile off my face and where it has led to now
with the old eight teams having eight female teams.
I think football means a real lot to those
sort of communities who, you know,
are out in the bush and that and,
even today, when you see the Looma Eagles play,
the ladies, you know, they bring so much flair
and pride to their guernsey, they wear it with pride.
- Let's destroy them!
(hard hip hop beat plays)
- Well I am so proud and I am so grateful
that we have a girls football team,
and I'm like the young captain in my team.
I'm so proud that my dad gets to coach us.
We grew up playing football when we was like,
little kids and we just love football,
it brings us all together and,
I think we're making a name for our community
and I'm very proud of us, boys and girls.
(cheering)
- Up the eagles! Yeah!
- My thing was, fly the footy here.
I'm a big believer in, you know,
expansion and all that stuff.
I would love to see Fitzroy Crossing,
a mens and ladies team join our league,
cause I think that would be great benefit
to not only their town, but also the league itself.
Hopefully we can develop these girls' skills
a bit more further, and that maybe
come from the help by the clubs themselves,
but also getting those Claremonts and Fremantle Dockers
who are in our area to come up and, you know,
learn us a bit more about professional football
and how do we go about honing our skills
and all that sort of stuff.
(serene acoustic guitar music)