\n Fremantle’s AFLW team is in Melbourne for 10 days but can’t find an oval to train on\n <\/p>\n
Emma O\u2019Driscoll warms up before the AFLW Round five match between Fremantle and West Coast, September 14, 2025. Picture: AFL Photos<\/p>\n
DOES ANYONE have a spare oval for Fremantle?<\/p>\n
The Dockers’ AFLW team is coming over to Melbourne for an extended 10-day trip, with games on Friday and next Thursday.<\/p>\n
Access to grounds for captain’s runs are guaranteed in the AFLW \u2013 unlike in the men’s, where Fremantle struggled to find suitable ovals this year \u2013 with women’s teams having a run on the surface they will be playing on the next day.<\/p>\n
The issue lies in the team’s main training session next Monday, with not a ground to be found for its two-hour run.<\/p>\n
Fremantle has been on the hunt for a whopping seven weeks and has been knocked back by clubs and top private schools alike.<\/p>\n
When it comes to school and council grounds, the major issue lies with the time of the year.<\/p>\n
School holidays means groundskeepers are taking the opportunity to transform ovals from football grounds to cricket fields, and goalposts are dropping like flies in council grounds as drop-in pitches are placed in centre squares.<\/p>\n
Securing grounds is usually the responsibility of clubs, but the AFL’s footy operations team has been asked for assistance, given the desperate stakes.<\/p>\n
The AFL has bought Hawthorn’s Waverley headquarters \u2013 with the Hawks scheduled to move out in the next 4-6 weeks \u2013 and that ground could be an option in the future for stuck AFL\/W teams.<\/p>\n
Dockers players after the AFLW Round six match between Fremantle and Essendon, September 20, 2025. Picture: AFL Photos<\/p>\n
The Dockers are bringing a sizeable contingent over east, including six children, with coach Lisa Webb, full-back Ash Brazill and midfield bull Kiara Bowers having two kids each.<\/p>\n
They’ve previously done extended stints in Melbourne over the men’s Grand Final weekend, but this will be the longest one yet and provides a great opportunity for bonding and to focus solely on football, given some players have work and study commitments away from the game.<\/p>\n
Fremantle has even arranged for a comedian to swing past after dinner one night, to break up the monotony of hotel living.<\/p>\n
Some players are planning on attending the men’s Grand Final on Saturday, given the women play on Friday, but others will choose to relax away from the spotlight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fremantle’s AFLW team is in Melbourne for 10 days but can’t find an oval to train on Emma…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":166210,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85,83],"class_list":{"0":"post-166209","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-afl","8":"tag-afl","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-australian-football-league","12":"tag-australianfootballleague","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-text"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}