ONE club had too many players, the other not enough. Together they are ensuring their footballers can take the field.<\/p>\n
Ocean Grove and Barwon Heads are two of six football clubs that will field merged teams in the 2026 AFL Barwon women\u2019s season.<\/p>\n
Like St Mary\u2019s and Geelong Amateur, Barwon Heads had enough players to fill a team and a half: too many for<\/p>\n
their team sheet but not enough to make a stand-alone seconds team.<\/p>\n
Ocean Grove was committed to having their players on field, but like Thomson and St Albans did not have enough to go it alone.<\/p>\n
When they realised their neighbours were in the same half-a-team conundrum, it made sense for these two cross-bridge rivals to join forces.<\/p>\n
Barwon Heads female football director, Nicole Bacely, said the merge is bigger than any club rivalries.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s more about the girls than it is the club,\u201d Bacely said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the moment it\u2019s about getting girls on the field, in the game, it\u2019s a different program for men versus women.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ocean Grove director of female football, Bianca Quinn, said the merge has ensured their young players can continue to play football.<\/p>\n
Having the guidance of experienced players has already paid dividends.<\/p>\n
\u201cBarwon Heads have been amazing at including our girls and making them feel really welcome,\u201d Quinn said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re really excited, they\u2019ve loved training, it\u2019s just really important for those young girls to have really strong female footy role models.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bacely said the clubs had been working with the league so players can move between Barwon Heads\u2019<\/p>\n
division one team and the merged second team.<\/p>\n
She said ensuring movement between the teams was key to player retention for both clubs.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe league has worked really closely with us, and we\u2019ve worked really closely with the league, and they\u2019ve given those girls an exemption to play division 1 or division 2 if they are good enough to be selected for division 1,\u201d Bacely said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no point having them just play division 2 if they\u2019re a standout and should be playing division 1.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bacely and Quinn agreed that allowing clubs to work together so players can take the field, rather than forcing them into recess, is part of a sustainable competition.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe league talked about wanting to really build a sustainable program and this is what it looks like,\u201d Bacely said.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be able to maintain and sustain players in the game, you need to be able to be flexible because women\u2019s needs are so much different to men.\u201d<\/p>\n
Quinn believes Ocean Grove and Barwon Heads have the chance to build a strong women\u2019s program into the future.<\/p>\n
With both clubs prioritising access, she sees a bright future for women\u2019s footy at both clubs.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got to compete with the likes of St Joey\u2019s, St Mary\u2019s and Ammos,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re well established really successful senior, women\u2019s clubs so I think that if we could join forces a bit, share resources and all of that sort of stuff that, you know, we could become a really big force.\u201d<\/p>\n
Senior female footy will begin on Friday 17 April.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ONE club had too many players, the other not enough. Together they are ensuring their footballers can take…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":600667,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-600666","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600666","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=600666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600666\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/600667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=600666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=600666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=600666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}