At the launch of the 2025 women’s National Football League, it was impossible to avoid talk of the 2025 AFLW season.
For the first time there will be over 40 Irish players featuring in the AFLW this year, which inevitably raises questions about the impact that may have on women’s Gaelic football in Ireland. In 2024, there were 34 Irish players across 13 different clubs Down Under.
Complicating matters is the new elongated AFLW season – which will start a fortnight earlier on the week beginning August 11th this year. Pre-season training begins on May 19th. The women’s All-Ireland football finals are scheduled for Sunday, August 3rd.
It emerged in December that Kerry’s Kayleigh Cronin – player of the match in last August’s All-Ireland final – has signed for Adelaide Crows.
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“She’s training away hard with us at the moment,” said fellow Kerry player Síofra O’Shea. “She’s training just like the rest of us and putting her whole life into Kerry football at the moment, so that’s all we can ask from her. Whatever happens down the line, then obviously we wish her the best in Australia.
“I think she’ll be massively suited to it, she’s an unbelievable athlete. It’s a great opportunity for her.”
But the proliferation of Irish players going to Australia looks set to become a more contentious issue due to the AFLW’s earlier start date.
“Look, I understand the opportunity,” says Dublin’s Carla Rowe, who turned down a potential move in 2018. “But it is going to have an impact on our game and that is where my worry is with it, because their season is now encroaching on our season.
“And that will make our players make choices, and that is not nice for players. We have Jen Dunne over there and we will wait and give time but you don’t want someone to make a choice, they don’t want to make a choice, but that is what it is coming down to.”
Rowe feels the exodus of top players to Australia could damage the standard of the women’s game here.
“You would be foolish to say that you are not worried because at this point they have so many players and so much backing, and it is the top players on every single team that are going over,” she said.
“I don’t know what the solution is to that challenge but maybe it is something we need to have a conversation around to lessen the impact, because we don’t want that, we don’t want the standard here, after so many years of work, dropping.”
Galway’s Nicola Ward, the 2024 player of the year, hopes all of her team-mates stick around for the season ahead.
“I know I’d be disappointed if a top player was taken from my team, but at the same time I think it’s a great opportunity for the girls over in the AFLW to get a different perspective,” she said.
“It’s a professional sport, you don’t have to do a part-time job or anything like that. I think it’s a great opportunity for them. But I know from my own perspective, if a top player was taken from my team, I wouldn’t be happy.”
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