Australian Rules Football: Sydney suburb looks to chance male image

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Australian Rules Football has long been considered as a male dominated sport, but in one Sydney community, that perception is changing. In the western part of the city, the sport is being used to create opportunities for young women and promote multiculturalism. CGTN's Greg Navarro tells us how.

To most of these teenagers, a week night practice on an oval in Western Sydney may not seem unusual. But Amna Karra-Hassan knows that the sight of girls learning the finer points of Australian Rules Football simply didn't exist here just a decade ago.

AMNA KARRA HASSANAUBURN GIANTS FOUNDER "You'd see lots of boys and men running around on a field but you'd never see little girls or women and that seemed really bizarre to me."

So she created the Auburn Giants Women's Australian Rules Football Club, to help level what she saw as an unfair playing field. A few years later the club added a junior program. And one by one, girls who had never been given the opportunity to play the sport, including 14-year old Eman Asaad, became hooked.

EMAN ASAAD AUBURN GIANTS TEAM MEMBER "It's so competitive and it's really fun, I love being competitive and I just really loved it."

It's the kind of reaction the professional Australian Football League, or AFL, is hoping for as it attempts to expand the sport's appeal.

LEON CAMERON GREATER WESTERN SYDNEY GIANTS COACH "With like any football club, or soccer club, or rugby club, the more work you do in the community the more opportunity you get to open up your footy club for a new fan."

That's been especially challenging here where other forms of rugby and soccer are more popular, in one of the most diverse areas in the country.

GREG NAVARRO SYDNEY "In fact, about 60% of the people who live in this community were born overseas, that's almost twice the national average."

AMNA KARRA HASSAN AUBURN GIANTS FOUNDER "A lot of these girls are culturally diverse so they have an ancestry or faith that is not part of the dominant culture in Australia and just saying that is ok, you should celebrate that diversity and be proud of who you are no matter where you go."

In 2017, the AFL launched a professional women's league.

YASH KAMMOUN AUBURN GIANTS COACH "For women to now be able to play at the highest level there is an aspiration for them as well, to work hard and to be able to achieve that just like the men could."

It's the kind of message that organisers hope will stay with these girls, learned through a sport that, in just a few short years, has become a part of this diverse community. Greg Navarro, CGTN, Sydney.