A $1.5 million upgrade of the Whitten Oval will transform the ground into the Victorian showcase for women's football, the fastest growing Australian Rules competition in the country.
In a redevelopment which has been supported by the Victorian government and the AFL, the Whitten Oval investment has also strengthened the push by the Western Bulldogs to become the first AFL club to field a women's team.
The move has reinforced the Bulldogs' vision to transform its once decrepit home ground into the centre of community and elite football in Melbourne's fast-growing western region. The Whitten Oval will also stage regular VFL games, VFL finals and is now likely to hold AFL pre-season NAB Challenge games from early next year.
Women's training facilities has become a hot political issue leading into the forthcoming Victorian election. The Whitten Oval upgrade will include two new women's change rooms and new lighting which will allow the best female players in the state to train outside of working hours.
Sports Minister Damian Drum, whose government has contributed $500,000 to the project, said he had been "blown away" by the skills at this year's second women's exhibition match staged by nominal Bulldogs and Melbourne teams selected through a second women's AFL-style draft.
Further funding has come from the Maribyrnong Council ($500,000) while the AFL has matched the $250,000 raised by the Western Bulldogs through a members' driven campaign last season.
The growth of the women's game across Australia was first significantly identified at head office by the AFL's first woman commissioner Sam Mostyn and has now become a strong focus of the league's only woman executive Dorothy Hisgrove, whose portfolio oversees community game development. The AFL now sees a genuine case for a national women's competition.
Both the state government and the opposition were heavily represented at last week's Victorian Women's Football League grand final at Coburg with the state ALP opposition pledging $10 million to establish or upgrade changing rooms for women athletes across Victoria.
Drum told Fairfax Media: "I'd say to footy fans who've never watched women's football you are missing out. This [Whitten Oval upgrade] will allow women's football to access AFL training facilities on an ongoing basis for the first time. It also enables the possibility of the Whitten Oval again hosting senior AFL football through the NAB Challenge.
"The gap in the pathway for girls' footy has been somewhere for the elite to call home in a training sense, using the best facilities can help lift the sport to another level. Despite all the great facilities a lot of AFL clubs have now, they've been designed for use by a professional men's team to use in working hours, and for a variety of reasons this doesn't work for elite female footballers.
"This is a great step in rectifying that and making elite women's footy something that young girls can aspire too, knowing that the facilities will be no different to that of an AFL team."
While the Bulldogs staggered to a disappointing AFL conclusion in 2014, the club's VFL team - which has readopted the title of Footscray - will contest Sunday's forthcoming grand final at Etihad Stadium in its first stand-alone season. Footscray attracted an attendance of more than 7000 when it hosted a week-one VFL final at the Whitten Oval.
Bulldogs chief Simon Garlick said the redevelopment in its first stage would see the VWFL Academy, which comprises the best 30 players across Victoria, train at the Whitten Oval on a weekly basis. The women's league, currently based at Carlton's Visy Park, boasts a premier division and five lower divisions.
While the Bulldogs have been highly sensitive to the impression the club is looking to gatecrash the women's league by forming its own team, the move has been strongly championed by the club's chairman Peter Gordon.
"We don't want to muscle in," said Garlick, "but we believe there are great benefits in having our own team both for the competition and clearly for us as well as for the western region community."
Garlick said the Whitten Oval would for the first time provide female players - who previously arrived at training in their football attire - access to AFL-standard training facilities on an ongoing basis.
Apart from NAB Challenge and regular Footscray VFL games and VFL finals, the Whitten Oval will host VWFL games, women's finals, Western Region Football League games and reinforce its place as the home of football for Maribyrnong College.
The Bulldogs will also host regular girls-only Auskick clinics in 2015 and the Youth Girls AFL weekend.
