A Playwright Turns Women's Footy Triumph Into Stage Hit

Growing up in a football-obsessed Melbourne family, Suzie Miller felt like an outsider. Because no girls could play AFL, she boycotted the sport entirely.

Then in 2017, everything changed. The Australian Football League launched the AFLW, its first professional women's competition, and Miller attended the historic first grand final on the Gold Coast between the Brisbane Lions and Adelaide Crows.

"Women were running out into a green field under a beautiful blue sky and all these little girls were cheering them on," Miller said. "There was just this air of joy throughout the evening, people were crying and laughing."

The internationally acclaimed playwright knew immediately she had to tell this story. She interviewed people involved in launching the league to understand how a 2010 AFL report recommendation became reality seven years later.

That research became Strong is the New Pretty, which just premiered at the Brisbane Festival. The play reimagines the real battle to transform women's football from impossible dream to professional sport.

The Ripple Effect

Ally Anderson was among the first players drafted to the Brisbane Lions in that inaugural 2017 season. "Growing up, I never thought I would be a professional athlete," she said.

Anderson has since won two premierships, earned the league's best and fairest honor, and holds the AFLW games record. But the impact reaches far beyond the field.

After finishing the play, Miller attended an under-9 girls' game where young boys cheered for their sisters. That moment crystallized what this shift really means.

"These young boys will see these girls running around as strong competitive players, and they'll see them with strong bodies and loud voices," Miller said. "They won't grow up thinking of girls as weak or other or not equal to them."

The league is now in its 11th season. Little girls who watched that first grand final are becoming teenagers who've never known a world where women couldn't play professional football.

The play tours to Canberra, Geelong, and Sydney next, carrying forward the message Miller wished she'd heard as a girl: everyone deserves a fair go.