World Footy News

Freedom Coach Wayne Kraska gives us the genesis of the current tour and US Women's footy.

In 2005 after a group of players had been gathered together to play an exhibition game at the Atlanta USAFL National Championships it was suggested that a women’s team in Atlanta would be a good addition for the Atlanta Kookaburras as a club. Being the President of the club at the time there appeared no one really interested in taking on the role to coach this team, so after separating myself from the coaching ranks of the men's team, it was left to yours truly. After our first training session at Scott Nathaniel Park in Decatur, Georgia, I was contacted by Kathryn Hogg who along with a few others had been the driving force behind the trial games in Atlanta in 2004 and the year before in Kansas City.
I had only token interest in the coaching of the team and mainly saw it as way to relieve the stress of where the Kookaburras men’s team was heading with their less than serious approach to training and playing games.

That coming October in Milwaukee Wisconsin I was to meet Kathryn Hogg for the first time and really start to feed off her enthusiasm for the sport. At the Milwaukee Nationals three teams came together for the first time drawn from players from various states all over. The Atlanta team had come together mainly through relationships with the Clan naGael Irish team in Atlanta and with some snappy recruiting by those players and some others, the Atlanta team were able to take home the prize.

That weekend talking to Kathryn several times I understood she had well and truly been bitten by the footy bug. Despite her apparently self titled nickname of "BitchKat" Kathryn was professional in her outlook, friendly to an extreme and hugely enthusiastic to somehow grow the women’s teams and sport around the country.

After the final game was over talking harmlessly about the potential of the game and even its current players Kathryn said. "Wayne wouldn’t be great to one day go down to Australia with a team". Myself at that time being the diplomatic club President and knowing how much work would be needed for that to happen, nodded in apparent agreement “Yes wouldn’t it be great". I remember thinking later "she should be called CrazyKat not BitchKat" as the idea of heading down there seemed nearly laughable.

Fast forward less than 5 years and here I am sitting on a plane bound for LA to join 24 spirited and ground breaking USA women, Aussie Rules footy players all of them, on the first ever tour of a National Women’s Aussie Rules Football team to the home of the game. My old home, Australia.

It is really hard to put into words how proud I am to be given this opportunity by the USAFL, the players themselves and to share with my fellow coaches this historic journey. I grew up in Melbourne and lived and breathed footy from a very young age. From the pretend games in the hallway of our old Victorian home, with a football made of one of my father’s socks stuffed with some of my t shirts to similar epic encounters with anything that might look like a ball in our grassed backyard. That yard was to me the MCG on Grand Final day every afternoon for all my early school years, I played, coached, scored and commentated hundreds and hundreds of games in that yard in lower class Elsternwick just out of Melbourne. Who would have thought I would be coming back like this one day.

They say "hard work will get you to the finish but passion will mean you are a winner regardless". Actually I just made that up, but it’s how I feel about those days. You lived and breathed the game, its players, its characters, the roar of the crowd and shuffle to the trams afterward if you were lucky enough to see a game.

The forecast is fine and sunny for LA, but I won’t be going out to play. But it will be another moment in a historical page of this sport, not only for Aussie Rules football in the USA but back there too. Australia.

Wayne Kraska

Wayne Kraska is the Head Coach of the USA Freedom on their first tour to Australia. You can follow his and his fellow coaches’ blog on http://www.usfootynews.com