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Pride On Show For All

By Jordan Zoch


In a first for both the club and league, Westmeadows Football Club celebrated LGBTI+ inclusion with the inaugural Westmeadows Pride Cup.

Willowbrook reserve was transformed into a festival for inclusion, as both senior women’s sides ran out in their specially designed Pride guernseys.

Replacing the traditional yellow sash, was a rainbow inspired design, standing out and shining brightly on the black backdrop of the guernsey.

Speaking ahead of the weekends event, Club President Grant Smith outlined how the Pride Cup was another step towards an inclusive and diverse environment down at Westmeadows.

“From a board level we have been very big on all types of diversity,” he said.

The club was therefore thrilled when approached by reigning league best and fairest winner Gemma Wright and other members of the women’s leadership group about the creation of the club’s first Pride Cup.

“Gemma spoke to the other girls in the leadership group with the coaching staff and then approached us to say could they drive this as an initiative, initially was just going to be done with the club. And then it kind of grew to become a league initiative as well.”

From growing through this idea, the club approached the league for their input, something that was wholeheartedly welcomed.

Alongside the pride guernseys on show, the day also included guest speakers, market stalls, and jumper presentations in a function the night before the big event.

“We've got some guest speakers [coming down] Sarah Wright, Gemma sister, who's playing at North Melbourne, she's speaking,” he said.

“A couple of other guest speakers that are coming down just to talk about some of the challenges they face, and how these initiatives are making it easy now for people to express themselves a little bit more freely.”

While Saturday was the first edition of the Pride Cup, the club has hopes that the day and initiative will only grow in the future, something club secretary Liana Keenan also hopes to roll out league wide.

“We really hope that this inaugural Westmeadows Pride cup will be an ongoing cup, [and] we hope that the teams that were involved to play against this weekend will be involved next year,” Keenan said.

From Keenan’s perspective, the Pride Cup is only just the beginning spurred on by the growth of the football club since the inception of the women’s team five years ago.

“We had our inaugural women's team five years ago and it really opened up the club as a community to welcoming people from the LGBT community as well.”

“We had a lot of new players come to the club and they were very open with how they felt welcomed, and we just really wanted to make sure that other clubs felt welcomed as well,” she said.

Involving other clubs in the league proved to be vital, to spread the message of inclusion across more than just Westmeadows.

And while both Westmeadows sides couldn’t get the win on the day, the event proved to be a massive success and one that will run into the future.

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