WITH women like Alicia Eva, Emma Kearney, Shae Sloane and Chloe McMillan involved, the future of women in coaching looks extremely bright.

Each of the quartet are currently coaching at AFL clubs, with three of the four involved in their club's men’s programs.

Each of their journeys is different, but all share the same passion for the game. 

Kearney and Eva are current AFLW players (with North Melbourne and Greater Western Sydney respectively), while for Sloane an injury-riddled playing career led to her transition into coaching at the end of 2021.

For McMillan, she played junior football with the boys before moving to coaching in 2016 when she began her career with the Dandenong Stingrays in the Coates Talent League.

Eva and Kearney are pioneers in the coaching space, starting their journeys a long time prior to the inception of AFLW.

“When I was 18 years old, I finished playing footy at my junior club in East Malvern,” Eva said.

“I loved that environment so much that I wanted to stay in it. I guess my coaching journey really took off before playing because AFLW wasn't a thing then.”

Kearney also coached at Flemington Juniors Football Club in Melbourne’s north-west.

“I started playing when I was 21 through Melbourne Uni and through that, we had a little partnership with Flemington Juniors Football Club. So I coached under 11s and under 12 girls teams,” Kearney said.

Fast-forward to 2025, and the two AFLW stars have risen through the ranks to find themselves as development coaches at their respective clubs. Eva spends her time focusing on opposition analysis while Kearney works within the club’s VFL development team.

With the growth of women playing football, Kearney believes that there will be more former players looking to stay involved in the game and will transition into coaching.

“If you look at just purely the men's system, a lot of the male coaches - whether it's assistants or head coaches - have come through as a player,” Kearney said. 

“So I think the more that girls are coming through the AFL system, they've been exposed to really good coaches, we're going to see more and more coaches coaching at the highest level.”

Having been involved with Melbourne's coaching set-up since injuring her knee as a player in 2019, Sloane agreed.

“I think having more female coaches around football clubs is just really exciting for players who are potentially looking to do that as a career post-footy, just seeing that there is a pathway post-football to stay involved in the club,” Sloane said.

McMillan has been coaching at Collingwood since 2017, just prior to the inaugural season of AFLW.

During that time she's been involved in the club’s VFLW and AFLW teams, now finding herself in the men's programs as a development coach for the AFL side while also coaching the midfield in the VFL.

"I think it's been great to have more women involved in the men's players' pathways. I think early on, it was probably a little bit foreign," she said.

“To have a female come into the environment was different at the start and probably something they weren't quite as used to. But the boys have been awesome with welcoming me and making me feel like a coach, not a female coach.”

Current AFLW players themselves, Kearney and Eva both also coach within their club’s men’s programs and believe that men having female coaches is becoming more normalised.

“I've actually found that a lot of the younger boys just treat me like the rest of the coaches,” Kearney said.

“They don't treat me any different. So I think just normalising that women are involved in footy is a really positive thing and I think AFLW has been able to set the right tone in that.”

Women’s Coaching Month is a chance to celebrate these pioneers and recognise their achievements. But for McMillan, she hopes that one day, that gender won’t be a discussion point.

“[It's] great to be recognised and especially for a lot of the coaches out there that do a lot of hard work," McMillan said.

“Hopefully one day it's seen as we're all coaches. It's not a female or a male coach. We're all sort of working our way through to be equal and have a voice, I guess, which is exciting.

"But there's a lot of other coaches out there that are extremely talented and hopefully one day they're sitting where I am and get to experience the things that I've been able to do.”

Women's Coaching Month runs throughout the month of July.