Tier-two players will receive $55,559 (up from $28,697),while tier-three players will be paid $47,372 (up from $24,468). McLachlan said the one-year deal also includes expanded parental leave,allowing parents of children up to three-years-old access.
McLachlan said the new one-year CBA was an “express version”,despitereports some AFLW players were growing increasingly frustrated with the league’s slow negotiations with pre-season for the upcoming August season to start soon.
“I understand that given the movement of the season that it was tight,but actually,it’s a pretty quick turnaround when you look[at] the scale of the deal and the changes that were made,” McLachlan said.
The one-year deal maintains the season at 10 rounds as the AFL preferred,despite Essendon,Hawthorn,Sydney and Port Adelaide entering the competition. There will now be an extra week of finals,with a top eight introduced for the now 18-team,540-player competition.
Both McLachlan and Marsh said the AFL and AFLPA still had to determine progressive increases in season length next year,with the AFLPA pushing a fully professional league with all teams playing each other once by 2026.
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“This has happened quickly and we and the players agree August is the right time to play this coming season,” Marsh said.
“But,there is a lot to get done and to try to knock it over a three-year deal – with all the detail that’s to be resolved – as much as we tried,I don’t think we could get there so quickly.”
North Melbourne captain Emma Kearney and Western Bulldogs skipper Ellie Blackburn said they were also pleased the new deal recognises the previously unpaid extra hours of training players completed.
“It’s a bit of a relief because our off-seasons are typically really long,” Kearney said. “We’re really competitive,we want to be growing the game and a lot of the work that we were doing was when we weren’t getting paid.”
McLachlan said the new pay deal meant the total AFLW salary bill was nearly four times that of any other professional sport in the country. However,female domestic cricketers – of which there are fewer than AFLW players – have higher average salaries.
Under the recently signed MoU between Cricket Australia and the Australian Cricketers Association,the average salary for female domestic cricketers who play both 50-over and T20 formats is now about $86,000,with players taking part in both a 12-game national one-day league and the 14-game WBBL competition.
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