Their husbands and brothers run the water bottles or help out goal umpiring while the Auburn Giants women’s Aussie Rules side train for the biggest game of their lives.
More than a fifth of the squad has never played competitive sport and 70 per cent drop out every year when they fall pregnant or marry.
Yet tomorrow they will become the first predominantly Muslim women’s team to play on the Melbourne Cricket Ground as a curtain-raiser to the GWS Giants’ game against Collingwood.
“This is the MCG – for some of our team it will be a dream come true,” founder and operations manager Amna Karra-Hassan told The Saturday Telegraph.
“We have created a community around the team as our mums come and run the canteen and siblings help out as well,” she said.
The Auburn Giants will fly to Melbourne tomorrow and play the historic nine-a-side demonstration game for 20 minutes before the main AFL fixture.
As a bonus, they are scheduled to return to Sydney on the same flight as the GWS Giants.
“It is an amazing opportunity as a lot of the girls have never played in a stadium, let alone the MCG,” player and coach of the club’s youth girls’ team Yash Kammoun said.
“AFL is foreign to most of the girls and they are learning the techniques of the sport. But we are doing really well this year and have won four out of our five games.”
The club, which was formed in 2011, usually plays in front of a handful of family and friends at Mona Park in Auburn.
The pioneers are the first women’s AFL team in Western Sydney, changing their name and colours from the Auburn Tigers to the Auburn Giants as part of a partnership with the GWS Giants.
The trip to the AFL capital has been sponsored by Harvey Norman, which became involved in the club when chief executive Katie Page met Ms Karra-Hassan at The Telegraph’s Fair Go For The West gala dinner last year.
Ms Page was so impressed with Ms Karra-Hassan she approached her friend and Giants chairman Tony Shepherd about partnering with the Auburn women’s team, and the rest is history.
Mr Shepherd said: “This team continues to break down barriers and we are proud to have them as part of the Giants.”