Echuca announced last Thursday that it would not have the numbers to field a team in the Goulburn Murray Women’s League citing a late departure of players.
The club made a late attempt to rally additional numbers at training on Wednesday night, April 1, but the effort fell short and the original decision to go on hiatus for 2026 was confirmed.
Amidst off-season talks, Moama has emerged with a women’s side, adding to its current presence in the under-14 and youth girls competitions, and will join the league this season.
Moama president Scott Slater said the club approached former Moama junior girls to gauge their interest in rejoining the Mowers if they could form a senior side.
“We've been working on developing a female program for a number of years,” he said.
“In the past nine years, with Echuca Bombers having a women's team we would always encourage the girls to go over and play seniors there, but we got to a point that we thought that there was probably enough numbers in town to have two teams and if we couldn't, we would have certainly looked at working together with them.
“Our girls did approach AFL Goulburn Murray to potentially put in a senior side, which they were okay with, and it certainly wasn't meant to be at the detriment of the Echuca Bombers.”
Slater said both clubs met with the league a few weeks back and at the time registrations were low across the board, with players often not officially registering until the last minute.
The clubs resolved to see how many numbers they could drum up over the next few days, to determine if either would be viable for 2026.
Echuca president Justin Hatfield had a slightly different take on events, indicating his club was caught off-guard by Moama’s attempt to introduce a team.
“It was disappointing because discussions were had to try and grow the women's game and from an Echuca perspective we believed that (Moama) were looking to put a team in for 2027,” he said.
“We had 32 girls at training and then (Moama) were given late admission only 2-3 weeks ago to put a team in.
“Unfortunately, there's not enough girls in the area at the moment to facilitate two teams and given that we are in the situation we are without clubrooms Echuca decided to allow Moama to go ahead on their own because they currently have the facilities, and we don't.”
Hatfield said the club had 15-20 players still around the program that are currently without a club, but are free to find a home elsewhere for this season.
“They're going to continue to train as a group and be involved with our footy club,” he said.
“They believe over the last nine years that they've built a really good core group of girls that have enjoyed each other and the club environment, and they just want to see that maintained.
“We'd love to see the girls return next year and also to add to that a junior program where you can see natural growth like we do with our juniors in the male system.”
Slater said the displaced players were welcome to link up with Moama and he addressed a combined training with words to that effect last Wednesday.
The Mowers will join Shepparton Swans and Cobram as new additions to the women’s league, bringing the competition up to eight sides, and will begin their season on April 19 with a visit to the Tigers.
“We had mid-70s on the track last Wednesday night between our 14s, youth girls and seniors and the beauty is if we are short on numbers some weeks, we can elevate our youth girls up to play a few games,” Slater said.
“Having that base underneath to supplement the senior list is certainly a positive and that's why we built it from the bottom up.
“We think we've developed the right pathways.”
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