The influence of women at the Collingwood Football Club is as strong as at any club.
A total of 26 women are on staff in the club’s administration, while five women work in the football area of the business. There are also several women who play key roles as volunteers at AFL and VFL level.
One of these women is Margie Amarfio, who is the General Manager of Sponsorship and Marketing.
She told The Club on FOX FOOTY on Tuesday that gender has no significance in the office at a football club.
“I’ve never been conscious of my gender working in football. It’s only occasionally that I’ll sit back and go, ‘I’m the only female in the room’, in some meetings. It doesn’t really affect my thinking from that perspective,” says Amarfio.
“There are a lot of women working in football and more and more are breaking into management positions.”
The 26 women who work in the club’s administration fill positions in areas such as finance, sponsorship, public relations, membership and sales.
As Amarfio told The Club: “Women can fulfil senior management positions and positions right across the business, so it’s not just having women in traditional roles, making them a role or giving them a massage or something like that.
“It’s also having women who are equals with the men in the business, so I think it’s not just a responsibility to them as players but to young men to show them that they’re sisters, partners, daughters when they have them will have an equal opportunity to be participating in this business.”
The importance of women at Collingwood extends to board level where Alisa Camplin serves as one of the Magpies’ seven board members.
“All the ladies that are around the Collingwood Footy Club play a massive part and without them, Collingwood wouldn’t be the successful club that it is” - Alex Fasolo, 17/7/12
Camplin brings expertise from both business and sport, having worked as a senior executive at IBM where she managed a team of more than 300 people. She also contributes to several sporting administrations including the Australian Olympic Committee (AOC), the Olympic Winter Institute of Australia and is the Deputy Chair for the Australian Sports Commission.
She is best known in the public arena for her gold medal performance in the women’s freestyle skiing at the 2002 Winter Olympics, and is the second woman to sit on the board of the club, following in the footsteps of Sally Capp.
Earlier this week, Collingwood coach Nathan Buckley caught up with 50 participants (players, coaches, umpires and manages) in the Women's High Performance Academy at the Magpies’ recovery session at St Kilda Beach on Tuesday.
The first-year coach paid tribute to the women at Collingwood who contribute to the on going successes experience on and off the field.
"It's fantastic. One of the great things about AFL is how inclusive it is; racial, religious and gender," the Magpie legend said.
"Women's week is a fantastic thing to celebrate.??
"I don't think we should wait until this week. It happens under the surface often.??
"We've got some great women at Collingwood that are the glue and make things tick, and it's great to have a standalone round to celebrate that."
