All-star team of women's Australian rules footballers
Emma Kearney was selected in the first eight AFL Women's All-Australian teams
The AFL Women's All-Australian team is an all-star team of women's Australian rules footballers playing in the AFL Women's (AFLW), selected by a panel at the end of each season. It represents a complete team, including interchange players and a coach, of the best-performed players during the home-and-away season. The first AFL Women's All-Australian team was selected in 2017 following the competition's inaugural season.[1] The team also follows the AFL's tradition of the All-Australian coach being the coach of that season's premiership-winning side, with no coach being selected in 2020 when no premiership was awarded.
Despite its nature, the AFL Women's All-Australian team is only ceremonial: the AFL Women's has not played any all-star matches as of season seven, and the difference in skill level between the All-Australian team and the nearest international competitor is currently too large for any contest to be competitive.
Like in the Australian Football League (AFL) with their All-Australian team since 1991 (following the Victorian Football League's conversion to a national competition), the panel chooses a complete AFLW team consisting of sixteen players and five interchange players (as opposed to eighteen players and four interchange players in the AFL), based on performances during the home-and-away season.[2]
The inaugural team was the only team to contain 22 players, as match-day teams in the AFLW were reduced to 21 players from 2018. The AFL Women's All-Australian team was sponsored by Virgin Australia in the competition's first three seasons and by Toyota in 2020.
