Five years ago, Jess Woodroffe was introduced to a massive club with a big heart – and facilities that hadn’t been updated for over 45 years. Her advocacy will help to change all of that, and more, and the Launceston City FC board director and secretary couldn’t be prouder.
Woodroffe is a social researcher by trade. She never played youth football – she loved watching her older brother play, but growing up, she felt that the sport was for men and boys only.
Now, she has been able to use her professional skills to help change all of that for young girls playing the sport today.
She helped her club become the first in Tasmania to gain both a Football Australia Club Changer one and two star, and secured both a CommBank Growing Football Fund through Football Australia, state government infrastructure funding, and an Australian Government Play Our Way grant for infrastructure, benefiting women and girls in sport.
“I’ve worked most of my career in community engagement, working with all levels of government, doing research and managing partnerships, and learning at a community level what the impact that grassroots organisations and sports can have,” she told Our Game.
“So I volunteered my time - actually with the encouragement of my son’s soccer coach - and wrote their first strategic plan, and then I was asked to join the board after that.
“It was easy for me, because I could see that football is a great sport. It's a good news story: the people involved in clubs, the well-being, the sense of connection and community that it enables, and the sense of pride.
“I could see that my skills could help Launceston City with governance and in building a strategic vision and with targeted grant writing by gathering the voices of our members.”
The club has about 750 playing members, of whom around 600 are juniors. Not only does it provide a space for players to thrive at a community level, it has also produced a wave of talented footballers including a CommBank Junior Matilda, with goalkeeper Amelie Millar representing Launceston in the latest CommBank Junior Matildas Under 17 squad. Woodroffe watched her older son play against Amelie, and has been in awe of her since.
Woodroffe knew that one of the first steps of creating a strategic plan for the club was understanding the views of members of the club. She began running Female Football Forums – another of which will take place in Female Football Week 2025 – to allow the club to really listen to its female members.
“We run female football forums, and we've been collecting the voices of women and girls actively through a designated project for quite a while,” she explained.
“We needed to know where we could be working and what was needed. It might be about how we work towards rejoining the women’s state league, about uniforms, explaining how our development programs might work, or sharing with parents about what our vision was, finding sponsors or upskilling coaches - we were really committed to that.”
One of the pressing issues that came out of the forums were the lacklustre facilities. Women and girls were feeling uncomfortable, some choosing to change in their cars before games or leave the club after games, rather than use the changerooms.
Woodroffe dedicated herself to helping the club secure the funding required to change that reality.
“Securing the Play Our Way grant isn't just a highlight of my time in football, this is probably a highlight of my career – I get a bit emotional thinking about it,” she said.
“We had these set of change rooms, and they were built in 1979 for a team of adult men, and look – the upside is that they have served our club well, and are bomb proof. So we went with the concept of refurbishment of existing infrastructure. We thought - wouldn't it be amazing if we could look at this as a designated standalone female facility?
“We went to the women and older girls in our club and friends in the game, and we asked them: What does a good change room feel like? When you go to a club and you walk in, what do you like? What do you not like?
“Our community got behind it and came up with all sorts of good ideas. What about if we lifted the roofline to allow for more light? You wouldn't need to knock that wall out, because you could put benches there, or we could do this, and we could have an undercover area, and we could have a parents and multipurpose room. It was just incredible.”
Because of the work that had been done collecting the voices of the club’s members, when the opportunity to apply for the grant came around, Woodroffe and the club were prepared to meet the extensive grant criteria.
“It will transform that facility for women and girls in our community for decades to come, and it will be a project that they will be involved in,” she continued.
“They will be part of the subcommittee, and they will bring ideas and meet the architect, and be able to make decisions around design and fit out.
“Part of the other criteria of that grant was demonstrating our commitment to women and girls, and so being able to use the Football Australia Club Changer star, our profile as Football Australia Club Changer Club of the Month, and our action plan around that, was very important.”
Female Football Week 2025 will again see Launceston City FC run forums to continue to understand what their women and girls are feeling including launching a new club sponsorship to support the next wave of female players.
Melita Beard, who is the Project Officer at Football Tasmania, said that she was proud to see clubs activating during Female Football Week to better understand the voices of their members.
“The Female Football Forums run by Launceston City FC have been a fantastic way to celebrate Female Football Week and to help them assess the needs of their female members,” she said.
Woodroffe concluded by encouraging others to use the skills and knowledge that they have in their professional or personal life to volunteer at their own local club.
“I had a lot of imposter syndrome. I was thinking, why would they want me in this club, but I could see what the club were trying to achieve, they just needed a hand” she recalled.
“But sports clubs just need people. They need people that can help in their own way. They need people that have lived experience, that will be happy to volunteer on a barbecue or manage a team. They need coaches that can be there on weekends. They need people at a governance level.
“I would say to anyone thinking about it, just give it a crack. Be part of cultural change. Be part of being a volunteer and meet some amazing people”.
“You’d be surprised with how much difference you can make.”