AFLW has come a long way but this player 'doesn’t want to settle'

When Jenna Richardson scrolls through TikTok, she's now starting to come across AFLW content — and lot's of it.

To the inaugural Hawthorn defender, it's a sign of the game's evolution and how it's connecting to fans.

"My feed is now full of different people talking about AFLW," Richardson tells ABC Sport.

"There are videos of people analysing the games… It's nice because they analyse the men's game, so then to see them do it for the W, [it's good]".

The Hawks are currently in finals, where the games are bigger and have a brighter spotlight on them.

After securing Hawthorn's first finals win last week (against Gold Coast), the side are now gearing up for a semi-final against Carlton on Saturday at Princes Park, a ground that drew 5,000 fans for the weekend's prior qualifying finals.

This season, the overall AFLW home-and-away attendance record was broken in round 10, helped by the introduction of double-headers, with the two crowds at Docklands drawing 20,455 and 14,573, respectively.

Excluding the matches with men's games, standalone games were at an average of 2,500 per game, similar to the 2025 figures.

"I'm pretty level-headed in being able to see the games come a long way," Richardson said.

"So whilst I am so grateful for everything we get, and I feel quite spoiled at times, I also know there's a lot of room for growth — and not to settle."

The biggest change Richardson wants to see is the number of regular season rounds increase from 12 — which she really feels during finals.

"At least playing every team once to make a more realistic ladder at the end of the season," she said.

Every team's fixture is dependent on where they finished the year before, meaning sides that finished lower theoretically play more fellow-lower sides, and vice versa with the top sides.

It can result in some teams making finals that get caught out straight away, and some that could make a finals run with more rounds, missing out.

"Playing the top teams, we always get the most out of… the more you play the best teams, the better you becomel. We did," Richardson said, noting Hawthorn were the only team to beat North Melbourne in three years.

"We played Adelaide (not in finals) and got beat. I thought they were really good to play against.

"They have shown in the past, for however many years, that they're up for finals contention. I feel like if there were more games, I wouldn't be surprised if they were in there too."

Richardson said, she'd then like to see increased salaries for support staff and assistant coaches in women's programs.

Richardson notes how stretched programs can be, which adds pressure on coaches, assistant coaches and support staff.

"They [line coaches] sacrifice a lot from their other jobs, like they're usually losing money to come and help our program," she said.

"They have to do so much for us; watching vision, say after a game to get their reviews ready for us, then individual reviews, and that's all outside their other job that they'd go to say on the Monday.

"Those two days a week where they're at our club, they're taking a massive pay cut from their other job."

With the W awards coming up, Richardson is also not opposed to the introduction of a defender award, given the best and fairest generally goes to a midfielder and there is a medal for leading goalkicker.

"Why not?," Richardson asked.

"That'd actually be cool because we're never in those, you know, fun photos or celebrating goals that are down there — so that'd be fun."