By Lauren Henry

The Western Bulldogs AFLW team visited Horsham as part of the 2026 AFLW Community Camp last week.

The Bulldogs, also stopping by Ballarat on their way up the Western Highway, visited schools and junior clubs, and led Auskick clinics on their two-day camp.

The Bulldogs also had an open training session at Coughlin Park, Horsham, on Friday, where AFLW Western Bulldogs head coach Tamara Hyett led a full training session, giving fans an opportunity to meet and greet their AFLW heroes. 

The community camp program gives AFLW players the opportunity to connect with women and girls in remote and regional communities across the country – giving back to local schools and clubs and inspiring the next generation of AFLW stars.

AFLW Bulldogs player Elle Bennetts said it had been beneficial to have a greater reach into the Horsham area.

“It’s been  really great to get to know some of the younger kids, and hopefully they can play some footy in the future,” she said.

“The couple of players who I’ve been with today, we’ve been to some smaller schools that had a total of about 25 students –  which obviously you don’t see that in inner Melbourne – and they were super grateful to have us come and attend the school and share our experiences.

“ We’re trying to obviously get as many young girls involved in AFL as possible, so hopefully after this week we do have many more girls, particularly around Horsham, attend Auskick and Superkick, et cetera, in the future.”

Bennetts said today’s AFL women’s competitions allowed girls to have higher aspirations compared with when she was a girl, there was not an AFLW competition.

“Hopefully by seeing that it is an opportunity for a young girl to live out their dream as a AFLW player, hopefully we do get more participants in football,” she said.

Bennetts said the AFLW Bulldogs players often visited Ballarat, but not further regional areas.

“It is great to come to Horsham because we haven’t been here as a team. I’d love to do it more often, so hopefully we can make that happen in the future,” she said.

“We’ve got a game in Ballarat in round eight at Mars Stadium, so obviously that’ll be one of the closer matches for the Horsham community, so hopefully we can have lots of people come and support us and jump on the bandwagon.”

Bennetts, a midfielder and defender, arrived at the Bulldogs in 2021, after initially being signed by the GWS Giants as a rookie ahead of the 2018 season, having come from a successful netball background. 

The AFLW players are in the midst of their pre-season ahead of their season kick-off on August 15 against Gold Coast Suns.

“We’ve had a really good last four or five months, focusing on our fitness and our skill execution, which skill execution was a focus coming off the back end of our season last year,” Bennetts said.

“We’re starting to see that in our drills in pre-season, and we’ve got a relatively healthy list, with just a couple of short-term injuries, so that’s always a good sign. Hopefully we’ll be healthy for many weeks to come.”

Bennetts said the Bulldogs finished in 12th position last season, missing out on a finals’ spot.

“I’m hoping we can continue to build our contested game and our defence, which is something that last year we probably felt were our stronger two parts to our game,” she said.

“We’ve got a range of younger players coming through, as well as myself and a number of other players with a bit more experience, so I think we’ve got a great group that hopefully we can make finals this year – that is our target.”

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