Just under 600 people flocked to the Crown Ballroom for Fremantle’s fourth International Women’s Day luncheon, presented by Programmed.

The day was more than a celebration of Fremantle’s AFLW team, who are currently leading the league with a 4-0 record.

As well as captain Kara Antonio, a number of prominent female figures spoke on the day, including board member Professor Colleen Hayward, sports presenter Neroli Meadows and the AFL’s general manager of commercial operations Kylie Rogers.

There was a second panel including Programmed’s general manager of risk and legal Anna Bagley and Woodside’s senior vice president of power Jill Hoffmann. 

The afternoon was rounded out by a presentation from Samantha Wills, who founded one of Australia’s best-known accessories brands.

Fremantle leader Hayley Miller said the afternoon was a great bonding experience for the Freo players in attendance.

“It’s been awesome and really inspiring listening to some powerful women, not just sports people but business women and hearing how they’ve made their own path in male dominated industries,” Miller said.

“It was really empowering and we had about 10 of the girls here today and it was awesome to catch up with them outside of the footy.”

In a media conference during the event, captain Kara Antonio spoke of the importance of Freo’s International Women’s Day clash against Brisbane, which pits the top teams from the AFLW’s conferences against each other.

Both teams are unbeaten heading into the game, with Freo having a perfect record and Brisbane with three wins and a draw.

“Every game is a must win in this competition,” Antonio said.

“We’re halfway through and being 4-0 is a fantastic start for us.

“To get a win this weekend will really set up the second half of the season for us.

“We’ve had some narrow wins and we’ve addressed that and we’re looking forward to putting some things in practice in the next few weeks.” 

Antonio said she was looking forward to playing in front of a bumper crowd at Fremantle Oval, where Fremantle is unbeaten in their past seven games.

“It always nice to play in front of a home crowd that’s almost 100 per cent in purple,” Antonio said.

“We love Fremantle Oval, we’ve obviously got a great track record there but we’re not focused too much on that.

“We’re focused on starting really strongly and playing the way we know we can, which we probably haven’t done so well in the past couple of weeks.

“We want to make a big impact this weekend.”