When you were growing up were you ever told you “throw like a girl” or “run like a girl”? Were these remarks intended as in insult? When did doing anything "like a girl" become a bad thing?

Hopefully the meaning of "kick like a girl" is about to take on a whole new meaning, with Australia leading the charge in changing what it means to be a female in a male-dominated sport.

In a long awaited historical moment for Australian sport, the first ever Women’s Australian Football League debuted on the weekend.

AFL WOMENS from Tina on Vimeo.

The crowd was packed to capacity as the inaugural match between Carlton and Collingwood kicked off on Friday night. Over 24,000 fans filled Ikon Park with the AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan turning away over 2,000 more spectators.  It is also turning out to be the most popular women’s sport on Australian TV, second only to the Olympic Games.

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The fans were not just women they are a mix of male and female, young and old. There were new punters exposed to women’s football as well as long time die-hard fans.

Australian rules football (AFL), otherwise known as "Aussie rules" was first established as the Victorian Football League in 1896, the game gradually grew to include interstate teams and became the legendary sporting institution it is today with a huge fan base around the country.

The elite sport has been dominated by male sportsmen who have enjoyed a celebrity status and been seen as role models for aspiring young boys. The need for more elite women in spectator sports to inspire young girls is long overdue.

A new billboard campaign, #ChangeOurGame was recently launched by the Victorian Government and VicHealth in an attempt to boost the profile of female athletes.

In a recent ABC article, state Minister for Health Jill Hennessy commented on how women are still unrepresented in most areas of sport.

"There is pay disparity, we've got women wanting to participate in sport where they don't have the facilities available to them, where the culture has not changed adequately," she said.

The overwhelming support for the women’s matches on the weekend, is a testament to how popular the sport is and how keen people are for the AFL to become more inclusive. After the success of the weekends first games, skeptics of the women’s league were made to eat their words.

While filming the reality show "I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here," journalist and talkback radio show host Steve Price, called the AFL Women’s league “a joke and a waste of money.”

Rohan Connolly is a, radio broadcaster and journalist specialising in Australian rules football. Connolly said on sport radio station SEN SportSENtral, “What a lot of sceptics don’t realise is how big a shot in the arm this could be for the whole sport. You’ve suddenly got half the population now who aren’t automatically excluded from the dream of playing the sport at an elite level by virtue of their gender.”

“You’d be pretty silly now if you ran a local footy club and didn’t offer girls and women a chance to play in their own team rather than just passively support — making the sandwiches for the blokes.”

In response to the skeptics who, in the lead up to the women’s league debut, complained about the level of skill that could be expected and compared the standard of play to that of Men’s AFL, Connolly said: “Apart from the obvious physical differences between men and women, these girls are part-timers, most of whom have never been given opportunity of decent facilities and coaching until the last few months.

“Let’s see how quickly skill levels and game sense improve with the benefit of that. I’m tipping it will happen pretty quickly.”

The evidence for how inspiring this new women’s league is for young girls is already evident.

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Majak Daw is a professional Australian rules footballer playing for the North Melbourne Football club. His young sister Mary Daw grew up watching him on the sidelines. She told Channel Ten’s The Project: “At first I didn’t think that there would be any future in girls playing footy.”

Now she can turn her dreams of following in her brothers footsteps into a reality, and she is well on her way having already been drafted to the Western Jets Youth Girls Academy. The Daw family arrived in Australia in 2003 as refugees after fleeing civil war in Sudan. AFL helped them to join their new community and meet people.

Amateur footballer Brigitte Crouch told the ABC, "I played Auskick when I was five years old and then had to stop playing footy because there was just nowhere to go with it. To see that these women had these dreams as well and are living it, oh it's incredible, makes you think you can do it as well."

Carlton player Darcy Vescio told the Herald Sun, “I guess it’s a sign of how far we have come and how much interest there is in women’s footy at the moment and how much it’s going to grow from this competition.”

There is sure to be exciting times ahead for women in Australian sport. The women’s league is not only an inspiration to future sportstar hopefuls but it teaches girls that they are allowed to dream big and have the same aspirations as boys their age. Because no one should be told they can’t do something or become something just because of their gender. For many girls, being an AFL star is no longer just a dream or a laughable notion, it’s now a reality.