Carl Dilena believes being granted one of the AFL’s first women’s team licences will provide a competitive advantage in growing female supporter and membership bases.

North Melbourne submitted its application for one of four Victoria licences in the National Women’s League (NWL) last week with Dilena telling The Herald Sun’s Grant Baker that no one has done more for women’s football than the Roos.

“We are very prepared and have a long history in women’s football to hit the ground running,” Dilena said.

“From our perspective we’ve got an existing and robust model for women’s football given our existing and long-term partnership with Melbourne University Women’s Football Club. They are the biggest women’s football club in Australia.

“They train here at Arden St and we support them with player development and mentoring from our coaches.

“They have been able to develop about 10 players who have played in the existing Melbourne and Western Bulldogs teams. So their talent pathways are excellent.”

Dilena said the club’s model was “low-cost, low-risk, ready to roll and commercially viable straight away”. Key planks include the expansion of the award-winning Huddle community program into Wyndham and Tasmania, linking in with a junior academy focusing on the development of girl’s and women’s football.

Dilena said the National Women’s League could be used to address financial inequities in the AFL.

“If you are looking at the longer-term strategy of the AFL, to reduce these inequities the AFL needs to undertake policies which assist smaller supporter based clubs to grow their supporter and membership bases. That is just logical,” he said.

“The concern that I have is that those clubs that receive the first round of licenses will have a competitive advantage in building the female supporter and membership bases as well as their club’s overall brand profile.

“If you just hand licenses to the bigger clubs, you are just reinforcing the inequities in the competition.

“In the interest of competitive balance and the longer term strategic objectives the AFL, it would be logical to grant licenses to clubs such as ourselves who are really striving to grow our supporter bases and being very competitive in the competition.”