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Moana Hope Reveals What It Costs To Be A Female AFL Player

5 hours sleep a night for $5,000 a season?
Moana Hope is a leading goalkicker in the league, a full-time carer to her sister and a traffic operations manager.
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Moana Hope is a leading goalkicker in the league, a full-time carer to her sister and a traffic operations manager.

Moana Hope kicked six goals in the Women's All Star AFL Match on the weekend, and on Monday night she revealed what it costs to play the game she adores so much.

Most of the players will earn about $5,000 a season, which combined is still probably less than AFL CEO Gill McLachlan (which you can read all about here). So, like Hope, most will still need to be working another job.

Hope, who has been signed to the Western Bulldogs, revealed her gruelling schedule on The 7:30 Report on Monday night as a 28-year-old traffic operations manager, newly minted AFL player and full-time carer.

(Hope takes care of her 21-year-old sister Livinia Hope, who has Möbius syndrome, which typically paralyses the face and eyes.)

Ready? Hold on tight.

"The average day starts at 3:00am, so between 3am and 6am I do the admin side of the business, and between 6am and 8am I will be training in the gym," Hope told Leigh Sales.

"Then 8am to 9am I will be getting Vinni ready for school -- that's my sister -- and dropping her off to school and her programs. Then I work between 9am to 3pm and I pick her up after her program and I prep dinner when I'm working at the same time, which normally takes me between 3pm to 6pm."

*Deep breath.*

"Then I train from 6pm to 8pm which is normally skill work and then I finish any work I didn't finish throughout the day between 8pm and 10pm and go to bed. Wake up and repeat!"

That's five hours sleep, if she's lucky.

Hope has 14 siblings and her mother is very ill.

When it comes to getting a fair and decent paycheck, the Western Bulldogs player said she'll leave that to league management.

"I feel blessed to be able to put on an AFL jersey. The money is going to be great but I love the game so much that I'm just excited to play it and being able to have that opportunity is amazing for me," Hope said.

"So I know the AFL will do right by us and we leave that in the hands of the AFL and the AFL's PA. I'll just concentrate on football."

The match on Saturday pulled in more than one million viewers, making it the most watched AFL match of the year.

So if that's any sign of what's to come, then things are looking up.

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