This week’s West Aussie Great is Jan Cooper, who has held just about every title you can imagine, including the Order of Australia and the first football manager in the AFLW and across WA.

When Cooper began promoting female footy, there were roughly 16,000 participants across the country. Today that number is nearly 600,000.

“I feel quite privileged to be given the opportunity to lead this charge with women and girls’ footy,” said Cooper, who currently works with West Coast.

LISTEN to her chat on Breakfast below

She told Breakfast host Michael Genovese the decision makers didn’t believe a women’s league would succeed due to the brutality of the game, but the opposite was true.

“Right from the get go, when we first did focus groups across Australia, that’s precisely what they wanted to have, and why they wanted to play the code, because of the physicality of it,” she said.