Yet, in April, the 23-year-old will don the red and white jumper for the South Melbourne District Football Club and take to the Lindsay Hassett Oval in Albert Park to play.

What motivated the Demon fan to join was watching Carlton and Collingwood play in the AFL Women's inaugural match.

"I felt really excited. I felt a real connection with the crowd that we were all there to support women in sport, whether it was your team or not," Ms Macdonald says.

"When the game finished everyone was having a kick-to-kick, everyone was just kicking the footy around, it was really inspiring.

"That was kind of the moment I thought, 'why not have a go? see what it would be like to play'."

Ms Macdonald is one of many women and girls joining local teams in their hundreds following the launch of the AFL's women's league.

Eastern Football League chief executive Phil Murton says the launch of the women's league has "normalised" girls playing footy.

"If you had a daughter and said 'my girl plays Aussie rules', people still raised their eyebrows a little bit," Mr Murton says.

"What I think the AFL Women's competition is doing is just normalising. So now girls playing Aussie rules is the same as girls playing netball and basketball, and all the sports that people have traditionally associated with girls playing sport."

Registrations haven't closed, but the six metropolitan community leagues are reporting heightened interest at all ages for women in football.

Numbers for Auskick for primary school-aged children are also expected to be up. Girls can play in the boys team until they are 13, but girls-only Auskick groups are on the rise.

Peter McDougall, chief executive at the Northern Football League, says they have been trying to get up an under-10s girl's team for the past two years with little success.

But this year they are confident they will have plenty of applicants.

Gary Brown is the regional development manager at AFL Victoria's inner southern region extending from Bayside to Greater Dandenong.

He says the region, which is one of the biggest Auskick centres in the state, has a 77 per cent increase, from the same time last year, in the number of girls signing up to play.

And though,he says, the growth largely results from the efforts of the past five years, the launch of AFLW has had a significant impact.

"For the first time ever, the South Metro Junior Football League has got under-10s, 12s, 14s, 16s and 18s [team] for girls only," Mr Brown says. "We are anticipating up to 60 girls teams in 2017. It is unprecedented."

Michael Sholly, chief executive of the Victorian Amateur Football Association, the largest senior community competition in the state, says the launch of the national women's team has made their plans for a girls-only competition a reality.

"We are anticipating that we will have 40 teams from zero. So we are going to have 1200 new girls playing this year," Mr Sholly says.

"We were always hopeful of getting these sorts of numbers, but it was never guaranteed. But since the AFLW has come on, these sides have now got the numbers to be able to participate."

Ms Macdonald says but for AFLW, she would have joined a more traditional female sport like netball.

"Seeing the women playing, seeing the intensity of the game ... definitely inspired me to give it a go ... and have fun with it," Ms Macdonald says.

"Because of the women's AFL there is this new league for women who want to give it a go.

"It shows women want to play, not only at a national level but also at a community level. Girls and women [are] wanting to join in on our game and be a part of it."