Yesterday I was lucky enough to stop in on the first interclub games for Swans girls/womens teams, when the U17s & U19s played the Giants at Tom Wills Oval, Homebush. The crowd was modest but the girls were passionate and determined and won both matches. (I have posted more in the Women's Footy forum.) Unfortunately I couldn't stay until the end but today I saw the tweets with videos of the girls singing the team song after their historic victories: Swans girls celebrate historic victories (sydneyswans.com.au).

I have to say that watching the singing of those songs it seems really jarring to me that they are singing "while her loyal sons march onwards to victory". The Bulldogs encountered a similar issue with their team song which begins "Sons of the west" and later has the lyrics "you can't beat the boys". They addressed this by creating a second version of the song beginning "daughters of the west" and later substituting "you can't beat the girls". Now that our girls and women are beginning to play other teams and to sing the song, I think we need to look at doing something similar although, personally, I would favour finding a single word that could be sung by all players. My suggestion (without having given it a lot of thought) would be to say "bloods" as in "while her loyal bloods" march onwards to victory".

What do others think? Is it ok for women and girls to have to sing "her sons march onwards"? Should we have an alternate version of the song with "daughters" instead of "sons"? Should we tweak the lyrics so the same song can be sung by all? Is there a better substitute word for "sons" than "bloods"?