For everyone else, it’s a way to protect their teeth, but the mouthguard Moana Hope wears while she’s playing AFL means all her dreams have come true.

In 2000, AFL CEO Wayne Jackson said society “wasn’t ready” to watch women playing AFL. In 2011, celebrity boofhead Sam Newman called the idea “unbelievably stupid and ridiculous”.

Even in 2016, when the national AFL women’s comp became a reality, former Adelaide coach Graham Cornes wrote in The Advertiser that it just doesn’t “look right”.

Today, at 1pm, the Brisbane Lions will host Adelaide at Metricon Stadium in the first AFL Women’s Grand Final. There’ll be a half-hour entertainment program before the match, starring Australian singer-songwriter Megan Washington.

Hope won’t be playing, but that’s because she signed with Collingwood. And has absolutely no regrets about that, because the past eight weeks has been nothing short of a dream run she never thought possible in her lifetime.

Until she was 13, Hope had to play with the boys at Glenroy to get a game, until she was eligible to join Hadfield in the VWFL at a senior level, as long as she agreed to wear a helmet.

16 years later, Hope is getting paid to wear a Gameday mouthguard. Yesterday, she got dropped off at the Australian Grand Prix in a helicopter.

And for the past eight weeks she’s been getting paid, by Collingwood, to play senior football, in front of a crowd screaming her name.

The formation of the women’s national league might have been knocking on the door for a few years, but it still caught everyone by surprise when AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan announced it late last year.

As did the surge of fans to watch it. They had to shut the gates at the first game at Ikon Park between Hope’s Collingwood and Carlton. 24,000 fans drank the park dry of beer by halftime.

“It was pretty awesome to be involved in,” Hope said.

“The noise. I loved it, and the best thing about it was it didn’t matter who kicked the goal or who took the big mark, the crowd were behind it, every single kick every single goal, and it’s kept building through the season.

“The more the AFL show, the more people will come. We were getting people who’d never watched an AFL game before, never followed football didn’t go for either teams, they just wanted to be there to watch what was happening.”

They’re expecting at least 10,000 to today’s grand final. The crowd numbers have stood up week after week, bringing suburban grounds back to life with screaming fans, and more importantly, young girls – and boys – with guernseys and painted faces sporting their heroine’s numbers.

Those were the real highlights that made Hope step back and think “Yeah, this is working.”

“I thought every moment was that moment,” she said. “For the players, seeing kids having their numbers on their jumpers, having their numbers written on their face, having hundreds of messages a day on social media from the young girls and boys… I could talk about it for days.

“Everywhere I go, people are stopping me to talk about the game and how amazing it is, so it’s pretty bloody awesome.”

Last year, the growth in female participation in Aussie Rules football was double that of male participation. Of the 1.4 million registered players around the country, 27 per cent are now women.

In the past 12 months, 350 new women’s teams have registered to play AFL.

And last week, AFLW boss Simon Lethlean said the league “had a process in place” if a transgender woman wanted to play AFLW.

The critics are still resolute. They mention the poor skills and the low scores, ignoring the fact that the games are half as long.

And the league still has to put up with rubbish like this, which, believe it or not, sinks to body-shaming as one reason why AFL Women’s League shouldn’t be cluttering up precious Monday night sports bulletins.

But Erin Phillips can bomb a 50-metre goal: