While the Cats have continued to privately lobby the commission, St Kilda have moved to practically pave the way to expansion by pushing for draft concessions for both clubs later this year.

The move would allow the two teams favoured access to players with a view to entering an expanded 10-team competition in 2018.

The Saints women's advisory board - which includes club director Danni Roche, senior businesswoman Lyndsey Cattermole and assistant coach Peta Searle - met last week with club CEO Matt Finnis and endorsed the push to admit a team into the AFLW next year.

Finnis said the AFL was stunting the club's progress by denying it an AFLW side next season. "Our advisory group has formed the view that the longer it takes us to join the competition, the further away we are from a premiership," said Finnis, "and that the AFL should act sooner rather than later."

Finnis added that by sooner he meant next season, and that he planned to meet Geelong to look at list-creation rules with concessions for the new clubs, in the spirit of allowing the two teams the benefits as "expansion" clubs.

And the Saints have moved to further lobby head office by staging a women's exhibition game at Etihad Stadium next month as a curtain-raiser to the club's round-five clash with Geelong. On the eve of unveiling plans for their new home at Moorabbin, where St Kilda will house the St Kilda City Sharks, Finnis said the exhibition game would feature a Saints women's side against a combined Australian Defence forces team.

Brian Cook and his chairman Colin Carter late last month hosted Simone Wilkie at Simonds Stadium and worked to persuade the commissioner, who chairs the AFLW advisory board, that the Cats would lose local talent. The Geelong view is they committed to developing female talent over the past 12 months and could now lose that talent if they are denied access to the competition for another year.

The Cats share the view that AFL bosses, now determined to stick with eight teams next season in a bid to improve the playing standard of the fledgling competition, have broken their original undertaking they could field a team by year two - an undertaking that saw the club heavily invest in women's facilities at its home ground.

Cook, like Finnis, has also refused to accept the AFL's current stand. With the Cats about to unveil their refurbished Simonds Stadium, equipped with women's training and changeroom facilities, Cook said the club had forged ahead over the past nine months on the understanding its provisional licence would be formalised for 2018.

Cook recently told Fairfax Media: "One of the issues in all of this is that the sides not in the AFLW are open to having talent poached by the national sides. The longer we are asked to wait, the bigger the chance of our players being picked up by other clubs increases. We'd hope that they [the AFL] stay true to their word."

The Saints have created partnerships with Seaford and the St Kilda City women's teams, and for the past three months have hosted the AFL Victoria Southern Women's Academy at the Linen House Centre.

Both clubs are disappointed that they could be denied access to the talent they are developing, and that further delays to expansion will only weaken their sides in the future as the foundation teams grow stronger.

While Gillon McLachlan has not ruled out expanding the AFLW, the AFL chief has given every indication that he will rule that the competition sticks with eight teams for another season.

That view is shared by AFL Players' Association boss Paul Marsh.