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The Australian football team did this country proud at the Olympics.
There is little need to even refer to the women’s team in a manner inclusive of their gender, given their male counterparts failed to qualify for Rio. For the purposes of the Rio Olympics, the Matildas truly are the Australian football team in every sense.
While the statistics will heavily favour their opponents, given that the Matildas played away from home against a Brazilian team with a quarter of a billion people behind them, to come literally within a kick of beating them is truly an extraordinary achievement.
The Matildas played a brand of football that was disciplined, expansive, controlled, and attacking, everything that the people of Australia should expect from athletes engaging in sporting combat and wearing their country’s name on their jersey.
The Matildas have once again proven that Australia can be proud of those who play the game of football on their behalf, as ambassadors to the rest of the world.
The Olympic quarter final penalty shootout very much harked back to that fabled night in Sydney, 15 November 2005, when Schwarzer saved penalties, and Aloisi sent us to Germany.
Lydia Williams played her Schwarzer role marvelously, only for Katrina Gorry to miss her Aloisi moment. Instead, Allana Kennedy (absolutely and entirely unjustly) had her penalty saved, and Brazil went through.
Heartbreaking stuff. But truly incredible stuff, nonetheless.
Of course, the more incredible part about the Matildas is that those 11 players on the field, and 23 squad members, are actually a mere tip of an incredibly large iceberg in Australian sport.
For football aficionados in Australia, the saying has always been that football in this country is the true sleeping giant of Australian sport.
Well may that be true.
However, true or not, if football is in fact a giant, the more accurate reflection of Australian football, is that we do not fully realise how big that giant is.
For if almost half of the footballers in this country are being given even less attention than their male counterparts, then football in this country has more work to do than it could possibly have imagined.
Having sat back for two and a half hours of the Olympic match enthralled at the athletic capabilities displayed by the best female footballers this country has to offer, I was even more spoilt in the afternoon. I had the pleasure of attending the second leg of the major semi final in the Newcastle Women’s Premier League, between the Adamstown Rosebuds and the Wallsend Devils.
Wallsend finished fourth at the end of the home-and-away season, Adamstown first.
The Devils had secured a 3-2 victory in the first leg the week before with the actual last kick of their home game, and now took their one-goal advantage to Adamstown Oval, against the minor premier, the Rosebuds.
After a 1-all draw in the season’s first encounter, the Rosebuds had been victorious in the other two home-and-away encounters, before their loss to the Devils in the first weekend of the finals, and were eager to restore balance, and win through to the grand final.
The Rosebuds got the early goal in the first half of the second leg, effectively giving themselves the advantage to advance, and at 1-nil up at half time, the Rosebuds would have been confident of advancing through to the grand final, at the very least on away goals.
However, the Devils turned it on in the second half, scoring four of the most skillful goals that any team could possibly produce, to win the game 4-1, take the tie 7-3 on aggregate, and advance to their first grand final.
Current Matilda and Newcastle Jet, Jenna Kingsley, scored two of those second half goals for Wallsend, and had her chances for a hat trick.
The quality was incredible, the tension was palpable, and the only thing missing (or two things missing) was a bigger stadium and a few thousand people.
If football is indeed to thrive in Australia, then every player needs to be recognised and supported, regardless of gender.
The quality in women’s football is there.
As school kids become more and more likely to take their junior weekend sports to bigger, better, and more lucrative places in adulthood, it is absolutely imperative than the women’s game is now nurtured to a professional standard for which female footballers can make a more than comfortable living.
It is a true curiosity that women’s football is overlooked as a marketable commodity.
To be sure, if netball can have a professional, televised competition, why not women’s football?
AFL will next year launch a women’s league, replete with eight full strength teams. The W-League deserves at least the same level of coverage.
If these are not warning signs to football that the W-League (a high quality product that is shamefully overlooked) to start getting more sponsors and better television coverage, then I do not know what is.
Aside from maybe a yard of pace (and to be honest, most female players would out-run this author on the playing paddock) there was little to separate watching both matches yesterday to any other like game played by men.
The FFA should be inclined to take an aggressive approach with this in mind: more saleable product means more money in their coffers.
It is no longer a logical or acceptable argument against selling the women’s game to say that in a competitive market place, women’s sport simply does not rate, or generate the revenue.
Garbage.
For starters, the women’s game is a product that, if actually presented to audiences, is something people will watch.
Secondly, the funnelling of corporate and government funding to support male sport, while female sport must rely on borderline volunteer participation and handouts to survive, means that the FFA must be on the front foot in terms of pumping money into the women’s game, to give it the opportunities it deserves.
However, if organisations need another reason to support female football in this country (and this may apply to all sports), surely there is untapped intellectual property resting in the minds of an entire gender that, if accessed and utilised, would in fact benefit not just female sport, but sport in general.
I can tell you now, the skill and athleticism that was on show in Brazil and Adamstown is but a reflection of a sport that is easily and readily packaged, brilliant to watch, and would create an entire new brand that can be of unknown benefits to many.
So for anyone interested, the WPL grand final will be played next Sunday afternoon out at Rockwell Automation Park, Weston. Wallsend Devils take on the Warners Bay FC.
It promises to be a cracker.
Enjoy the Olympics with me on Twitter @theKdogroars
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