'Bottom of the pecking order': When it comes to football, not all pitches are equal

With the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup now less than a year away from kicking off, what sort of legacy will the tournament leave for football in Australia and New Zealand?

Have you got your tickets to Bruno Mars yet? You’d be better be quick – he’s only here for two nights at the newly-minted Allianz Stadium in Sydney on October 14 and 15.

Of course he is. To the average Australian politician, the word ‘football’ in ‘football stadium’ doesn’t really mean football – and certainly not the kind we’re talking about here.

What politicians really mean when they talk about building new football stadiums is ‘multi-purpose,’ which is why Venues NSW won’t bat an eyelid at ruining the pitch in their expensive new stadium literally one week into the nascent A-Leagues season.

Why would they? Having 40,000 spectators tear up the surface on consecutive nights at a Bruno Mars show is probably worth more to them than an entire A-League season anyway.

(Photo by Matt King/Getty Images)

When Aston Villa met Leeds United in a pre-season friendly at Suncorp Stadium last month, the pitch looked decidedly threadbare after hosting both the Wallabies and a State of Origin decider in the build-up to the game.

But the only thing the Queensland Government would have noticed as the two Premier League giants did their best to negotiate the tricky conditions were the 40,000 fans in the stands and the dollars pouring into the local economy.

It’s the same story everywhere you turn.

When the All Whites host the Socceroos at Eden Park in Auckland on September 25, they’ll do so less than 24 hours after a rugby union double-header takes place on the same pitch.

Ten years after the Newcastle Jets were forced to postpone A-League fixtures because a Supercross motorbike event tore up the pitch in the Hunter, the same venue is having another go with yet another Supercross event on November 26.

And the events calendar for HBF Park – long-time home of Perth Glory – reveals it’s music, not football, that stadium operators Venues West have got on their minds.

There’s no doubt upcoming Justin Bieber and Harry Styles shows will be money-spinners for the Western Australian government, but spare a thought for Perth Glory – who after two COVID-riddled seasons run the risk of going broke at the same time their long-term home ironically undergoes renovations to bring it up to modern standards for the 2023 Women’s World Cup.

And that, in a nutshell, is one of the biggest issues with football in this part of the world.

Football is at the bottom of the pecking order, and for all the feel-good photo opportunities the Women’s World Cup will invariably present, that’s probably where most politicians would prefer it to stay.

And before anyone chimes in with a quip that all football needs to do is build its own stadiums, it’s worth pointing out the same suggestion never seems to be made when cashed-up NRL clubs like the Sydney Roosters or AFL teams like the West Coast Eagles and Fremantle Dockers benefit from playing out of taxpayer-funded grounds.

It’s the same sort of reasoning that sees women’s football remain chronically underfunded – as ABC journalists Laura Lavelle and Dan Colasimone wrote during the week – on the eve of one of the biggest women’s sporting events Australia and New Zealand has ever hosted.

And if there’s one thing Football Australia and its recently re-signed chief executive James Johnson should add to the to-do list, it’s a few frank discussions with politicians and stadium operators around football’s unique requirements.

No one is asking for special treatment. Even if they did, football wouldn’t get it anyway.

But one of the legacies of the 2023 Women’s World Cup – aside from improved dressing rooms in shared multi-purpose stadiums – will hopefully be the ability to initiate some honest conversations about the fundamental importance of pitch quality to the sport.

Otherwise, football will be stuck playing on surfaces cut up by motorcross events from now until the end of time.