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Canberra father Tom Rogers sat down with his two daughters to watch the Matildas’ opening match of the 2023 World Cup in icy Canberra last Thursday night.
During the pre-game, he asked daughters Charlotte, six, and Matilda, four, to stand up and sing the anthem along with the players, the massive crowd at the stadium and the millions of people around the country hoping desperately for an Australian win to open the tournament.
That win did eventually arrive, via a second-half Steph Catley penalty that brought as big a sound as has ever been heard at Stadium Australia. Perhaps only Cathy Freeman’s 400 metres victory at the 2000 Olympics could rival the sheer, unbridled passion that reverberated around the stadium when Catley’s strike hit the back of the net.
And that is just how powerful the biggest women’s football tournament in the world is for the country, its citizens and most importantly, for the young girls seeing something to which they have never been exposed previously.
Whilst a few cynics might still exist, having now probably crawled back under the rock from which they came, the expected emotional impact of the World Cup on Australia and the metaphorical power of it has potential already been surpassed, even at this early stage of the event.
Rogers’ tweet summed it up succinctly and powerfully. The image was beautiful and touching, whilst the caption he added to it took its poignancy to a whole new level.
“You can’t be what you can’t see. I’m proud that they get to see what they can be. Let’s go Matildas!”
All fairly simple and straight forward words, yet together, forming an idea of great magnitude and one only now hitting home to plenty of Australians who were a little oblivious to the World Cup in the weeks leading up to the event.
You see, those two little girls have dreams, fuelled mostly by what they know, their experiences and more often than not, what society tells them are the lanes into which they should settle and use to navigate their life journey.
However, for women across all walks of life, those expectations are slowly being altered by visual representations of what life can look like, in the form of the stories of others who have broken the glass ceiling and created tangible, inspirational evidence of just what is possible.
Charlotte and Matilda are very young of course, yet are being exposed to a glorious sporting event that their mum Pam had almost zero chance of experiencing 30 or so years ago.
The recent publication of a book retelling the story of the first women’s team to represent Australia on the international stage in 1975 highlights the importance of the pioneering and courageous women who dared to play football and fight for the right to do so as equals with their male counterparts.
Author Greg Downes has done a brilliant job with The First Matildas – the 1975 Asian Ladies Championship, a visual and written exploration of that famous team, the women who were a part of it and the significance the moment played in the development of women’s football in Australia and the path to where we currently are.
The link between the players who ventured to Hong Kong for that tournament 48 years ago and two young girls standing in a Canberra lounge room last Thursday cannot be understated. It is doubtful that without names like Julie Dolan AM, Trixie Tag and captain of that squad Pat O’Connor, Australian women’s football would be where it is today.
Many other nations at the World Cup are far less advanced in their growth as internationally competitive teams. The Nigerian women in particular are fighting their domestic federation for a more even-handed treatment of the men’s and women’s teams and many nations that failed to qualify for this edition of the event are only embryonic when it comes to females playing football.
Blessed we are to be far more advanced; battling with the best in the business on the pitch and finally presenting a showpiece to the near generation of players like Charlotte and Matilda.
I’d rather them doing what they did with mum and dad last Thursday night, than attend a screening of the new Barbie move. Sadly, things such as that have hamstrung women footballers fighting for exposure, pay, respect and acceptance for too long.
Thankfully, things are finally beginning to change.