Australian football has had plenty of false dawns over the years, but this doesn’t feel like one of them. The country was gripped by the Matildas during the FIFA Women’s World Cup to a level not seen for a sporting event since the 2000 Sydney Olympics, making household names out of athletes who had toiled for years in search of the recognition they deserved.
Now, with the A-League Women set to kick off this weekend, the players are acutely aware of the lightning they will have to bottle to keep the momentum going.
Assembled for the season launch were two incoming stars of the competition with wildly differing paths to the A-League Women.
For Kyah Simon, one of the Matildas who captivated Australia in July and August, this is a homecoming: she arrives back at her first club, the Central Coast Mariners, as the big name in their return to the league following a career that has taken in the best of the women’s game, with stints at Tottenham, PSV Eindhoven and Houston Dash on her CV.
At the other end of the spectrum in 17-year-old Milly Clegg, who joins Western Sydney Wanderers from Wellington Phoenix on the back of featuring for New Zealand at the World Cup, her third such tournament within a year after also representing the Football Ferns at the Under-17 and Under-20 versions in 2022.
Both were appreciative of the new eyeballs that would be tuning in for the first weekend – held as a standalone before the A-League Men begin next week – but welcomed the need to keep that new audience going.
“I wouldn’t say it’s pressure,” said Simon. “I wouldn’t say I’ve felt pressure throughout my career, I embrace it. It’s more of an opportunity than pressure, knowing how many people turned in to watch the World Cup only a couple of months ago.
“I hope we can continue that momentum into the A-League, to see so many packed out stadiums and so many young boys and girls aspiring to play there one day themselves. Hopefully we can continue it and see where we land at the end of the season.”
Clegg experienced World Cup fever first hand in New Zealand, then from afar as the Matildas took it even further.r
“It’s exciting pressure,” she said.
“It’s good that the World Cup has happened and it’s exciting for us as players to get more attention around the game, but we want to perform and put on a show for the crowd to show it’s worth coming to watch.
“There’s been a huge buzz and I’m really excited to be in one of the hubs of the World Cup. In New Zealand, it was huge – after the first game when we won, that’s when started to take off with ticket sales. Everyone was getting behind us.
“The Matildas and Sydney were amazing, theirs was to another level but ours was huge as well.”
She is now where Simon was in 2008 when she made her Mariners debut, and the Matildas striker was able to explain just how far the comp had come since then.
“The league was very different,” laughed the 32-year-old.
“I think I played for free for my first year, I didn’t get paid. Where the league was, it was semi-professional and we had full-time jobs. I was working at Rebel Sport in my first year in Rouse Hill, so I was commuting.
“It was in its infant stage and we were playing for the love of the game, that was the slogan for women’s football and female athletes back then.
“It was very different playing as a 17-year-old with no stress, no worries, just out there doing what I Iove doing, trying to play football and do what I could for the league and to help us be successful.
“Fast-forwarding 15 years, I have a lot more experience under my belt and I’m hopefully able to guide some of those young girls that are stepping into the league to help them develop as female footballers.”
Clegg doesn’t have to worry about working in a shop, though she also will not be paid – though that is of her own volition, as she can play as an amateur to keep eligibility to play college soccer in the United States should she choose to do so in the future.
She is also so young that she will miss the first two games of the season, as under-18s are not allowed to play internationally – even though Clegg made 16 appearances for Wellington Phoenix last year.
Her 18th birthday present will be a debut in Round 3, away to Newcastle Jets. Nevertheless, she will be pulling hard for her teammates from the stands on Saturday night at Allianz Stadium, while appreciating the work that has been done – both this year and over the past 15 years – to put the A-League W on the map.
“I talk to a lot of teammates and it’s quite hard to comprehend how much the game has grown,” she told The Roar.
“It’s so cool to be a part of it now but it’s also important to understand where the game has come from and to be super grateful that it is evolving and developing.
“The messaging doesn’t change in that we always want to be up there and pushing to win titles, but it’s obvious that now the World Cup has happened and there’s so much more attention, we definitely want to be one of the better teams and get that attention on us. We’ve worked so hard in preseason to get that.”
Here is the way the Roar expert panel sees all the action unfolding across the final weekend of play prior to the semi-finals.
Central Coast Mariners' star striker Angel Torres has been stood down from playing in the A-League Men after he was charged with sexual assault. …
Mathew Leckie played a pivotal part in Melbourne City claiming an 8-nil win; playing a role in several of his team's goals.
The Mariners must deal with possibly their toughest challenge yet - Kyrgyzstan’s FK Abdysh-Ata Kant in the first leg of the semifinal.
The loser of the Sydney Derby will be under immense pressure entering the final three matches of the season.
A good performance from Michael Ruhs, scoring twice to beat Macarthur and doubling his season goal tally in the process.
