I have been a women’s football fan for a very long time. No, that is not a euphemism for “being a lesbian” but yes I am also a lesbian. If you don’t know, it’s a very exciting time to be a football fan/lesbian in Australia and Aotearoa at the moment, because in July we will be hosting the 2023 Women’s World Cup! This is a humongous global event. There are plenty of people excited about it, thousands will travel here to barrack for their teams and Fifa predicts that more than 2 billion people will watch worldwide.
I am here to demand that some of those 2 billion are you. It’s time for Australians to get behind our team and behind this tournament. We also happen to have a home team to barrack for with immense heart and huge talent hitting their stride at the right time. It was only a couple of weeks ago that the Matildas (under Tony Gustavsson), defeated the world’s most in-form team, England, ending their 30-game winning streak. Surely beating England is something we can all get behind.
Things are already buzzing. The Matildas’ opening game against Ireland has been moved to a larger stadium, allowing an extra 38,000 people(!) to attend. I missed out on tickets to the smaller stadium but assumed I would have no problem the second time around. Yet when I clicked on the link the tickets were gone – the allocations were exhausted (aren’t we all?).
At first I was annoyed and disappointed that the game had sold out before I could get a ticket. ME! A longtime supporter! A lesbian! But then it sunk in – the demand was so strong that the game had sold out. I couldn’t be mad.
The possibility of not getting a ticket to a women’s game is something I could not have fathomed when I started out as a fan, supporting the Brisbane Roar when the A-League Women’s competition started, alongside the Matildas. We would trudge out to the most random and inconvenient places, to places that were never well-equipped (some didn’t even have hot chips!), to watch the teams play their hearts out on uneven muddy fields in front of small crowds. I also went to the men’s games, and the difference between the support given to the male and female teams was stark, in everything from payment to travel conditions to fields to fans.
It was not unusual for me to see a Brisbane Roar women’s game on the weekend and then to be served at a cafe by one of their players the next week. This made me admire them and their skill even more. The female players were always the most dedicated and most passionate – sometimes literally only taking part for the love of the game. They have had to fight an uphill battle to be taken seriously, to be respected and to be given a liveable level of infrastructure and support.
Male players have historically been encouraged to reach their full potential from the earliest signs of talent they show out of the womb. Girls interested in football have only fairly recently been given a path to pursue it. Female players were not plucked out of high school or club games and put into the Australian Institute of Sport or full-time training. They haven’t had the same access to coaching and money and all the tools. They weren’t given a salary that meant they could eat, breathe and sleep football, dedicating themselves to becoming great.
They battled, they had jobs, they went to uni, they gave birth, and they travelled and trained and played. Even still, despite all of that, women’s football has made huge leaps and bounds. There has been insane growth in talent and skill (funnily enough, happening alongside proper support). It will continue to grow.
Fifa predicts the Women’s World Cup will encourage 400,000 girls to take up the sport in Australia. All of this is what you should remember when you see people (mostly men) in comment sections insulting women’s football standards as not “good enough”. The growth of the game is good for everyone – unless you’re an insecure man who has made men’s football his personality.
If you are someone who will ignore this event because it’s women doing the ball kicking, well, that’s your loss. The atmosphere at women’s games is incredible. It is joyous. The vibes are impeccable. It’s fans, it’s families, it’s young kids of all genders and ages wearing the jerseys of their favourite female football players, learning that they can and should idolise women too.
It doesn’t matter if you aren’t a regular football fan or don’t know anything about the team (I for one remember crying when Jane Seville got disqualified in walking at the 2000 Olympics, a sport i’d never heard of). There’s also a new series about the Matildas has just dropped on Disney if you want to learn more. The Matildas are full of heart, full of confidence and full of talent. Australia is going to be buzzing with people from all over the world and you have the chance to join in and be part of history.
You might even get to see England lose again.
Rebecca Shaw is a writer based in Sydney
