After a week-long delay due to the death of the queen, the Women's Super League (WSL) finally kicks off this weekend, and all signs point to the 2022/23 season being one of the biggest and best yet for the women's game in England.
Football fans around the country rallied behind the Lionesses on their charge towards a maiden Women's European Championship title in July, with dozens of players who starred throughout that continental showpiece returning to the 12 clubs that will compete in the WSL this year.
Last season, Sam Kerr's Chelsea pipped Caitlin Foord's Arsenal for the league title by a single point on an iconic final match day, with the Matildas skipper scoring two wonder-goals against Manchester United to lift her second consecutive league championship and Golden Boot award.
The 2022/23 campaign matters more than most: with the Women's World Cup just 10 months away, this is the final English domestic season that players will have to prepare themselves to compete for the biggest trophy of all next July.
With that in mind, here are three big questions heading into the upcoming season.
1. Will Kerr win another Golden Boot?
She may be struggling to find the back of the net for Australia, but Kerr has shown over the past two seasons that scoring is a piece of cake while wearing a Chelsea shirt.
Kerr took out back-to-back Golden Boot awards in the WSL with 20 goals in 20 games last season, taking her personal tally to seven — count 'em - seven! — top-scorer gongs in the last six years across three different continents: Australia, the USA, and England.
She edged out the runner-up, Arsenal's Vivianne Miedema, by four goals to claim the individual trophy, capping it off with those two insane volleys against Manchester United in their title-defining final game.
Beyond the league, she's also scored clutch goals in the Women's Champions League — which Chelsea will be contesting once again this season — as well as Cup competitions, including her extra-time winner in the Women's FA Cup final against Manchester City in May.
Kerr isn't the only striker hunting for that top-scorer award this season, though.
After renewing her contract at the Gunners earlier this year, Dutch forward Miedema is probably feeling salty that her goal-scoring genius has been eclipsed by the plucky Australian, so will be coming into the new season with fire.
She'll be joined by fellow Arsenal striker Beth Mead, who finished third on the Golden Boot ladder last season with 11 goals before winning the award at the Euros.
A little further north, Manchester City winger Lauren Hemp is in some of the best form of her young career after finishing 2021/22 with 10 goals, while her City team-mate — Jamaica's Khadija Shaw — will be keen to build on the nine she scored in her debut WSL season.
Across town, back-heel wizard Alessia Russo is also coming in hot for Manchester United after a break-out Euros and looking to build on her nine-goal haul alongside team-mate Leah Galton, who finished with eight. They're joined by new recruit Adrianna Leon, who put on a clinic against the Matildas in their recent friendly series against Canada.
Kerr's list of individual achievements is longer than my arm, but it's safe to say that if she has another Golden Boot-winning season in the league and bangs them away during Chelsea's Champions League run, that will almost certainly guarantee her some of football's biggest awards of all including FIFA Player of the Year and the Ballon D'Or, which she has been repeatedly nominated for but never won.
Could this be the year she finally does?
2. Where are all the other Matildas?
There's been a bit of movement for our Aussies in the WSL off-season, with some Matildas leaving the league while others have arrived in the hunt for a new challenge.
Veteran Australian goalkeeper Lydia Williams departed Arsenal in search of greater playing-time at Paris Saint-Germain in France, leaving her two Matildas team-mates Steph Catley and Caitlin Foord as the two remaining Aussies at the club.
While Catley has largely cemented herself as a starter at the Gunners, Foord has got her work cut out for her to secure regular minutes this season after the club added Sweden striker Lina Hurtig to their forward line of Miedema, Mead, and Stina Blackstenius.
Sticking with London, winger Kyah Simon enters into her second season with Tottenham Hotspur after slowly recovering from a series of injuries that hampered her first campaign, scoring just three goals in 14 games.
Spurs were one of the surprise packages of last year, finishing fifth after some big results including draws with Arsenal and Man United and a win over Man City, and will be looking to build on that momentum under the guidance of former Lionesses assistant coach Rehanne Skinner.
Also nearby is Matildas goalkeeper Mackenzie Arnold, who returns with West Ham for her third stint. While her form hasn't been great for Australia — she was in goal for one half of their 7-0 demolition at the hands of Spain in June — her performances for the Irons have been anything but.
Arnold finished last season as one of the league's best goalkeepers, starting 18 games and making a whopping 67 key saves from 93 shots — the second-highest in the competition — with an overall save percentage of just under 70 per cent.
Although she has young New Zealand glove-woman Anna Leat snapping at her heels, Arnold is West Ham's number one currently and will need to perform well this season if she wants to be the same for the Matildas in 10 months' time.
Moving further North, Australian winger Emily Gielnik is back with Aston Villa after a fairly quiet debut campaign. She only scored two goals in 15 matches last year — not a great return for someone being played as a centre-forward — and after a disappointing few international windows, will want to use the upcoming season to find the same goal-scoring flare that saw her win the W-League Golden Boot for Brisbane Roar back in 2020/21.
Emerging Matildas midfielder Clare Wheeler could become one of the only Australians to ever compete in a Merseyside derby after being loaned to Everton from Danish club Fortuna Hjörring, while local rivals Liverpool — where Gielnik spent a season in 2012 — were promoted after winning the second-tier Championship in 2021/22.
Wheeler was a stand-out in Denmark last year, playing 21 matches and scoring two goals for the league runners-up before being named the club's Player Of The Year. She's now linking up with former manager Brian Sørensen at the Toffees as the historic club look to claw their way back from a disastrous 10th-placed finish last season.
Finally, Australia are best-represented this season at Manchester City with three Aussies — Alanna Kennedy, Hayley Raso, and new signing Mary Fowler — linking up to try and recapture the club's former glories.
City finished third last season, eight points of runners-up Arsenal and only five ahead of fourth-placed Man United, and have lost a number of key players this off-season including Lionesses quartet Lucy Bronze, Georgia Stanway, Ellen White, and Keira Walsh, as well as Scotland star Caroline Weir to Real Madrid (whose goal knocked City out of the Champions League last month — spicy).
It's a moment to embrace for the Aussies, then, as they aim to become starters in a side undertaking a rebuild, which includes the arrival of Fowler alongside Spanish defensive duo Laia Aleixandri and Leila Ouahabi, Venezuelan superstar Deyna Castellanos, and the return of Euros final goal-scorer Chloe Kelly from injury.
We also have a couple Aussies battling it out in the Championship this season with Isobel Dalton and Libby Copus-Brown at Lewes FC, and former Melbourne Victory defender Polly Doran at Crystal Palace.
3. Will this be the most-watched WSL season yet?
After the cultural triumph that was the Women's Euros, the upcoming WSL season looks set to ride that wave of energy and enthusiasm right through til the Women's World Cup next year.
An historic 87,192 people crammed into Wembley to watch the Lionesses defeat Germany in the Euros final (the highest attendance ever for a Euros match, men or women), while 17.4 million people in England and 17.9 million in Germany watched the big dance on their respective tellies.
Even women's football fans in Australia got on board, with over one-third of Optus Sport subscribers (or almost 360,000 people) streaming the tournament despite some ungodly kick-off times of 2am or 5am. That was itself off the back of a 66 per cent increase in WSL viewers Down Under last season, up from 55 per cent the season before.
The 2022/23 WSL season is placed perfectly to capitalise on this meteoric rise in interest.
The league is now into the second year of its $11-million-per-season broadcast deal between Sky and the BBC, which saw a 285 per cent increase in viewership last season, with major sponsors like Barclays, Visa, and Nike all agreeing bespoke commercial deals to further promote the league this year.
Clubs are already basking in the afterglow of the Euros as they enter into a new and rapid era of growth for the game.
Every Championship club has seen a 200-300 per cent increase in season ticket sales, with some clubs selling more on the first day than they did throughout the entirety of last year.
In the top-flight, Arsenal and Chelsea have already exhausted their season ticket allocations, while those for Manchester City, Leicester, and Aston Villa have doubled.
The attendance record for a single WSL game is also set to be smashed with 40,000 tickets already sold for the North London derby between Arsenal and Tottenham at the Gunners' main stadium on September 24.
With more teams playing more games at bigger stadia this season, the 2022/23 campaign looks set to be one of the most-watched in its history, generating even more buzz ahead of the Women's World Cup just around the corner.
Australian fans can watch every match live on Optus Sport, while the Championship is accessible live and free via The FA Player.
Match Day 2 (all times AEST):
Saturday 17 Sept, 4:30am: Arsenal v Brighton & Hove Albion
Saturday 17 Sept, 9:00pm: Manchester United v Reading
Sunday 18 Sept, 9:30pm: Aston Villa v Manchester City
Monday 19 Sept, 12:00am: West Ham v Everton
Monday 19 Sept, 12:00am: Leicester City v Tottenham
Monday 19 Sept, 2:00am: Liverpool v Chelsea
