In Sydney’s biggest sports shop, the show window facing the busy city traffic is telling.
Australia is in the midst of an Ashes battle and rugby league’s beloved State of Origin series has just concluded. Yet, the jersey on display is the latest yellow Nike offering for Australia’s women’s football team, the Matildas, available in both men’s and women’s sizes.
The Women’s World Cup is almost upon us in Australia and the Matildas will soon be the team on everyone’s lips.
In Australia, you cannot escape sport, it invades most conversations, even when it’s not meant to be there. Each Monday, the country’s major breakfast news show has a finance reporter who after reporting about the latest economic crisis is then asked seriously for his thoughts on the weekend’s rugby league.
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One Easter, this writer attended church in Melbourne to support a friend working there and expected the priest to open with a standard message that Christ had risen. Instead his opening gambit was encouraging his congregation to enter the parish’s upcoming Australian Football League prediction competition.
For generations in a country obsessed with sport, its female athletes were largely an afterthought. Of course, there were sporting female sporting heroes, the former world number one tennis players Evonne Goolagong Cawley and Margaret Court took on the world in Grand Slams and received a hero’s welcome on their return Down Under.
Every four years the Olympics faithfully supplied Australia with an array of female sporting icons, often in the pool, and that unforgettable night in 2000 in Sydney, when Cathy Freeman won the 400 metres on the track with the weight of the country on her slender shoulders.
However, these were isolated snapshots in sporting time. Every four years at an Olympics, or at a tennis Grand Slam there might be a woman briefly placed on a pedestal in the media, but day-to-day there was little visibility of elite female sport through regular leagues or tournaments, certainly not on television.
Popular Australian team sports, such as rugby league, Australian Football and soccer had female participants, but they remained at best, a curiosity, or at worst completely ignored.
Broadcaster and author Liz Deep-Jones was Australia’s first female football broadcaster and tirelessly championed the Matildas’ cause when there were few in the media joining her.
Jones often stood alone on the sidelines reporting on their games and built a strong relationship with the players that lasts until today. She watched elite footballers juggling multiple jobs to play for their country and struggling to get widespread media recognition or even awareness.
“In the late 90s, I was the only TV journalist at the games, none of the media was interested in the Matildas whatsoever. It was disappointing. I was always doing my best to promote women’s sport and put them on a national platform. You were lucky to get 500 to 1,000 people at a home game for the Matildas, whereas now, you can’t get a ticket to the Women’s World Cup.
“I remember for the Matildas to get any sort of wide media recognition, the first time they got it was when they launched their nude calendar in 1999. Which I was so disappointed about, to be honest, I thought you shouldn’t have to exploit yourselves in that manner to get any sort of coverage.
“It was just incredible, all the media jumped on it and it put them in the spotlight. It was depressing for me as a female. I was very close to the team and they didn’t tell me about the calendar as they knew I would have opposed it. However, you know, it worked for them in a way, it finally got the Matildas’ brand out there.”
Today, the Matildas are one of Australia’s most popular national sporting teams, comfortably ahead of the men’s rugby union team. Chelsea and Matildas’ star Sam Kerr was ranked number one last year in ESPN’s Australian Sports Power Rankings.
The Perth native also graced the cover of EA Sport’s Fifa 2023 video game with Kylian Mbappe. At the Tokyo Olympics, 2.32 million Australian viewers watched the Olympic semi-final against Sweden. The Matildas are undoubtedly a beloved brand in Australian sport.
How did it change? The answer is very slowly. The Matildas started succeeding on the field thanks to their coach Tom Sermanni’s willingness to play talented teenagers, including Kerr, and in 2010 they won their first Asian Cup. Their popularity in Australia was also driven by a collective effort from all of the major sporting codes to drive visibility and change.
On free-to-air Australian television on any given night, depending on the season, it is now possible to watch elite female cricket, Australian Football, cricket and rugby league. Indeed, last week, Channel 9, one of the country’s major broadcasters, announced that it would be showing all 48 National Rugby League Women’s league games, with 45 on their main channel, drawing millions more viewers.
There is a strong cross-pollination across the codes from major Australian female athletes. Retired tennis star Ash Barty is a diehard Australian Football fan who has appeared as a pundit for games featuring her beloved Richmond Tigers, and also once spent a season playing in the women’s Big Bash cricket league for the Brisbane Heat.
Similarly, one of the country’s most famous cricketers, Ellyse Perry regularly represented the Matildas at the start of her career, supports the Sydney Swans in the AFL, and is a strong public advocate for female participation and support across all sports.
In 2019, women’s Australian Football star and professional boxer Tayla Harris suffered derogatory and sexist abuse when a photo of her kicking a football in an AFLW game was shared online. Her dignity in fighting against the abuse and the collective response of sports fans across Australia led to a bronze statue standing in Melbourne in full flight kicking the ball.
It was an important line in the sand for Australian women in sport. There was a need to fight back against the begrudgers. Harris, like many of her team-mates, had been forced to fight to keep playing the game she loved, given pathways for Australian Football for women once stopped in early teenage years.
Erin Philips, a two-time women’s NBA champion, had always dreamt of playing Australian Football like her father, a decorated player for Port Adelaide, but she had to stop the game at 14 due to a lack of opportunities, turning instead to basketball.
With the advent of the AFLW, she returned to her first love with the Adelaide Crows and was voted the league’s best player in 2017 and 2019. Harris’s fight wasn’t just her own, it was to ensure that no young woman was lost to the game they loved.
In Australia, the Sydney Olympics in 2000 is still regarded as a landmark moment for sport in the country. When Freeman was roared across the line in an Olympic stadium enveloped in the Aboriginal and Australian flags, there was a sense that anything was possible, even perhaps reconciliation.
Only five years later, ahead of playing the world champions the United States, the Matildas went on strike and refused to take to the field. They demanded fairer treatment, particularly regarding their paltry payments. Players were juggling jobs with elite sport, and they had reached their limit.
Today, due to smart negotiations and tireless work from the players’ union, the Matildas enjoy the exact same benefits as their colleagues in the men’s national team through a collective bargaining agreement. The sacrifices of previous Matildas created a platform for Kerr and her team-mates to thrive in a home World Cup.
Former Crystal Palace and Australia player Craig Foster doesn’t believe that the average Australian understands the impact that this World Cup on home soil is going to have on the country. The Matildas could well be on the verge of writing a brilliant new chapter for Australian sport, as long as they perform on the field.
“I’m not sure Australia really knows just how big this World Cup is going to be. Australia understood exactly what a Rugby World Cup was when it hosted it in 2003, but most of Australia will never have watched a Women’s World Cup in any sport, in person, and the beauty of it is, if the Matildas do well, say get to a semi-final or a final, it’s going to arguably surpass the Sydney Olympics or anything in the history in Australian sport,” said Foster.
“One of the reasons the Matildas have caught on so well with all Australians is the way they play. They never give up. People love them and they take pride in them. They’re the most popular team in Australia. They’re authentic and real and it’s the way we’d love all professional sport to be, there are absolutely no egos. After a game, they’ll stay and sign autographs for over an hour. They’re so real and accessible and young girls and boys love them equally.”
On July 20th, the Matildas will walk out in front of 83,500 screaming fans of all ages against Ireland in the exact same stadium Freeman won her gold medal. Men and women will wear jerseys with ‘Kerr’ on the back and it will not only be a game. It will be a cherished opportunity to drive female sport even higher in Australia. It will be hard to imagine that Kerr and her team will relinquish this goal.
