During the half-time break of the Matildas’ friendly against Haiti this week, former national team players Grace Gill and Ash Sykes spoke glowingly of the performances of some of the country’s emerging talent and the domestic league that produced them.
Leticia McKenna, having left Melbourne City last month to join Nottingham Forest, scored twice in the first half in just her fourth appearance for the national team. Clare Wheeler, who came through the system at the Newcastle Jets and Sydney FC, had a goal and an assist in a player of the match performance.
Former Melbourne Victory midfielder Alana Murphy had the composure of a player twice her age, with her sharp pass setting up the debut goal by ex-City attacker Daniela Galic, who then watched her old teammate Holly McNamara add another.
As former A-League Women veterans themselves, both Gill and Sykes know how critical the competition has been in developing Matildas over the years. From the biggest names like Sam Kerr, Ellie Carpenter, Steph Catley and Mary Fowler, to the generation now cracking into the senior team, all have been shaped by the ALW.
Imagine their surprise, then, when broadcast host Nalin Mastou segued to a commercial break by throwing to an advert for… the A-League Men.
This jarring experience perfectly illustrates the invisibility and lack of cultural cut-through the A-League Women has these days. You wouldn’t know that the league’s 19th season kicks off this weekend – the same weekend as the ALM – given the marketing has been almost completely swallowed up by men’s football. If you can’t advertise the ALW in the middle of a Matildas game, then when can you?
Many issues have been plaguing the A-Leagues recently. A new collective bargaining agreement between the players’ union and the league is still not in place, with negotiations between the two organisations having all but broken down over fundamental disagreements about the future of the leagues.
A public strike of the game’s professional referees threatened to spill over into the start of both seasons, with a settlement reached only in the last fortnight. And the Australian Professional Leagues (APL), the club-owned body that runs the competitions, has still not delivered their roadmap for a full-time ALW, despite the players themselves developing their own business case for how to get there.
No wonder, then, that this off-season has seen the biggest single exodus of Australian women players to overseas leagues since the current core of Matildas left for Europe in the 2019-20 period.
From Golden Boot winners to Julie Dolan medal recipients to recently-capped national team players, the current talent drain is severe and possibly irreversible. Triggered by a perceived lack of care, commitment and investment from its clubs, these players are sick of waiting for a league that inches imperceptibly forward as other leagues take longer, more confident strides.
And if the players have lost faith in the direction of the ALW, then what is left for its fans? A common refrain is that if fans want the ALW to thrive, then fans need to be the ones showing up. But this unfairly blames the community instead of those whose job it is to make the league as visible, inclusive and accessible as possible.
With the ALW skewing younger each year, fan attendance stagnating and mainstream media coverage returning to pre-World Cup levels, what hope is there for a league that has been the primary pipeline for the Matildas for the past two decades?
Having chosen just two ALW-contracted players (two goalkeepers) for the current window, head coach Joe Montemurro has been blunt in his assessment.
“They need to be tested at the highest levels possible … and that’s what overseas at the moment is giving them,” he said. “It’s a situation where it’s important for us, and it’s a situation that’s important for even the players to become professional footballers. There must be that consistency. There is that challenge, that day-to-day.”
What hope is there, then, for the Matildas themselves? As the current golden generation phases out of their national team careers, have the players who are being positioned to succeed them been given enough of a springboard to maintain their tournament qualification track record, let alone their world rankings?
With global women’s football revenues estimated to reach over $1bn in 2027, Australia’s years-long thumb-twiddling when it comes to the ALW is now being exposed. Next year’s World Cup in Brazil will likely be the last for many of this crop of Matildas before they move into the next stage of their lives. What will be left behind once they do?
