Reaching 50-50: Matildas’ startling impact on Aussie kids

And it makes sense when you can draw threads between Matildas’ captain Sam Kerr pulling out a trademark backflip and Freeman’s incredible run.

The magnitude of the Women’s World Cup is emphasised by former Matilda and head of women’s football (Women’s World Cup legacy and inclusion) at Football Australia, Sarah Walsh.

“I say it hands down when you look at just simply the metrics,” Walsh tells Wide World of Sports.

“I don’t think we are just reshaping women’s sport here in Australia, I think we are disrupting the status quo through this World Cup.”

Using the example of Origin II, Walsh explains that 2.6 million people tuned into Nine’s coverage of arguably the nation’s biggest rivalry last Wednesday night.

Yet that figure accounts for just 1.08 per cent of the 240 million fans who watched the United States defeat the Netherlands 2-0 in the preceding Women’s World Cup final in France.

Now, three years on from Australia’s successful bid to host the 2023 World Cup alongside New Zealand, Walsh has been busy driving Football Australia’s Legacy ’23 plan which hopes to deliver enduring benefits for women’s football.

Comprising five action areas, Walsh says the plan is about leveraging the many opportunities the World Cup will provide to “leave more than memories” from the international event.

The first pillar fearlessly focuses on increased participation of women and girls to ultimately achieve gender parity by 2027.

“We’ve got this bold vision which underpins the entire legacy strategy,” Walsh says.

“We want to be one of the few sports to reach 50-50 in gender participation.

“We reached an equal pay deal with the Matildas and the Socceroos in 2019 and we’ve shown other sports that you can do it if you think differently and align principles.

“This has allowed us to build foundations at a high level that we can try to adopt at a local level.”

With a surge in demand expected, the second pillar involves improving grassroots infrastructure and providing equitable female facilities.

“For us, some of the barriers to entry were our facilities,” Walsh says.

“We ran a national facilities audit which showed us, for example, in New South Wales only 24 per cent of our community facilities were considered inclusive for women and girls.

“That in itself is a key barrier to growing our women and girls’ participation but also our retention.

“There are lots of key indicators that break down what’s inclusive whether it be gender-neutral bathrooms, doors on showers, irrigation on pitches, lighting – they all have an impact on the capacity in which a club can help grow our game.

“We’re proud to say that over the three years, we’ve had $3 million invested into football as a result of hosting the Women’s World Cup.

“A lot of that has been in stadia for infrastructure for the World Cup but a significant amount has also been in community facilities, and we’re starting to see the growth in those areas.”

The Matildas are viewed as one of the country’s most beloved sporting teams.

Through their rise in popularity, the Matildas’ brand has demonstrated a unique ability to rise above the boundaries of gender.

“The Matildas have transcended women’s and men’s sport. They’re reshaping the commercial model, the investment model, how partners view women’s properties, and it’s an exciting time,” Walsh says.

“We’re thinking of new and different ways we can commercialise this team.

“We’ve only just extended our licensing program because it doesn’t look and feel like the men’s licensing program.

“We’re finding out that the per head spend at a stadium is significantly more at a Matildas match than a Socceroos. That doesn’t mean that our Socceroos brand isn’t strong, it just means that we’re learning more about this new fandom around the Matildas and we’re trying to capitalise on it.

“We’re expecting a lot of new audiences to get to know the Matildas over the next eight weeks and we want them to continue to be fans beyond the tournament.”

Asked what success looks like for the Matildas at the World Cup, Walsh says Football Australia has done everything to set the team up to perform but stopped short of sharing any specific goals.

“They’re actually not looking past the first game and I think that’s really important,” she says.

“They’ve had some amazing results [at World Cups] and when I think about legacy concerning the Matildas, it was really about setting up a schedule over the three-to-four-year period from Paris that will right the wrongs of the past.

“We developed a performance gap in 2020 that highlighted that the team wasn’t playing enough match minutes and matches against high-quality opposition within top-10 ranked teams, and we were absolutely not playing enough European nations.

“If you look at where the balance has gone in not just investment but performance, things are happening very quickly in Europe … and Australia and Asia need to keep up with that.

“So, they’ve never played more European opposition than they have in the last three years. They’ve never played as much in the window [between World Cups] and they’ve also ensured they play against different opposition so that when they get to a tournament scenario, they’ve built muscle around the different ways in which you need to play each of these federations.

“But more than that, what I love about this team is that people and fans love them for much more than their results on the pitch – it’s how they make them feel and there’s a real emotional connection that the fans have.”

With under 25 days to go until kick-off, Walsh says a lot of the foundations have been built to realise a meaningful legacy beyond Australia simply hosting the World Cup.

“We just hope that we’ve done enough to make sure that we are ready [and] our community clubs are ready to capitalise on what will be a significant uplift in participation, but also fandom for football and the Matildas.”

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