Blog: If A Tree Falls...

IF TWO Australian women’s football teams play a match, but no one actually sees it, did it occur?

That's the question I've been asking myself for months, with my frustration at the lack of W-League broadcast coverage ever increasing.

Sure the league is new. Sure it's finding its feet. But with just 10 weeks of W-League football annually there's little time for the players to find their feet and even less time to showcase their talents. Particularly if their talents aren't being broadcast.

Season two of the W-League promised more of the same football with style. What they're actually delivering is more of the same lack of coverage. One match per week isn't enough to build a following or develop women's football in Australia. And without a following or development, there won't be a W-League.

Sure, there are match reports and weekly wrap-ups, but particularly for an emerging, as-yet-unfamiliar sport, a picture - or broadcast match - is worth a thousand words. The most common phrase I hear uttered when people see the W-League in action is that ‘these girls can actually play'. We need more matches broadcast so more people can be similarly surprised and converted.

In fact, four games a weekend for 10 weeks isn't much in the content-hungry medium of television, but it would do wonders for women's football. The ratings of the lone match broadcast alone tell us that there's an interest in watching it.

And, blasphemous as it may seem given that Aunty ABC has supported the W-League from the get go, perhaps, as one forum commenter suggested, the broadcast rights would be better assigned to another channel such as 24-hour sports channel One HD.

The ABC broadcasts games between different teams each week to ensure that every W-League team receives equal coverage, which is fair in principle but pants in practice. It means that potentially the most exciting games - say, for example, this week's top of the table clash between Roar Women and Melbourne Victory Women - are witnessed live at the location by a limited number of people and opportunities to showcase and promote the exciting women's game go begging.

And, frankly, I'm frustrated that we should be grateful that the ABC is showing even the one match. The same would be absolutely unthinkable for the A-League, which not only has every match broadcast every week, it has them repeated. If the A-League can get repeats, surely the W-League can get at least single showings. Because otherwise, if two Australian women's football teams play a match and nobody sees it, it never really happened.