SCHEDULING clashes meant I was forced to choose between girls and boys this week.

Roar Men were at home and Roar Women, while away to Newcastle, were playing at the driveable, nearer-to-Brisbane-than-Newcastle-but-still-a-mission Lismore.

And both teams were playing at roughly the same time.

As the Roar Women game wasn’t being broadcast (it was Melbourne v Perth this week as ABC diplomatically, but occasionally inconveniently, shares its coverage around), we were rallying the troops for a road trip. After all, given the can’t-win-at-home Roar’s track record, maybe us not being there would break the curse.

Sadly, our own football and friend’s birthday drinks commitments combined with a late it’s-moments-like-these-I-hate-backwards-Queensland recall of New South Wale’s daylight saving time warp and we decided that Lismore was just slightly too far away for it to be safe-drivingly feasible.

So we instead braved the it-only-rains-when-there’s-soccer-at-Suncorp downpour to see the Roar Men concede a soft goal from a corner and, well, fail to score.

Sigh.

I know I’m hard on the Roar Men. I never used to be this way, honest. For three full seasons I was tirelessly inveigling friends to come to the game, that this time would be different. But four seasons in and I’m, well, tired. Just this week I’ve had fellow foundation members tell me that they won’t be renewing their season tickets for Version 5. And who decided against coming to the game last night because:

a) it was raining heavily;

b) the train line they were on was closed for maintenance and the thought of being packed into lurching buses with oodles of other slightly damp people on a 100 percent humidity Queensland day was a little much;

c) (and here’s the killer) it’s just too demoralising when your team consistently goes down, not because the other team is more skilful, but because they for some reason can’t get it together at home.

You might argue that these friends needed a teaspoon of cement to harden the fark up, that the Premier League has a longer and more brutal history of frustration and they should try supporting such and such a team.

But as I sat there in poncho-and-wet-butt glory accurately predicting that ‘they’re going to concede a goal from an unmarked header from this corner—please God let it not be from Archie Thompson’s noggin’ and then watching as that’s exactly what they did, I completely understood.

Indeed, it’s a fairly damning sign when there’s considerable interest in driving just under three hours each way on a Saturday night to watch another team play at the same time. And when at the end of the match it was announced that Roar Women had gone two-up over Newcastle’s nil, the shared-looks and slumped-shoulders consensus was clear: we were at the wrong game.

But Roar Men form aside, should we have to decide between the sexes? Should we have to prioritise one match over another?

There are only so many days that football can be played, so I understand that there are going to be scheduling clashes. But I’m torn as to whether the W-League matches should mirror the A-League’s and, like the National Youth League ones, be played as curtain raisers (or closers).

The question is, would mirroring the A-League matches make the W-League the B-League?

I recognise that showcasing women’s footballing talent prior to or after A-League matches might devalue and groupie-fy it, and that the W-League needs to be able to stand alone as a viable, crowd-pleasing football league.

But I do wonder if it might attract otherwise staunch men’s league supporters or if it might capitalise on a kind of ‘Olympic opportunism’ where, by putting lesser-known sports in front of already-watching fans, organisers inspire discussion and genuine interest in them.

Encouragingly, the free-to-air W-League broadcasts have been out-rating the A-League ones. This might be because they’re freely available and harness such viewing opportunism, but I would like to think that it’s also because there’s genuine interest in women’s football.

And frankly, ratings and potential B-League groupie relegation aside, I would have given my season pass for Roar Women to have played at Suncorp last night. I think I speak for all Roar fans when I say that we needed a home team victory to salve the open, salt-rubbed wound.

When she’s not watching and writing about the W-League, Fiona Crawford is watching and writing about the A-League on her website.