AFTER issuing Adelaide a 4-1 drubbing last week, Roar Women went into the Canberra match needing to prove that they weren’t just a one match wonder and could, unlike their A-League counterparts, consistently deliver at home.

So, yeah, let’s get this bandaid ripped off quickly: instead of winning at home, Roar Women played like cabbage.

Why? We could talk about the hot, humid, windy day, the hard pitch, the fact that Tristram (who was creating their best chances) injured her knee twice and had to sub off, and the potentially little or no home ground advantage given that Roar Women are rotating their games around a number of non-Suncorp Stadium venues...but in truth, they just didn’t bring their boots.

I know that they can do better — I saw it last week. And, to be fair to Canberra — a team that comprises its own strong showing of international and experienced players — Roar Women were up against some worthy opponents. Ah, the AIS: fantastic when it’s working for us; totally pants when it’s working against us.

But here’s the irony: the Roar v Canberra game that I was able to attend by pure geographic convenience was the same single game that the ABC broadcast as its weekly match.

Pants.

With just one W-League match broadcast per week it’s incredibly difficult for women (and men) to consistently follow their chosen teams (not to mention for me to report on them) and I do wonder: If you can’t see it, can you support it?

I’m not ungrateful. I repeat, I am not ungrateful that the ABC broadcast the match. I am indescribably appreciative that they have stepped up to the plate and are broadcasting any matches at all. I am simply, Oliver Twist-ly saying that ‘Please sir, I want some more’.

The ABC half-time break broadcast includes highlights from the other matches, which is fantastic, but which also begs the question: If they’re able to show highlights, someone must be recording the games — is it not possible to televise them, even if it’s over the web or in the wee, TV-wasteland hours of the morning?

I’m not going to get into discussions about ratings, commercial realities, or sponsorship dollars. I don’t dispute that — at this stage, at least — women’s football doesn’t command the same levels of interest as the men’s.

But in order to nurture a league in its infancy, we need to make it visible and accessible to both the hardcore and the hey-these-girls-can-actually-play fans who may stumble across the W-League in their adventures.

My hopes were briefly buoyed by FourFourTwo’s very own foray into web TV this week, but sadly it isn't suited to football match coverage.

Sigh.

But all is not lost. Around the 80-minute mark at the Roar Women game when the lone trumpeter was issuing random, comedic, encouraging-yet-futile toots to spur the Roar Women on, my phone went nuts with text messages stirring me: ‘So you think you’re a WAG?’ and ‘Is it not enough that you’re on FourFourTwo, now you’re on the ABC?!’

It seems that I was unwittingly being broadcast in big WAG sunglasses glory across the nation as a pitch-side spectator.

And better, despite some let’s-hope-short-lived not-so-great home form from Roar Women this time around, it seems that people are watching — really watching — the W-League.

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