Blog: Where Have All The Women Gone?

MISSING: one young and talented women’s football team – yellow in colour, answers to the name of Central Coast.

The W-league is not strictly within my remit on this blog, but as Women’s football is actually quite close to my heart, I thought I’d share yet another of my frustrations with you all, given I have the luxury of this forum in which to have a whinge (at least for now).

With the announcement of the W-League earlier this year, like many other fans of the women’s form of the beautiful game, I was extremely excited at the prospect of supporting yet another local football team on the national stage. Not only was I excited about the prospect of watching these games (no, not just because women are pretty), but because I was genuinely enthused about what it could do for the development of women’s football on the Central Coast.

At this point, you may be asking yourself why I should be so interested. Well, it’s not because I’m a SNAG who is merely trying to humour the ladies. Let’s just say my interest goes back a long time (some 25 odd years in fact). My better half actually introduced me to football, when she was a local representative player in the days when the women’s game was not exactly mainstream.

Today, times have fortunately changed. The Matildas are now one of Australia’s pre-eminent sporting teams (male or female), competing at the very top level against the world’s football heavyweights. Their performances in the last World Cup were outstanding, and the quality of the football played was top class.

Following on from this achievement, the W-League is precisely the initiative we desperately needed to continue to grow the base of talent we have in this country. Fortunately, the emphasis on youth in the selection of the inaugural squads, is also a very encouraging sign.

Now before I go any further, let me just try to counter any of the critics, or what I would loosely describe as ‘the purist pundit’ who usually happens to have a Y chromosome. It is simply not fair to compare men and women’s football directly, for reasons that I think are obvious, but will expand on anyway just in case anyone decides they are going to take a shot.

The most obvious reason is physiological. Now I concede I’m no sports scientist, but I think it has to do with comparative strength translating into such things as speed and acceleration. When adding mass to the equation, this must influence overall game pace, and the general ‘physicality’ of contact etc, so clearly we are not comparing apples with apples. In my opinion, this does not lessen the athletic contest – it is simply a different type of contest.

In my experience, there is no notable difference in passion, competitiveness or general player psychology between women and men.

Technique, skills and game decision making on the other hand, are largely to do with experience, and the quality of coaching. In this respect, the men have had a very big head start. The W-League hopefully provides the vehicle to close this gap.

The local club in which I am involved, currently has 700 registered players, of which over 20 percent are female. Across the Central Coast, this player contingent represents one of the greatest opportunities to grow the game, and overall participation rates. I would guess that at least 45 percent of paying Mariners fans are female, so again I think there is a real interest not just from young girls, but older players who are considering playing for the first time.

My concern is that Football NSW – whom I understand really own/operate the Mariners Women’s team - do not recognise nor care about women’s football on the Central Coast. As those who have any interest in this will know, the Mariners ladies actually play all their home games in the South West of Sydney (Campbelltown), and a couple of games at Parramatta.

Football NSW and/or Football Australia have unfortunately short changed fans of the game on the Central Coast. Even a token effort of a couple of ‘home’ games would have been nice. The girls were trotted out and introduced at a Mariners home game at the beginning of the season, and that was the last we saw of them.

I can live with the fact that the team itself is made up of promising young Sydney based players at this early stage, albeit I do understand that two Central Coast based players now play for Newcastle.

To my knowledge, the Central Coast is the only Australian A-League market that has been treated in this way.

I must ask the question of Football NSW or Football Australia – why has my ‘local’ W-League team gone missing in action?