I’LL go out on a limb and suggest the Ellyse Perry Ultimatum is a defining moment for women’s football. So significant, in fact, it warrants its own acronym. Years from now the terms pre EPU or post EPU might provide a handy reference point for analysis.

The background to this saga hardly needs repeating: the talented and highly marketable dual international torn between two loves - football and cricket - and the fusty club demanding a monogamous relationship.

Except, of course, Perry is not torn – she wants them both – and the club is not just any old outfit but Canberra United, the reigning W-League champs who romped through the 2011/12 season undefeated.

Let’s be clear, the EPU is not about bowling a fast ball versus kicking one. Come to think of it, the EPU might not even be about Perry. It is very much about the future professionalism of women’s sport.

Canberra’s Czech coach, Jitka Klimkova, wants her players available for training four times a week and to contribute to the “total club environment”. It just so happens the 21-year-old Perry is not in a position to deliver – and therein lies the problem.

Klimkova has drawn a line in the sand. It should come as no surprise. Or did we think she was just mugging for the cameras when she said after Canberra’s Grand Final win: “For me we had a cruise this season, and next season we go to the mountain.”

Perry is an outstanding athlete, and a wonderful sporting ambassador, but the fact remains she couldn’t give her all to the team. Cricketing commitments prevented her from completing the club’s title-winning season and she was unavailable for crucial games leading up to Canberra’s Grand Final triumph, a game in which she played no part.

Judging by the vitriol hurled at Canberra, many think it’s entirely reasonable, nay desirable, to make allowances for the defender to pursue both sports at an elite level – and in the same season no less. I’m not sure what that implies about the standard of women’s football and cricket but it can’t be good.

One news report said Football Federation Australia (FFA) was “privately aghast at Klimkova's ultimatum”. And HQ wasn't alone. Respected sports commentator Gerard Whateley summed up the prevailing mood with his usual eloquence – ‘Ellyse, tell ‘em to get stuffed’.

Never mind that the footballers themselves wholeheartedly backed Canberra’s push for greater professionalism. What would they know? Former Socceroo and SBS World Game panellist Francis Awaritefe was there to put them straight. ''Stunningly stupid'' is how he described the club’s actions.

So what, then, are we to make of comments in The Canberra Times by Perry’s friend and Canberra United skipper Ellie Brush? “I know how successful (Perry) is at cricket but as captain and wanting to build a professional culture, it comes down to no player can be bigger than the club,'' she said.

Perry might not wear the Green again, but she is not lost to football. The suitors are already lining up. A report in the Weekend West suggested Football West would allow her to live in Sydney, fulfil her cricketing commitments and fly to Perth “for specific matches”. Surely that is the antithesis of professional team sport. How dismal, how selfish, how unimaginative – Whateley bristled. Oh wait – he was still talking about Canberra United.

Of course none of this would be an issue if Perry was a professional A-League, AFL or NRL player. In fact the whole notion of say, Harry Kewell – or even an everyday squaddie – ducking out on his club commitments for a tilt at the baggy green is laughable. Yes I know, women's football is not in the same league - literally or figuratively. But what is Canberra United really accused of? Taking themselves and the women’s game too seriously?

The club’s chief executive Heather Reid hit the nail on the head when she defended the EPU: "This is about increasing professionalism in women's sport, even if we're not paid in professional terms.”

Spot on.

The prevailing logic is that female athletes are so poorly remunerated it’s outrageous for clubs like Canberra to demand greater commitment. Should W-League players be better compensated? Of course! Should they put their personal and collective aspirations on hold until they are? Seriously, if female athletes limited their sporting ambitions to the amount of money they earned many of them would still be lining up for hopscotch behind the girls toilets at lunchtime.

I can’t get inside Klimkova’s head but just maybe she is trying to tell her players that respect starts at home. That even if the sports media, sponsors and game’s governing body treat the game as little more than a politically correct sideshow, she knows differently.

Whateley concluded his blog with these words: “Canberra United, for its part, should reconsider its place in the grand scheme of Australian Sport.” I think they have Gerard – isn’t that the point?

Perry might not believe women’s football has reached the stage where she needs to make a choice but as she told the Herald Sun: "That's not to say, with women's sport evolving, a few years down the track I might need to fully commit to one sport because of the professionalism or full-time demands of one."

That’s it in a nutshell. All Canberra United is saying is, for them at least, that time has come.