THE launch of the W-League this weekend was a momentous occasion not just because it marked the beginning of the first fully-fledged women’s football league in Australia, nor because it kicked off at the same time as my high school reunion, but because it represented an opportunity for the Roar Women to do what the Roar Men haven’t been able to: win at home.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t more than a little anxious as I approached the Queensland Sport and Athletics Centre (which translates to the unfortunate sounding ‘Q-SAC’ acronym).

Roar Women boast the highest percentage of Matildas players on their team, but football is a cruel game and I knew better than to expect a Roar home ground victory. And while it was the same Roar uniform, it was borne by a different sex in a different stadium — could it be enough to get them up and over the line?

Queuing up to enter, I silently thanked the gods of football that I hadn’t asked FourFourTwo to cover my entry fee — at just $5 per person and $2 for concessions and Roar season ticket holders, I would have looked like the biggest tight arse in the history of football. I even got my very own hot-football-chick poster as I passed through the bag check.

And here’s the thing. The game — and the Perth Glory v Sydney FC one I taped and watched later — was awesome.

Sepp Blatter declared some time ago that ‘the future of football is feminine’. Judging from the predominantly female, 850-odd spectators who turned out to watch the match, I think he’s right.

Admittedly, he went on to draw every self-respecting woman’s ire by saying that in order to garner some serious interest women should wear tighter shorts, but this is the same guy who recognised that Italy shouldn’t have been issued the iffy, Socceroos-slaying penalty in the 2006 World Cup—he gets some things right.

For the record, it appears that the W-League uniform designers heeded his call. Most of the teams are sporting reasonably short — but not trashy, butt-revealing — shorts. I’m now officially uber envious of the W-League players’ lean, athletic legs — I spent three quarters of the match declaring ‘I want that one’ in a terrible faux Little Britain voice.

But even better than the shorts was the football. The match was physical but free of melodramatic dives as the women played the whistle. They passed with precision and kept us entertained with climatic build-ups that surpassed the Roar Men’s.

It was odd but refreshing to hear fans’ dog-whistle-worthy high-pitched screams of delight as players threaded through the defence and shot at the goal — nearby blokes dug deep to unsuccessfully attempt to raise their voices a few octaves to match the cheer squad’s tone.

At the same time, my boyfriend and I discussed at length the practicality of calling out ‘man on’ when, realistically, there are no men on the field (even the referee and, er, ballboys and linesmen were women).

But ‘chick on’ and ‘ho on’ sound more like food and ban-worthy politically incorrect banter respectively so we figured it’s best to stick with the former.

And, refreshingly, we for once didn’t feel the need to take bets on which 80th minute Roar would concede a soft—and ultimately match-losing—goal in. Not only did Roar Women finish, they finished four times to issue Adelaide United a 4-1 shellacking.

I got goosebumps and teared up the first time they scored. And I laughed out loud when players got nutmegged and — through an attempted back-to-goal bicycle kick — falconed themselves. We also quite seriously discussed how we’d go about exchanging our Roar A-League season passes for W-League ones as we left the stadium, wryly noting that this was how it felt to win at home.

Entertaining and finishing football aside, it’s a sign that the W-League has made it when the match has its own security.

Admittedly, one of the security guards looked like a girl guide, and the death-defying leap required to reach the pitch from the perilously-high QSAC stand would be more likely to thwart any pitch invaders than the guards’ Kung Fu-style restraining skills, but the agreement was unanimous: the ball-handling and finishing skills and the interest in the game are there — all the W-League needs now to make it a bona fide football league is a streaker.

Avid — but largely untalented — female footballer Fiona ‘Fred’ Crawford ditched her high school reunion in order to attend Roar Women’s inaugural match. Her only regret is not starting to play football sooner.