The W-League reaches its denouement this weekend and while the spotlight will inevitably be on the two contestants – Melbourne Victory and Brisbane Roar – the real story is a game that is developing at warp speed.



Australia’s women’s national side first took the field as recently as 1979. A modest suburban ground in the southern Sydney suburb of Miranda provided a humble backdrop for the game against New Zealand, with a handful of friends and family, three small grass embankments, and a rudimentary working-bee built scaffold-style seating structure.

A few years earlier a small town in northern France was the location for what FIFA later retrospectively deemed the first ever women’s international, between the home side and the Netherlands.

Fast forward to the present day and women’s football offers itself as an increasingly viable sport in its own right. The 2011 World Cup final was at the time the most tweeted event in Twitter’s five-year history.

Interest is growing steadily on a local level too. Last weekend’s “other Big Blue” – the W-League semi-final between Sydney FC and Melbourne Victory – attracted a six-year competition high of about 220,000 viewers on the ABC.

The figures are anywhere between three to five times larger than pay TV audiences for the A-League. Sunday’s match will also be broadcast nationwide in full on ABC radio, in what is another marker of the game’s growth.

Further down the pyramid, Australia has 100,000 registered female players, which in itself is a number many sports would salivate at.

But what about the on-field product at the top level?

Casual visitors to Melbourne’s Lakeside Stadium, once home to NSL super-club South Melbourne, or channel-surfing viewers stopping at ABC1 on Sunday may notice an immediate point of difference with the men.

Female footballers rarely engage in gamesmanship, histrionics or unsporting behaviour. Indeed, it is almost a matter of pride to bounce up from a hefty challenge and not display pain.

The former Australian coach Tom Sermanni, now at the helm of world No1 USA, last year described the W-League as enjoying “inordinate growth” across its early years.

Melbourne Victory coach Dave Edmondson, who has coached women’s football in New Zealand and his native England, is another singing the praises of the competition, now in its sixth year.

“The W-League has been huge for the development of women’s football in Australia,” says Edmondson.

“The W-League needs to stay as it is, though possibly expand slightly. It has been a real breath of fresh air.”

Sunday’s season finale pits two-time champions and marginal favourites Brisbane Roar against a Melbourne Victory side that lost its maiden grand final last year, and risk the dreaded tag of “perennial bridesmaids” if they fail again on home turf.

Brisbane’s depth and array of talent seems endless. On several occasions this season they fielded an entire outfield side comprised of current or former Matildas, backed by the recently crowned world player of the year, German goalkeeper Nadine Angerer.

The Roar’s ace in the pack, certainly one with an eye for the big occasion, is attacking midfielder Tameka Butt. The Gold Coast-based obsessive surfer has scored in all four grand finals in which Brisbane have featured.

But Melbourne arguably have more x-factor in enigmatic Matildas forward Lisa De Vanna and the metronomic midfield drive offered by midfielder and Wales captain Jess Fishlock.

Elsewhere quirky back-stories and rare tales abound. Melbourne’s Beattie Goad is only 16, but is currently earning unimaginable schoolyard credibility among her year 10 schoolmates after a sudden elevation to the W-League.

Fellow Victory midfielder Gulcan Koca, though born and bred in Melbourne, has played sporadically for Turkey, the nation of her ancestry, after being approached by the national team captain on social media.

The teams appear evenly matched – as were all four semi-finalists – and a tight contest seems assured, though curiously the Victory have never beaten their rivals in 11 W-League encounters.

Edmondson, who will leave the W-League after the match for English Super League side Bristol Academy, unsurprisingly says history is irrelevant.

“Dwelling on [past results] doesn’t achieve anything,” he said. “It’s dangerous to look too far in the past at things that have gone before.

“It will be motivation for some, but this team has only played Brisbane once [this season], and lost 1-0 in a really close game. We dominated big spells of that game. There’s lots we can take from that.”

Whatever the outcome, the game will be a celebration for many, not least Melburnian Matildas pioneer Theresa Jones, who three decades ago sewed her own coat of arms onto the national team shirt.