New Zealand’s sporting identity has long been shaped by the exploits of its male competitors, but the country’s joint bid for the next football Women’s World Cup can help change that

Women’s football is acutely conscious of legacy. References to ‘the next generation’ pepper conversations about the future of the sport. The outlook is always towards the future; memories of past false dawns, when women’s football appeared to be on the cusp of a breakthrough only for pledges of support and development to fall through, are never far from the mind.

The New Zealand launch of the joint 2023 Women’s World Cup ‘As One’ bid with Australia last week at Eden Park - New Zealand sport’s spiritual home - was a subtle reminder of this. Four women stood on the hallowed turf of the proposed site of the 2023 tournament’s opening match, a microcosm of how far football has come in New Zealand sports culture for girls and women - and where it still needs to go.

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The mother and daughter duo of Drs Barbara and Michele Cox, both former New Zealand representatives. A Football Fern centurion and local star of the last Fifa women’s tournament held on New Zealand soil, 2008’s inaugural Under-17s World Cup, in Rosie White. And a Football Fern fresh from her first tour with the national team, former Under-20s captain Claudia Bunge. They represent New Zealand’s finest: the game’s pioneers and potential.

Dr Barbara Cox was the first Football Ferns captain, back when the New Zealand national team was known as the Swanz (the former Soccer Women’s Association New Zealand). She started playing in the 1970s when opposition to women’s football was common on the hackneyed grounds that is was ‘unladylike’. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the subject of her PhD was the gendered experiences of girls and women in football in New Zealand.

Barbara and Michele were the first mother-and-daughter pairing to play international football in the same team, taking to the field for the Swanz on 15 December 1987, and defeating the United States for the first (and to date only) time.

Cox junior was New Zealand Football’s first head of women’s football, and during her time at Fifa was part of the campaign to allow girls and women to wear headscarves when playing football. Cox senior approached the Human Rights Commission for girls and boys to be allowed to play together when Michele, aged 11, was no longer permitted to play in the boys’ team of which she’d previously been part.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest New Zealand’s Rosie White in action during the 2019 Fifa Women’s World Cup in France. Photograph: Maddie Meyer - FIFA/FIFA via Getty Images

White and Bunge are beneficiaries of that change. White, who plays for the Reign in the NWSL and who represented the Young Football Ferns in the 2008 Under-17s Women’s World Cup, began her life in football playing in a boys league in Auckland.

Bunge, in the absence of a professional women’s team in New Zealand during the winter season, when New Zealand’s club football takes place, lines up for the FFDP - a squad of players anticipated to one day become professional footballers and Football Ferns. The FFDP produced many members of last year’s bronze-medal winning Under-17s World Cup team and plays in a boys league in Auckland.

It’s hard to imagine a football landscape where that kind of innovation and adaptability might have been possible were it not for the efforts of figures like the Coxes and their determination to shift perceptions and experiences of the game.

Some in New Zealand are occasionally guilty of overlooking the contribution of female footballers, though. Just this week, one of the country’s major newspapers published an exclusively male list of New Zealand’s ‘top ten teenage footballers’, before updating the headline to read ‘top ten male New Zealand teenage footballers’ after a Twitter storm erupted, backed by some Football Ferns; the absence of any of the bronze-medal winning Young Football Ferns was especially galling.

Helena Wiseman (@HelenaWiseman) *male footballers, you mean, because there’s not a single woman on this list and our U17 women won third at a World Cup? https://t.co/XLCp1umgVF

Hannah Wilkinson (@HannahWilkinso1) Damn right 🔥 https://t.co/BAL9Fu8Cmu

It’s impossible to truly grasp, at this stage, what co-hosting the 2023 Women’s World Cup with Australia could mean for the growth of football in New Zealand, a country where ‘football’, historically, has almost exclusively meant ‘rugby’, and where a national sports culture is slowly becoming accustomed to identifying itself through its male and female athletes. Indeed, the fact that accessibility to the games are key to the bid, with just under half anticipated to be played in New Zealand, and ticket prices proposed to start at US$5 and not exceed US$90, genuine engagement is at the heart of the bid.

“I don’t think anyone will realise the impact,” said Cox senior, discussing the trend of increased participation rates in the sport following world cups. “And I think you need to prepare for it.”