The history of Australian women’s football — and women’s football around the world — is structured by exclusion and silence

On 6 October 1979, 11 Australian women walked out onto a football pitch in the southern Sydney suburb of Miranda. It was a bright, cloudless afternoon; the city was just leaning into spring. Interested locals in T-shirts and shorts were lightly scattered around the field, leaning against rickety fence-posts.

Some spectators sat along the splintery wooden benches that were set up on a small hill overlooking the field. The back fence was low enough that a neighbour’s hills-hoist, that Great Pyramid of suburbia, could be seen jutting out of the surrounding shrubbery.

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The women, dressed in dark green jerseys, stood in a line across the dry, patchy grass. They shook the hands of their New Zealand opponents and took their places on the field, ready for the whistle.

Ninety minutes later, the game ended. The score was 2-2. It was the first international “A” match the Matildas ever played, and the field — Seymour Shaw Park — was written into history.

Only, it wasn’t. In fact, there’s hardly any evidence that the game existed at all.

There were no front-page stories or interviews with players; no announcements or ceremonies marking the occasion. All we know about this historic match 40 years ago today has come through a handful of black and white photographs, a team list, and a newspaper clipping from The Canberra Times, which was published a few weeks later, and buried beneath the results from the dogs and the horses.

“I don’t think anybody realised [the importance of the game] at the time,” says Julie Dolan, who captained the side that day. “It’s an enormous occasion to pull on a green and gold jumper, so you’re thinking about that; you’re thinking about the opposition and the coach’s instruction. And there’s no thought whatsoever as to being back here in 40 years’ time.”

“I remember some stands and a few people in the audience,” says Dolan’s teammate, Sue Monteath. “But we’ve had more attention today than any other time. I don’t think there was a lot of press or print media or TV or anything happening at that time.

“It certainly wasn’t just another game because any time you go and play for your nation, it’s pretty special. It [didn’t feel] like the first time; any time that you put on that strip and played for your country was something to cherish.”

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In August, Football Federation Australia announced the creation of a Football Heritage Committee, designed to preserve and celebrate the history of the game in Australia. Yesterday, committee member Simon Hill was present for the unveiling of a plaque commemorating the Matildas’ pioneering match — the first plaque of its kind in Australia.

The fact that it took this long to formally recognise such a significant match in Australian history speaks volumes about the historical indifference to the contribution women have made to the sport. It’s not that women haven’t been playing or watching or contributing to the game, it’s that nobody cared that they did.

“If one looks for silences in the record, then there appears to be an absence of women in football clubs and crowds,” writes academic Greg Downes. “Of all groups involved in the game, they were the most marginalised. Until this gap is filled, the history of football clubs will be seriously incomplete.”

The history of Australian women’s football — and women’s football around the world — is structured by exclusion and silence. Having been banned for almost 50 years, the sport never had the opportunity to embed itself in our national consciousness the way the men’s game did.

So scant was the interest that some retired Matildas don’t have a single photo of themselves playing for their country. And yet it was a space where central questions of identity, belonging, and nationhood were played out — it is a space still brimming with conversations about who we are and where we’ve come from.

“You don’t have the present without the past,” says current Matilda Tameka Yallop. “I think it’s extremely important to go back to the roots of where it all began, and when you talk about passion and the love of the game, it starts with them. When you do realise the sacrifices that were made back then so that we could step out on the field today, and with the support we have today, that’s where it’s all driven from.

“Even just in terms of respect for the game, respect for your team-mates, that initial passion, everything follows from where it all began.”

While history may have positioned it as such, women have never and will never be peripheral to the Australian game. If they haven’t been on the field, they’ve been selling the pies in canteens, setting up the nets, counting the coins, cleaning the boots and feeding the mouths of the people history has chosen to remember instead.

But times are changing. The Matildas are now Australia’s most-loved sporting team; they’ve appeared on the biggest international stages in front of tens of thousands of screaming fans. Their stars are the faces of multi-billion-dollar companies with global reach. They’re on our televisions, in our social media feeds, and splashed — finally — across the front pages of our newspapers.

In order to understand what this means and why it matters, it’s imperative that the history of the Matildas is unearthed. The stories must be told by the women themselves, whose memories are treasure-chests filled with moments of personal, local and national importance. They can only serve to make our game richer.

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“What’s happened in the ensuing years is how we’d like to be remembered,” Dolan says. “Laying the foundations for this passion, this dedication, this work ethic that goes into every Matildas team. We can see it in the current Matildas and all the players represented through the years have added their own little bit to it and build on those foundations. So it’s a great honour to have the current group here to see where it all began.”

History is a series of decisions; a reflection of the people and the stories we consider worthy of remembering. If we are to construct a new history of football in Australia, and if we are to understand and care about the game in all its complexities and contradictions, equal space must be given to the voices of the women who have been part of it from the beginning. Anything less will be incomplete.