On the eve of the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup, not long after Sam Kerr made a pre-emptive call for better funding to support the legacy the Matildas were about to create, federal sports minister Anika Wells provided something of an explanation as to why to some football seemed to get a raw deal from government.
Despite being Australia’s most popular sport at a community level, and despite the wild popularity of the Matildas and Socceroos, Wells argued that the game’s splintered governance and administrative model – a national body, nine state and territory bodies, and since 2020, a separate professional league – created confusion and competing interests.
Football Australia chief executive James Johnson.Credit: Getty Images
There was no “unified purpose [or] proposal” from the whole of the game, she said.
“At the moment, my experience — as a new, incoming sports minister — has been [that] everybody comes in with their individual pitch, even if it directly clashes with the individual pitch of the next state over, or with the code that shares the stadium, and they just leave it for us to sort out,” Wells told the ABC.
“I would have thought that sport would want to work strategically.”
Two years on, the game says it has listened. And now it says it wants governments to listen back.
For the first time, Australian football’s various bodies have united to make a collective pitch to government for more than $3 billion in funding, outlined in a document, Securing Our Football Future, which serves as the game’s national agenda for the upcoming federal election and well beyond.
Though that ask seems ambitious on face value, it is aimed at all levels of government in all parts of the country over the next 10 years. And the scope of the paper’s 23 recommendations is vast, stretching from the most basic of suburban facilities to the elite end of the sport, encompassing on-field programs to off-field diplomatic efforts through football.
The recommendations include:
- An immediate call for the next federal government to introduce a fully funded, indexed rolling 10-year program to meet the $1.56 billion “change room facilities gap” to accommodate the growing female participating base;
- Similar action from state, territory and local governments to spend a combined $1.2 billion to upgrade lighting and drainage over the next five to 10 years;
- An investment of $50 million from the next federal government for a national football headquarters to house both FA and the Australian Professional Leagues;
- Calls for support for three new state football headquarters, upgrades for five others, and for the proposed redevelopment of Perry Park in Brisbane as part of the 2032 Olympic Games
- A request for a combined $1 million from the federal, NSW and Victorian governments for “seed funding” for FA’s proposed Australian Championship competition;
- Increased resources and support for sports diplomacy, football development and social programs;
- The establishment of a formal process with federal and state governments to expedite bids for future international tournaments in Australia;
- Changes to a broad range of regulations, laws and policies – from high-performance funding, visa classes for import players, urban and land use planning, the policing of football matches and even the adoption of national standards to prevent marine flares from being purchased for other uses and deployed at games.
FA chief executive James Johnson described the document as a “strategic smorgasbord” that football will use as a basis for discussions with government in the coming years.
“We’re just wanting to make ground,” Johnson said.
“We’re not expecting to get everything. We’ve tried to go for the big fish, and tried to get everything – it just hasn’t worked. We need to do it in stages. It’s a blueprint over a long time … it’s a long-term ask.
“We’re a sport that listens to feedback, and this is a response to that feedback. We are one sport. Although we have quite a complex governance model, it’s on us to come together in a coordinated way and speak with one voice.
“Now we need some commitments.”
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and sports minister Anika Wells at the 2023 World Cup.Credit: Getty
The federal government launched the $200 million “Play Our Way” grants program in 2023 in response to the euphoria triggered by the Women’s World Cup – a move that was welcomed by some football administrators but derided by many within the game, not only because it was made available to all sports, but because it was well short of what was required to improve grassroots facilities, which have not been able to keep up with increasing participation rates.
An analysis of existing football facilities across the country, conducted by FA and the state federations, identified more than 2000 facilities needing investment through 7848 proposed projects to meet what the governing body said is the “minimum standard” required.
Two-thirds of these facilities are shared by other sports, which means any government investment would have a much broader impact than benefiting just football.
“Last year, we grew about 11 or 12 per cent as a sport … we have nearly 2 million participants, so when you’re adding 11 per cent to that, it’s a big number,” Johnson said.
“The sport continues to grow, but clubs need to … have enough fields, and make sure the fields are of good quality, and the right dressing rooms and the right lighting, et cetera, to let those participants in and then keep those participants in over a long time.
“The sport as a whole … we’re becoming prisoners of our own success, in a way. Because growth is happening, but we need the infrastructure to allow it to grow.”
A national football headquarters – almost certainly to be based in Sydney – has been football’s infrastructure “white whale” for many years. Johnson said four years ago that if FA couldn’t get one as a legacy outcome from the 2023 Women’s World Cup, that it would probably never happen, but the federation now sees it as an inevitability.
“It’s not just a home of football for Football Australia. It’s got to be all of football,” said George Houssos, FA’s new head of corporate affairs and general manager of government relations.
“There’s got to be a value proposition for the community as well, and we’re doing a fair bit of work on that right now. The next 12 months, with the Women’s Asian Cup and the men’s World Cup, our push for this is going to increase, and it’s going to get very, very loud and very, very direct … because eyes will be on football, domestically and internationally.”
Some of football’s requests appear to be overly ambitious, such as the call for seed funding for the Australian Championship, a national second-tier competition which will launch later this year as a post-season tournament for NPL clubs and is hoped to eventually become a full-blown home-and-away league.
Johnson said it would have been “highly inappropriate” not to ask for government help for the Championship.
“You’ve got great historical clubs that are deeply rooted in community, they have high participation numbers … this is a competition that everyone wants to succeed,” he said.
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