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BY CONNOR STEPHENS
There has been plenty of talk about the positive impact the Women's World Cup being held in Australia has had on Football/Soccer from a nationwide perspective. However, the impact this tournament has had goes past just the sport of Football, but is also making moves within multiple women’s sports throughout the nation.
Membership numbers in the A-League women’s competition are breaking records left right and centre, but the unspoken facts about all of this is the fact that at the beginning of the year were just over 30,000, and now it is currently at over 50,000, showing that numbers have nearly doubled since the Women’s World Cup! Take that information how you want, but statistics don’t lie, and this is a major boost for Australian Sport, as Australian Rules is the premier sport in the nation.
Average crowd numbers at AFLW games have ranged between 2,000 and 3,000 in recent years, but the opening round of the current season saw an average match attendance of 4,819, and the Guardian has credited this to the interest the Matilda’s have generated since the World Cup (Strong opening AFLW round crowd numbers credited to Matildas effect | AFLW | The Guardian).
The length of quarters have also increased in the AFLW, creating more fatigue and higher scoring, further making the women's competition closer to their male counterparts.
While women's sport in Australia is coming fresh off a world cup, where our National team achieved great success, the only question is: Will we continue to see this interest in women's sport? Or is it all just a flash in the pan, striking while the iron is hot?
This all has the potential to slip worse than Steven Gerrard did against Chelsea in 2014 (Please never mention this to me either), but what can we do as Australians to prevent this from happening, and keep interest and demand in Women’s Sport at an all time high?
The simple answer is to keep the sports entertaining, as that keeps crowds coming in every week, and keep the top competitions competitive. If 1 or 2 teams are dominating season after season, then crowd and membership numbers are going to quickly dip. The AFL and NRL have shown for years that every team has their chance at dominance, and if the Women’s competitions adopt the same methods, then this will pave the way for success.
What the Matilda’s achieved hasn't gone unnoticed, and if they, along with other national teams and domestic competitions can stay competitive, then Women’s sport still has a long way to go, and in the coming years, I am sure we will see more national success across many sporting codes!