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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2023-05-31 Daily Xml
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Women's World Cup

The Hon. F. PANGALLO (16:58): I move:

That this council—

1. Celebrates an unprecedented 32 nations competing in the premier women’s international sporting event;

2. Congratulates Football Australia and New Zealand Football for jointly staging and organising the tournament, including locally at Hindmarsh Stadium;

3. Encourages South Australians to get behind locally hosted games which will include teams from Brazil, Panama, China, Haiti, Korea, Morocco, and England;

4. Welcomes the many football fans coming from all parts of the world to view matches; and

5. Recognises the opportunities this world-class event will create in women’s sports participation rates and appeals to the South Australian government to provide further support to upgrade training and playing facilities for local and regional women’s football competitions.

In under 49 days, one of the biggest football tournaments on earth will kick off simultaneously in New Zealand and Australia: 32 of the world's footballing nations will be vying for the Women's World Cup, the ninth edition of this tournament and, no doubt, the most anticipated in its relatively short history. Four-time and current holders, the United States, are the logical favourites. This will be the first time the tournament is co-hosted by two countries and played in the Southern Hemisphere and also in the Oceania region.

There will be 64 matches played in eight groups of four teams, with groups shared equally here and in New Zealand. The opening match and opening ceremony take place at Eden Park in Auckland on 20 July between New Zealand and Norway. Later that day, Australia (the Matildas) take on the Republic of Ireland at Stadium Australia in Sydney before a sell-out crowd of more than 80,000.

The Matildas are ranked 12th in the world and will also face Canada and Nigeria in first-round matches of group B, but are favoured to progress through to the round of 16, and hopefully beyond, and better their previous qualifying record of the quarterfinal stage. This is why playing before a home crowd will be a psychological advantage.

It also helps having arguably the best female player currently in the world as our captain. Sam Kerr is a sensation in England, where she has led Chelsea to consecutive Women's Super League titles and FA Cup glory, scoring a high of 28 goals in all competitions this season, including the winning goal in Chelsea's FA Cup triumph over Manchester United. Sam is our rock star athlete, the female David Beckham, a real ticket magnet for the tournament. She has become the first woman to win the England Football Writers' Association Footballer of the Year trophy two years in a row, a feat completed by only two men: Cristiano Ronaldo and Thierry Henry. These are her feats in the UK.

Kerr has also swept all before her in the USA as the all-time leading goal scorer in the National Women's Soccer League, as well as Australia's W-League. Sam made her debut for Australia at the age of 15 in 2009 and has since represented Australia at three World Cups, four Asian Football Confederation Women's Asian Cup tournaments, and two Olympics. She was the Young Australian of the Year in 2018 and also an Order of Australia Medal recipient.

It seems elite sporting ability runs deep in her DNA. Kerr's father, Roger, was born to an English father who was a featherweight boxing champion and an Indian mother who played basketball in Calcutta. He played professional Australian Rules football in Western Australia. Her brother, Daniel, played for the West Coast Eagles, while on her mother Roxanne's side, Sam's grandfather and uncles were WAFL players, while another uncle—and you might recall this jockey, Mr President—Johnny Miller, was a champion jockey in the 1960s, riding Galilee in winning the 1966 Melbourne Cup.

Sam actually played Australian Rules football until the age of 12 when she had to switch codes due to gender restrictions. Chelsea manager, Emma Hayes, said of Sam, and I quote:

You (Australians) should cherish her. You have the most unbelievable leader. She is golden in every way, shape and form. She's one of the best I have ever coached. She's outstanding. She manages pressure. She manages expectations. She does it with joy. She does it with a smile on her face and I would not trade Sam Kerr for any other player in the world.

Sam Kerr is a woman of few words—she lets her boots do the talking. She is surrounded by players in the Matildas based at elite clubs in elite leagues: Lyon's Ellie Carpenter, Emily van Egmond of San Diego Wave, Racing Louisville's Alex Chidiac, Caitlin Foord of Arsenal, and Manchester City trio, Mary Fowler, Hayley Raso and Alanna Kennedy among them.

Under manager, Tony Gustavsson, Australia will also go into a major tournament in better form than ever, having beaten a number of heavyweights in women's football, including England, Denmark, Sweden and Spain. The Matildas finished fourth in the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. There were a couple of South Australian names in the squad: Charlotte Grant and Matilda McNamara are the Adelaide connections in the squad. There is a national women's competition, as we know, in Australia that has attracted a number of talented players as the popularity of the game grows.

I want to go back to the fact that Adelaide will be one of the host cities, with five matches being played at a facelifted Hindmarsh Stadium. The teams coming here include England, Haiti, China and Denmark, with a round 16 match also scheduled. Make no mistake, this will be a massive sporting event, the biggest event held here since the Olympics, and ticket sales are already tipping record levels, such is the attraction of the competition and level of the players.

Many will be surprised to know that women's football has a long history dating back to 1895, when the British Ladies' Football Club played their first match. A crowd of 10,000 watched the Blues play the Reds. The media coverage was a little condescending, with TheWestminster Gazette saying, 'The match proved football was not impossible for women and that as a novel and interesting experiment it might have significant far-reaching results.'

In Australia, there were reports that ladies' teams were being set up in New South Wales as early as 1903, with the first public match between two women's teams, North Brisbane and South Brisbane, being played in 1921 at the then Brisbane Cricket Ground, also known as the Gabba, and there were 10,000 in attendance.

Sadly, interest petered out after the English Football Association banned women's football, saying, 'The game of football is quite unsuitable for females and ought not be encouraged.' I can report, and gladly report, that the English FA has since retracted those views, considering the popularity of this game on a global scale as well as at club level in Europe and elsewhere around the world now.

A committee in Australia declared that football was 'medically inappropriate' for women to play and instead encouraged females to take up swimming, rowing, gymnastics, cycling and horseback riding. However, the game managed to survive, with national championships played in the 1970s. A national team played in the Asian championships and was involved in later international competitions.

The quirky nickname the Matildas came into being at the 1995 World Cup, following, ironically, a phone poll on SBS television. On the shortlist was the Soccertoos, the Lorikeets, the Waratahs, the Blue Flyers and the Matildas, which of course is the name that eventually managed to stick. It is just as well it did, as the Matildas are actually regarded as probably the eminent women's sporting team in Australia.

In closing, the tournament, as I said, kicks off in July, and of course Sam Kerr will hold the hopes of a nation on her slender shoulders as the Matildas seek to go better than their best quarterfinal finish. Their opponents in group B include Nigeria and Canada. I commend the motion the chamber.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. D.G.E. Hood.

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