Women's World Cup 2023: Can football shine in Australia and New Zealand?

A cavernous arena of more than 80,000 seats and a large ring of grass surrounds the playing field, evoking memories of the running track on which Cathy Freeman won her historic 400m gold at the 2000 Olympics.

The view isn't great from some seats yet in the years since the Olympics, Australia's football fans have simply learned to make do.

It's not perfect, but it's symbolic: the site of the 2006 penalty shootout that that sent the Socceroos to their first World Cup in three decades, the Asian Cup triumph in 2015 and countless other victories there have made the women's national team, the Matildas, a symbol of national sporting pride.

Yet, with the 2023 Women's World Cup set to kick off here in less than three weeks' time, the fanfare that typically accompanies a tournament of its magnitude has been slow to start.

All the best Women's World Cup 2023 content

With the National Rugby League (NRL) and Australian Football League (AFL) seasons in full swing, only in the last couple of weeks have banners been hoisted and marketing events started in earnest - a fact not lost on ABC women's football journalist Samantha Lewis.

"I've had countless conversations with strangers over the past few weeks who have no idea that there's a Women's World Cup happening," she tells BBC Sport, "let alone that we're co-hosting it."

It's a telling snapshot that, with a World Cup about to land on its doorstep, Australia is yet to figure out its relationship with the beautiful game.

The next couple of months have the potential to chart a new path for football in a region where, despite moments of promise, the sport has seldom thrived and always struggled against both its many competitors and internal mismanagement.

Despite high registration fees and scant facilities, football remains easily the most popular sport in both Australia and New Zealand to play at a grassroots level.

More than a million Australians and more than 150,000 Kiwis register to play each year, far exceeding participation levels in cricket, rugby and Australian rules football.

But despite the wealth of young players, the professional game's journey down under has been bumpy. In both countries, football lags behind as a spectator sport by a considerable distance.

The National Soccer League, founded in 1977 and largely composed of clubs formed from Australia's myriad immigrant communities, drew mixed levels of success until 2004 when, beset by financial and broadcast issues, it folded.

In a push to establish a rejuvenated professional system in Australia, a year later Football Australia established the A-League, in which New Zealand's only professional club currently plays.

Its female counterpart came two years later, instantly becoming a magnet for the world's best female players during the United States' National Women's Soccer League off-season, among them Sam Kerr and Megan Rapinoe.

In the nearly two decades since, the A-League's impact on the region's sporting landscape has been mixed.

Initial attendances were strong, however the league's lack of young, world-class talent and limited appeal to foreign players quickly soured the public's perception of the quality of football on offer compared with the English and European leagues.

It's a stigma the men's league in particular has never quite been able to shake, despite it producing a number of exciting Australian talents, including Mat Ryan, Aaron Mooy and more recently Garang Kuol.

This problem is compounded by the constant presence of Cricket Australia, the All Blacks, the AFL and NRL - all of which enjoy a reputation as the global elite of their respective sports - competing locally for eyeballs and column inches.

Add to that the fact the league is played during the scorching Australian summer, along with a poorly-received broadcast deal with Paramount that, as of next season, will see just two men's games and no women's games broadcast on television each week - the rest are available via streaming - and it's no wonder football is far from being the first, second or even third most-watched domestic sport.

Meanwhile, the pull of full-time, big-money contracts overseas has stripped the semi-professional A-League Women of its biggest stars, while the majority of those left behind are forced to either play in multiple competitions or take second jobs to make ends meet.

"The league's administrators were short-sighted," says Lewis. "They failed to get ahead of the curve by investing in women's club football when they had the opportunity.

"It has had to reposition and rebrand itself as a greenhouse for the next generation of players who eventually seek bigger and better opportunities elsewhere, but that narrative is difficult to sell to a nation whose love of women's football largely stops with the senior Matildas."

A-League's 'darkest day'

A bright spot remains though in Australia's vibrant fan culture, which has long served as the main draw for new fans.

The league boasts a small yet passionate community of active support groups, drawing inspiration from a myriad of different fan cultures across central and eastern Europe in embracing choreographed visual displays.

The scene tends to expand and contract in size along with the league's wider popularity, resulting in thrilling highs with world-class atmospheres and equally cavernous lows, particularly when, on occasion, those all-too-common blights of hooliganism, racism and homophobia have reared their ugly heads.

With professional football in Australia and New Zealand engaged in a constant struggle for viewers in the so-called 'code wars', this community has also come to view any mismanagement of the professional game as an existential threat to the sport itself.

The result has been an increasingly fractious relationship between the fans and the Australian Professional Leagues (APL), which wrested governance of the A-Leagues away from Football Australia in 2019.

This state of constantly simmering tensions has boiled over into moments of shocking anger, most notably during last December's Melbourne derby, when a group of Melbourne Victory fans, irate at the APL's decision to sell the hosting rights to the next three A-League grand finals to Sydney, violently stormed the pitch, forcing the abandonment of the game.

Melbourne City goalkeeper Thomas Glover was taken to hospital after being struck in the head with a bucket thrown by one of the invaders.

Sydney Morning Herald writer Vince Rugari called it the league's "darkest day" and ex-Socceroo Danny Vukovic wrote on Twitter that the Australian game was "in tatters".

What made those scenes in Melbourne all the more shocking was the fact they took place barely two weeks after a fleeting yet poignant moment of Australian footballing Nirvana.

As the little-favoured Socceroos somehow forced their way into the round of 16 at Qatar 2022, bowing out after a valiant showing against eventual champions Argentina, tens of thousands of fans created viral scenes of early-morning rhapsody in Sydney and Melbourne's public squares, which coach Graham Arnold showed in the locker room to motivate his players.

For a brief moment, it felt like Australian football was set to get its mojo back but thanks to its inability to get out of its own way, it was back to square one once again.

"You have to wonder how the men's season would have ended had its administrators fully capitalised on the spotlight the Socceroos brought them," Lewis says.

Even so, Australian football's governing bodies may just get another chance to chart a new course for the game should the Matildas - already one of the nation's most beloved sporting institutions - deliver on the hype.

Tickets to their opening match at Stadium Australia against the Republic of Ireland have sold out, while it is not an exaggeration to say that if talismanic forward Sam Kerr brings Australia a World Cup or a 2024 Olympic gold medal, she will be deified alongside the likes of Don Bradman, Shane Warne and Ashleigh Barty in the highest echelons of Australian sporting lore.

Chelsea striker Sam Kerr

Australia's penchant for getting behind its national teams makes the Matildas' success at the World Cup all the more important for the future health of the game, particularly if they can generate the kind of wave we saw in England after the Lionesses' triumph at least year's Euros.

In rugby-dominated New Zealand - perhaps the first and only World Cup host country with just one professional club side, Wellington Phoenix - a crowd of almost 40,000 is expected for the Football Ferns' opening match at Eden Park, meaning a strong showing from the team could be just as transformative.

The potential is clearly there in both countries but, as Lewis remarks, the biggest thing standing in the way of football's growth down under is often its own powers that be.

"They've already seen what happens when one major World Cup moment passes them by," she added. "They won't want to waste another."

-bbc