With European womens football taking off, and even outgrowing US womens football, the time as probably come to drop all pretense about the W-League being a major global player.
There are a lot of positives in viewing it purely as a development league, and chief amongst them is the fact that it becomes affordable to run (if the bulk of your players are youngsters still at school and at uni, for example).

Like the socceroos have always been, the Matildas will now be, in the main, located overseas, and that ain't a bad thing.