Man if only the a league got 1/4 of the love the Matildas are getting.

Forget AFL and nrl we need to keep these fans that are showing up.

Right now we're like the nerdy kid with the new iPhone everyone wants to be our friend but we all know how that ends.

Hopefully apl can keep the momentum going this time 

Matilda's have genuinely world class players in their team all plying their trade in Tier 1 of European football. 

IF the A-league started to produce the same kind of player, relative to the level of the Matilda's, then the A-league would be HUGE. 

Sam Kerr is not only a footballer, but judging by the screams from the stands when she came on last night, she's a bonafide celebrity/poster-girl of Aussie Women's Football. 

But nobody will know how good the a league w players if they don't watch.

This Popularity is 'always' there it is called the Premier league, WC and UCL.

The WWC is the for the most part the very best of women's football - people want to see the top end of the spear.

thus, people love football in Australia but they want to watch the top levels of the game. 

The AL gets more hype from players like Koal heading to Newcastle Utd then the AL finals series. Becuz people want us to be successful you want to see Australians playing in the PL, Series A, La Liga and UCL etc.

The easiest example I give is everyone wants to see/drive a Ferrari which is the top levels of football. The AL is like a Camry it is still a car but far less exicting, also the AL has shot itself in the head with being overly PC, anti active support, stale structure and way to sterile - it is for the most part 'boring' to follow. - It has done everything BUT focus on the game itself football WHICH is the pollar opposite of something like a world cup which is 100% about football - for all the moaning from PC wankers b4 Qatar soon as the tornament started NO wanted politics in the game they just cared about the matches being played. It is what the FA fail to understand football is the product not whatever bullshit agenda is in the media. 

I do watch the AL becuz in general im a fan of the sport but i hate the strcuture of the AL and almost everything it has 'become' - i do not attend games anymore as i personally think the atmosphere is not what is used to be and the league itself is un-interesting. The league for too long has ignored the shit structure in favor of 'short term' money. Until it has P/R and removes most of the squad restrictions i cannot see the AL ever being 'very' popular. 

The numbers do not lie, most people think the way i do or or a similar vien it is why you get 20k people to fed squad to watch a match on a screen but cant get 20k people to fill a stadium for clubs that have exsited almost 2 decades 

Football is incredbly popular in Australia but domestic league isnt and we should NEVER mix those two things up - becuz the structure, on the pitch quality, money and focus of the domestic league is so far from what top professional football is, you simply cannot call the AL a 'professional' football league with a straight face 

70 odd thousand people last night dont know and dont care how good the players are or how they played mate..... 

They were there to support their idols and their country... Ask most of the girls losing their minds when Kerr was brought on who the other 10 players on the pitch are and most will struggle to answer. Its not a criticism it just reality... The Wleague needs to take a leaf out of what the Asian and Euro womens comps are now doing and expand. Play a full h/a season. create a national cup competition ike the men's and follow up on creating a womens NSD as soon as possible... Give the thousands upon thousands of girls now playing the game a pathway to both play and support and they will thrive... 

Don't worry, someone in football community is no doubt putting some bullets in the chamber, preparing to shoot ourselves in the foot

Players should publicaly tweet asking for funding - shame the politicians into giving more to the game

Given the players mostly started their journey back then in the w-league (now a-league women's) its a perfect marketing tool to explain that the league is where Matildas stars are made.

But I dont trust the APL especially how they handled the grand final decision straight after the Socceroos great run at the World Cup when they builded such large momentum.
Lets see if they learned their lessons from that.

The FA needs to go to the Federal/State governments NOW and demand 10x fund for 'grass' roots of the game - it should be almost Free for Boys and Girls to play the game and follow in the foot steps of their Nation Team Heroes. 

The dream for Aussie kids should be to play in a world cup not become some Rugby/AFL Wife/GF beater and be player addicted to Ketamine/Coke 

Fine example of the 'national sport' 

https://www.foxsports.com.au/afl/well-continue-to-support-tarryn-roos-stand-firm-amid-damning-alleged-texts/news-story/a4e9f529ccde0b531d705c2054a7f2c3

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/afl/article-10908475/Bailey-Smith-tell-AFL-snorting-cocaine-video-accept-ban.html

I'm really bored of the AFL/nrl comparisons I believe there is room for all three sports to be thriving 

There isn't...... 

We have 26m people 

Add in Aus Open, Netball, Union, cricket and Formula 1....even add the rise in popularity of Basketball 

There simply isnt enough money to go around.....

Football has 1 big advantage which we have not really used since the AL was created and it can 'sell players' for massive money but due to the Cap clubs are hamstrung into crap fees 

The sooner people realise professional level sport is a business the better we will be....

Why do you think the AFL/NRL are constently lobbying for more funding at grass roots to get more and more kids into their sport 

In order to be a developing nation that receives HUGE payouts for developing players, it needs to attract the best junior athletes in the first place. Fees are probably the #1 hurdle to overcome in that context, but I don't want to open this can of worms again. 

My hope is APL learns how to connect to the player base... the sadness I feel as no management team in over 70 years has connected to the player base.... I hope but doubt APL uses the WC in mid season to connect to the player base not try and leverage benefits off the player base which goes down poorly...

I agree the fees to be lowed if not free is very important but the pathways are also important too especially that the demand for playing football from both female and even males will go up so they need to refined.

I also think its a great opportunity to educated the masses about the skills of the game especially at grassroots level, education is equalling as important as getting more kids playing football in my opinion especially to mums and dads who are might want their kids to get into the game for potentially the first time.
And get more futsal, 5v5 courts built around all over the country as future stars will be inspired to become the next Kerr, Foord etc but there is so many ways to build on this wonderful legacy these girls are doing for the country. 

Its up the powers at be to bottle this up and make the most of it! 

Most watched show of 2023

Out rated every NRL GF and origin since 2016 

And out rated 4 of the last 6 afl GFs

8.30 on a monday too....

I think the final figure will smash all records, if you add regional Australia plus streaming plus 7plus aps, plus Optus, plus youtube the final figure will be well over 5 million...

In the last game  capital city rating were 1.5 million and the final total was 4.7 million, if that follows it will approach 7 million... 

Hahahaha but Cevapi and Souvlaki are TWO separate, yet both delicious, things :P lol.

Thats bonkers...... absolute bonkers......  if we make the final and get a public holiday it will be 'almost' impossible to fail to connect with a bigger audience for soccer moving forward ... 

Can someone up there in Sydney kidnap Danny and Lederer for the next 2 x weeks and keep them from announcing anything..... pretty please :)

Give Danny a $50k bonus if he shuts his mouth for the next 6 months. 

But Kerr played in the A-league w for ages. It didn't bring huge crowds in, other players like Kyra was great to watch coming through not too long ago. The interest still wasn't there. People seem to only care once they go overseas to the big clubs or are playing for the Matildas. 

Mid, I hope APL do nothing to capitilise from the WWC momentum and in any case they will surely screw it up if so.
Its not all about the APLW but whats massive underneath.
As you posted in the MLS thread the USL see themselves being irrelevant in the future due to the system and we have it in a small scale compared to them but still totally a barrier for the leagues below.
This isn't good at all, hope someone, let alone JJ/FA WTFU cut the loss's put a knife through it all - we are on the wrong path.

The ‘cultural cringe’ , it’s always been there and probably always will be.

Keep winning?
Look our popularity like the US fluctuates being hot and cold based on when the WC and olympics is on and then we all stop pretending to like the game 

sad but true..... 

It will be interesting if this all translates in greater W League attendances.  

It's hard to see it making a huge difference to A-League W even if we win the tournament. All the players the country falls in love with will head straight back to their overseas clubs and in the modern world with all the kids on social media and such they will follow the players through that. I mean if Kerr announced she was going back to Perth for the upcoming season, then it would get interesting to see the following it could get compared to when she used to play there, but obviously that's not happening. 

The Matildas should be huge business going forward however, surely State Governments will be bidding big money for any games over the next decade or so and likewise TV money should be much better. Channel 7 have probably made a fortune off this World Cup with the ratings being a lot higher than anyone imagined. Hopefully 7 spend more money on womens football in the future and not use it all on AFLW.

We can't maintain this popularity for the womens game. It's a world cup. It's at home. It's an event being an event.

To capitalise on this, I think we need to be lobbying hard for fair grass roots funding and make a concerted push to turn the ALW fully professional. A big part of that should be pushing the media partners that made a fucking feast on us for ratings on this cup to put some decent money toward a ALW specific media deal.

Seven are cnts that we should never hitch our wagon to. But I think it's really up to Optus to put its money where its mouth is. They send all the money O/S and placate us with feel good documentaries about the grassroots but the thing they've never done is pay for pro Australian footballers to play pro football in Australia.

I think the generally fair ticket prices but also pricier categories for these massive games are the treat in many household budgets. The ALW will have to really go hard on good pricing which is unlikely sustainable. It's a fest, a one-off, with great hype and that's great. Invariably a lot will dissipate. I don't think we'll see anything remotely close to how it's kicked on in England.  

Post tournament most will seek out other past times and it'll be incredibly hard to reel them in. I hope I'm wrong but the customer and fan is hard to crack.

Probably won't but that's OK think about how many little kids are now thinking football and what is possible for them.

The amount of little girls (and boys) I see at the matches has been great. Kids that are carrying carboard signs made with textas and glitter. When was the last time you saw that? Just fantastic.

The vibe at the matches is also great as already commented on. Barely any swearing, lots of good humour and genuine joy just to be there. Definitely no aggro which I imagine puts a lot of hand wringers off going to the A League.  

As also mentioned affordable tickets. When I was in Brisbane a family of 5 was $90 to see the Roar play. Just ridiculous. $50 would have been fair.