When FIFA president Gianni Infantino opened the envelope that revealed Australia's effort to host the Women's World Cup alongside New Zealand had been successful back in 2020, the country was entering a period where it would never be further apart. Not in an abstract sense, but in a very literal one - the COVID-19 pandemic just months into what would become months, years, of restrictions, lockdowns, and isolation.
'As One' was the bid's title but it would take a while before anyone would find out what that looked like.
Now though, Australia is beginning to feel what As One means. Three years on from the socially distanced explosion of joy that greeted that moment, the Matildas' quarterfinal clash with France at Lang Park on Saturday is being trumpeted as one of the biggest sporting events to hit Australia in decades and the nation is coming together in its millions in anticipation.
Tickets for the game itself are the most in-demand digital scrap of paper since Taylor Swift announced she was touring Down Under, while the sheer demand and excitement surrounding the fixture almost forced governments and councils across the country to provide a host of live sites where supporters can communally watch the match. The likes of Rod Laver Arena -- home of the Australian Open Grand Slam -- and Sydney's Olympic Park -- which will host England's quarterfinal with Colombia later on Saturday -- are being transformed into impromptu live sites to meet the demand and excitement.
Free-to-air rights holders Channel 7 took the extraordinary step on Wednesday of moving to broadcast the game on its main channel in all of Australia's states and territories, which, in turn, delayed the start of its flagship news bulletin. Such a move isn't unprecedented in a sporting context, however, you can count the number of times that's happened for football before on one hand and then have five fingers left over.
Perhaps most extraordinarily, the reigning overlord of the Australian sporting scene, the AFL, has moved to delay the opening bounce of its blockbuster clash between Carlton and Melbourne until 7.30 to aid this move. Additionally, the MCG, Perth's Optus Stadium, and SCG, which are all hosting AFL games that day, will put the Matildas on their big screens before and after their respective fixtures. Adelaide Crows coach Matthew Nicks, whose side travels to face the Brisbane Lions at the same time as the Matildas game remarked: "If I could, I'd be watching the Matildas as well."
Yes, it also describes the joint nature of Australia and New Zealand's bid for the tournament, but As One now perfectly encapsulates the swelling public support surrounding the Matildas heading into Saturday. And unless you've lived in an Australian football context, it's almost impossible to properly communicate the magnitude or unprecedented nature of all this, or the deserved validation it provides for countless pioneers (especially in the women's space) that toiled out of the limelight for so long, with little thanks and often even less pay (if any), to lay the foundation for it all.
For decades, football was considered a foreign interloper, an unwelcome distraction and a challenger to more accepted local codes. It was a sport for "Sheilas, Wogs and Poofters," an impugnation that was co-opted for the title of Australian football icon Johny Warren's biography. Women's football had it even worse, dealing not just with this broader hostility but also being pushed to the margins and forced to survive off the backs of volunteers' love and labour, discarded and disrespected by Australian football's nominal leaders.
In an email written in 2000 and later revealed in a 2005 Federal Court case, a Channel 7 executive revealed that the channel had bought the rights to the National Soccer League, the A-Leagues' predecessor competition that collapsed in 2004, with the express intent of hiding it to the benefit of the AFL. Now, moving beyond tiresome code wars, the broadcaster and the AFL are shifting their plans for football. For women's football. For the Matildas.
The largest-ever audience for a Matildas match before this World Cup cycle was 571,000 viewers, set during the 2019 World Cup. In 2023, 6.54 million at one point or another were reached by Channel 7 during the broadcast of the Matildas' 2-0 win over Denmark, with an average audience clocking in at 3.56 million. And that's a record almost certain to be broken this Saturday, leaving little choice but to get on board or get out of the way.
In 2015, the team -- featuring many players still a part of the squad in 2023 -- went on strike and boycotted a tour of the United States to secure better conditions. Players that had reached the quarterfinals of the 2015 World Cup months prior received just a $750 match payment for that game. In 2023, the team's collective bargaining agreement enshrines pay and support equity with the Socceroos, and they are a leading voice calling on FIFA to enshrine equal prize money between the men's and women's World Cups.
Matildas' media manager Ann Odong, who before landing with Football Australia helped drive coverage of women's football in the absence of mainstream interest, remarked that in 2007 the Matildas had staged their send-off fixture before the World Cup in front 1186, increasing to 2866, 4277, and 6834 fans for subsequent iterations. This year, the send-off sold out 50,000 capacity Marvel Stadium, while the team's games in the World Cup thus far have attracted sellout crowds to Stadium Australia, Lang Park, and Melbourne Rectangular Stadium.
Helen Tyrikos, the general manager of Heidelberg United, a semiprofessional community-based club whose home has served as a training base for Canada and Colombia during the World Cup, has also been at the forefront of the change that has already been wrought by the growth of the women's game Down Under. Since 2014, the club's women's program has helped drive millions of dollars of investment from local and state governments in upgrading the club's facilities, allowing their Olympic Village home to host teams during this tournament with few upgrades required.
"What [legacy] I hope this tournament will leave is a massive increase in participation in the women's game," she told ESPN. "The number of expressions of interest for our club coming in, even without us opening them, has been huge. That hasn't happened before.
"I'd like to see a new audience being created for our local leagues. The A-League Women, National Premier League Women and Victorian Women's Premier League. Because the Australian audiences that are more used to the Premier League or men's game have started to take notice and enjoy coming to watch women's games.
"I think the men now know that a lot of the infrastructure that we've put in place like the tower [a large scaffold overlooking the pitch for broadcasters and technical staff to observe and film from] is because of the Women's World Cup. So now they're asking if they can use something rather than just expecting to use something - 100% there's more respect."
It all harkens to perhaps the most famous of Warren's words, the parting message, parting gift, he left for the game before his death in 2004 when asked what he wanted his legacy to be. "I told you so." It's a message that has since become part rallying cry, part prayer for Australian football. A belief that one day it would be recognised for the value it brings and its ability to unite the country. That it would be respected.
Is it there yet? Has the Matildas' home World Cup run revealed Australia as the 'football country' it is increasingly being proclaimed to be across social media? Maybe. The cynical view, given the game's long history, is that it will find a way to fumble this all somehow. National teams always tend to transcend petty rivalries and given that Australia is without question a major events country, it will probably take a few years, when the country isn't basking in the afterglow of a home World Cup, to figure out if the dial has shifted anyway.
But knowing the context, it's impossible not to feel something as you see a banner bearing the message "I told you so" being waved before an Australian team plays in front of a sold-out 80,000 people at a home World Cup. And as ESPN's Stuart Randall, who at the win over Denmark, observed, those in the stands around him covering a wide spectrum of ages, genders, and ethnicities, may not have been a footballing crowd when they entered Stadium Australia but might have been one by the time they were exiting the stadium.
Additionally, it wasn't just young girls decked out head to toe in green and gold, cheering the team on, but young boys too. The inspiration from Mat Leckie's goal against the Danes in the men's World Cup eight months prior was matched in power by Caitlin Foord's opener.
The Matildas have seemingly become all of Australia's team. No qualifiers are needed. And as Randall observed, "This could be the greatest legacy of it all."