Former Sydney FC captain Teresa Polias knows what it’s like to play in a competition that’s mostly not broadcast – which is why she believes that making the Liberty A-League as accessible as possible is crucial to the future of women’s football. Making games free to watch is quickest way to create heroes.
I watched loads of the Euros from England recently, and loved seeing the big crowds and the way a whole country got behind a women’s football tournament.
Sitting alongside me for a lot of those games was my daughter. She’s only eight months old now but eventually she’ll realise that when the W-League, as it was called then, kicked off in 2008, I was on the pitch in the second ever game – playing for the Mariners away to Melbourne Victory.
I imagine she’ll ask me if she can see me in that game but the answer will be “no”, as it will be for most of the games I played that season, for the simple reason that only one game a week was shown on TV. For everyone bar the players and the fans who were physically there, 70% of games in that first season are just entries in the history books.
Even one game a week was an improvement on what came before – the lack of visibility of women’s football meant that when I was a kid, kicking a ball around, I was wearing football shirts with male names on the back. To have heroes, you need to be able to see them.
This is why, as someone who played 13 seasons in what was the W-League but who sat out last season to start a family, I hope there is some awareness of how much the landscape has changed. We’ve seen overseas that if you put a sport on a broadcast platform where people can actually see it, its popularity soars.
There are so many reasons for putting our games into a place where the maximum number of people can see them. As players in the early years of the W-League, we wanted to watch other teams and learn about our opposition, but only had that single game each week.
Otherwise you’re reliant on the analysis sessions you’re club puts on using the single-camera filming of a game that coaches get sent. It’s actually really hard to get a sense of how well one of the other teams is doing if you can’t watch a game with all its ebb and flow.
Now we’ve developed to a point where every game in the Liberty A-League is covered live, and that’s unbelievable progress – with one important thing to note. Until now the majority of games every season have been on a pay-TV channel. I understand the economics of live sport, but for me the key to growing the game is to be in front of as many people as possible.
Read: the incredible story of Teresa Polias’s first A-Leagues goal for Sydney FC… foretold.
That way you build recognition and loyalty, and the culture of supporting a team. Give people the chance to watch a team every week, home and away, and you can start to build the tribalism and the passion, that makes football great.
So I’m delighted that every Liberty A-League game this season will be live and free to watch. As the World Cup gets closer, and excitement grows, you hope that people will seek out our competition – so it’s crucial that we’ve made it as accessible as possible.
I’m not sure yet what role I will play at Sydney FC this season, if any, but I’ll definitely be watching – hopefully as part of an audience that’s growing because more people than ever can actually see it.
