Football Fridays | Women’s football in focus

Football Fridays is our weekly football content drop.

Before starting Content Hype, Matthew Galea cut his teeth as a sports journalist with a strong focus on football (or soccer, if you insist). Today, he continues to work for clients within the football industry and remains on the look out for great football stories.

New Deal for Matildas

It’s been a big week for women’s football in Australia.

Football Federation Australia and Professional Footballers Australia announced a brand new collective bargaining agreement which will guarantee the Matildas much better pay and conditions, in line with their male Socceroos counterparts.

It’s no surprise then that most of my football writing this week focused on the female game.

This week’s column on The Roar, dealt with the benefits of the new deal, how it captures the current mood of optimism in Australian football at the moment and the ever-present role of the PFA in just about everything good in football these days.

It only seems like yesterday that football was ready to rip itself to pieces.

It wasn’t strictly last week, but I recently spoke to Australian Association of Football Clubs (AAFC) chairperson Nick Galatas, who commented that he was seeing more goodwill from the game’s various stakeholders since the inception of the A-League.

Kudos to the new FFA board for fostering an environment which has seemingly allowed for much more constructive dialogue.

W-League break for youngster

Elsewhere in the women’s game, the W-League is just around the corner.

I had the opportunity to chat to Polly Doran, one of Melbourne Victory’s new players for the upcoming campaign.

Polly has been playing senior football since she was 14-years-old, having risen rapidly through the ranks at her junior club, Essendon Royals.

It was great to get her insights into how the club’s willingness to open up new opportunities encouraged her development.

She had no doubts that early exposure to senior football gave her a solid base for her progression into the Women’s National Premier Leagues with Calder United.

This is a great example of how some great news from outside a club or organisation can be turned into a compelling piece of content which helps to demonstrate the values of and quality of service provided by that organisation.

Of course, we also spoke about her excitement ahead of her debut W-League campaign and how she’s gone about balancing her studies (she’s in the midst of Year 12 exams) and football.

Fox Sports W-League commentator Teo Pellizzeri also shared a great story about stumbling on 15-year-old Polly whilst looking for W-League roughies.

Perth Glory struggles

Outside of that, I jumped on The Roar’s Game of Codes podcast to talk about Perth Glory’s slow start to the A-League.

You can catch that below from the 22:50 mark onwards.

Got a good football story? Want better football content for your website or club? Drop me a line using the form below.