Adelaide City chief executive Tony Costa says joining the boom in women’s national club sport makes sense

Adelaide City is investigating the prospect of entering its successful women’s team in the national W-League which could give Adelaide United a much-needed derby sparring partner.

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Adelaide City is investigating the prospect of entering its successful women’s team in the national W-League which could give Adelaide United a much-needed derby sparring partner.

The three-time time men’s national soccer league champion’s chief executive Tony Costa revealed he and the City board had thoughts about entering the club in the top flight women’s league.

Costa had contacted FFA before the nation’s governing body’s chairman Chris Nikou said he was in favour of expanding the W-League after fronting an Adelaide audience for FFA’s community summit more than a fortnight ago.

“The initial discussion was to find out what the W-League criteria is,’’ Costa said.

“FFA’s initial response is inferring W-League expansion should align with A-League clubs first, however, Canberra United’s W-League side is outside that logic.

“We’re prepared to have further meetings with the key stakeholders to continue discussions about it.”

Adelaide City players Emily Gale, left, Grace Abbey, Daniela DiBartolo, coach Andrew Calderbank, Mikayla Vidmar and Chrissie Zikos. Picture: Matt Turner

“About three years ago the club built an ‘action agenda’, it has five goals underpinning it and one of those goals is to grow brand awareness, so national exposure is an obvious strategy.

“We believe we have things in place and what we want to do is to investigate whether we’re a chance of entering the W-League and I have asked the question to FFA.

“Our senior women’s team has won seven SA championships in the last 10 years.

“We have a high percentage of players that have represented the W-League and we have good talent coming through.”

Costa said injecting more resources into the club’s women’s football teams made sense after Roy Morgan market research results issued last month revealed more than 550,000 women play one of four main football codes in Australia.

AFLW is the fastest growing sport with 177,000 participants but it’s well behind soccer which has almost 400,000 players among women aged more than 14.

“We believe we are ready to enter the W-League competition,’’ Costa said.

“We’ve got 125 women players registered, we have juniors and we have facilities which all leads to positives for our club and women’s football.

“When you see what women’s club football has done recently, in Italy Juventus had almost 40,000 at their stadium watching their women’s team and Atletico Madrid had more than 60,000 fans watching their women’s team.

“And the Crows attracting more than 50,000 to the AFLW grand final against Carlton at Adelaide Oval it’s easy to see where the real growth in sport is.”

Adelaide City currently has seven players that have featured in Adelaide United’s W-League past campaigns.

Daniela Di Bartolo, Dylan Holmes, Chelsie Dawber, Grace Abbey, Georgia Campagnale, Tiarn Powell and Nora Peat are all part of this season’s WNPL leaders squad.

Coached by Andrew Calderbank, City was atop of SA’s WNPL ladder with five wins from five matches scoring 26 goals and conceding seven before meeting West Adelaide at West Beach on Friday night.

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