Football Australia and the Matildas gaslighting Lisa De Vanna shows how broken the culture is

Modern Matildas are benefiting from what Lisa De Vanna endured

The Matildas’ attempt to gaslight former star Lisa De Vanna is perhaps the lowest moment of the disturbing scandal currently gripping the game.

A Matildas statement, released via Football Australia platforms on their behalf, has made this current team seem selfish and completely disconnected from the issues at hand.

The statement, signed by every Matilda including captain Sam Kerr, was in response to De Vanna’s damning abuse allegations.

It screams brand protection. It’s clearly a heartless PR move to reassure the Matildas’ major sponsors such as the Commonwealth Bank.

The statement is sprinkled with words like “empathise”, “haven”, “inclusive” — but there is nothing saying they believe Lisa De Vanna. Not one word.

The current contracted Matildas have made a statement regarding today’s team culture and stance against inappropriate behaviour.https://t.co/0jX0vJ0HhC

— CommBank Matildas (@TheMatildas) October 10, 2021

In fact it seems to demonise her experience because the current Matildas have also included personal messages of how amazing their team environment is. They use words such as “welcoming”, “family”, a “special team”. The current Matildas say how welcome they feel and “proud” they are to be part of this team.

The statement makes out De Vanna to be some crazy lone ranger and that everyone else in the Matildas has been living a sweet existence in a “professional” sporting environment full of soccer sunshine and rainbows. This is a “family”, how could anything bad be happening because it is so “safe”.

Notably the Matildas refer to just “Lisa’s allegations” in the statement.

It doesn’t acknowledge the multiple other women who have also come forward, who are also bravely saying the culture was toxic and they felt sexually harassed.

The Matildas might use the word “empathise”, but they don’t actually do it.

The statement is especially problematic because in saying that the current team feels like nothing is wrong, how can a woman who feels there is a problem say so now?

How can a Matilda feel comfortable calling anything out? Because, you know, everything is so “safe”.

The clinching line in the desperate and failed attempt to stop this very public scandal is this one: “As a team, we have spoken at length about the allegations and we are all hurt by what has occurred.”

This is not about the Matildas. This is bigger than them, this is about player welfare and creating a better culture for those to come.

Instead, the current Matildas seem to have dismissed the truth and experience that their previous teammates endured (even though some current Matildas allegedly saw some of this ugliness unfold).

These are victims who worked hard to create a team that has ascended as a much loved collective in the Australian sporting landscape. These modern day Matildas are now benefiting from their hard work, but yet survivors of any awful environment aren‘t being acknowledged.

This is about women who have felt incredibly unsafe and hurt, and say they still carry immense trauma.

This really was a moment for soccer to look at itself as a whole, not just at the women’s squad. To look at the game from the elite level to its grassroots and ask: what more can be done?

Instead Football Australia seem to want to frame this as a historical issue when it’s clearly not, and try to kill it off with a pretty, emotive PR statement. It hasn‘t worked. It’s failed badly.

The majority of the squad have since released the statement on their personal Twitter accounts, but all have banned replies to their tweets. The locking out of the public can’t be ignored — it says Football Australia just wants this all to go away.

If Football Australia’s plan to resurrect the Matildas brand via the current squad, framing Lisa De Vanna as the only one carrying pain from her time in the national team, they failed.

It‘s time for Football Australia to do better.