Forget a public holiday, Matildas fervour should be harnessed for a revolution

There’s never been anything like it. It’s been said many times about this tournament, but it never felt more true than during, and immediately after, the Matildas’ nail-biting win over France, on Saturday night.

I’ve never seen an event so totally overwhelm everything. Every single story on my Instagram feed was of people watching, and celebrating, Cortnee Vine’s game-winning penalty. Every group chat I’m in, normally home to idle gossip and memes of dubious quality, was taken over by World Cup commentary. More than 3 million people watched it live on free-to-air, millions more on streaming and in live sites and pubs across the country. Planeloads of passengers tuned in during international flights.

It feels safe to say that the Matildas’ incredible run this World Cup has overtaken even the Sydney Olympics in terms of cultural and social resonance. The collective fervour, stress, joy and anticipation has created a unique national moment, and regardless of whether Australia win or lose from here, it’s a moment that shouldn’t be wasted.

The prime minister has been an early advocate for a national public holiday if the Matildas win the Cup. It’s an appealing idea, a no-brainer really, but it should be the bare minimum. There is an opportunity here, as former captain Melissa Barbieri alluded to last week, for this to be a truly transformative moment for women’s sport, and our entire sporting culture more generally.

The success of the Matildas is not an accident. It is a testament, as writer and long-term Matildas’ fan Rebecca Shaw put it, to not just the players but to the many women who have toiled for years to build the game to this level, in the face of a male-dominated sporting culture that has been resistant to change. But we are in different era now, and it’s time for a revolution, in terms of how we approach, fund and govern sport in this country. Doing so isn’t just about helping ensure success in future World Cups (though that would be nice), it’s about rebalancing our sporting ecosystem to make it fairer, more accessible, more fun and less dominated by forces that cause social harm.

Millions of people watched the Matildas’ thrilling victory over France.Credit: Getty

There will be an influx of young people turning to soccer, and other codes, in the aftermath of this Cup – particularly young women. They deserve the best facilities in the world. Our public schools and community sporting grounds should be top-tier. Council facilities should no longer be able to get away with having no change rooms and bathrooms for women. Youth academies should be bolstered to identify and support a new generation of talent. At the grassroots, club and national level funding should be increased to offset the reliance Australian sport has on pokies and gambling. Part of what has made this World Cup so enjoyable is that it feels like pure sport rather than “wagering content” (as rugby league boss Peter V’landys recently described sporting fixtures).

Stadiums should be built or repurposed so cities like Melbourne, the self-declared sporting capital of the world, can fit more than 20,000 people into the ground to watch the national team. A more egalitarian sporting culture can be created out of this moment. One that is less heavily based on the private school system that currently drives Australia’s biggest sporting codes, one that allows athletes to hone their skills regardless of where they grow up and what their social background is, be scouted and developed and then play in local top-tier leagues run by and for communities, rather than in overseas competitions dominated by billionaires.

It’s happened before. One of the most successful soccer nations in the world has a population of just 3 million people – the same as the amount of Australians that watched the quarter-final on live television. Uruguay won two Olympic gold medals in the 1920s, the first of two World Cup wins in 1930, and have won the Copa América 15 times – more than any other nation. Their early success was, like the Matildas, not an accident.

In the early 20th century, reformist president José Batlle y Ordóñez built up a welfare state, fostering working-class participation in the sport. His government created one of the first national sporting bureaucracies, influencing the rest of South America, and built football pitches across the country. Public investment egalitarian social policies laid the groundwork for Uruguay’s sporting success – which also saw it become the first country in the world to field Black players in international competitions. Australia is not Uruguay in the 1920s, but now more than ever there is an opportunity to use public resources to create our own model of egalitarian and groundbreaking sporting success.

The steady march of sport, of all stripes and in all nations, becoming the plaything of Saudi royals and sports-betting companies, has been grim to watch. Part of why we love the Matildas is because they – largely due to how unseriously they have been taken until now – represent something different. A more genuine, raw and hopeful vision of sport. A vision that could become the norm, if we seize the moment.

Osman Faruqi is culture editor for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald.

The Opinion newsletter is a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up here.