They Are Women, Hear Them Roar

IF 2017 was a breakthrough year for Australian women in sport, then 2018 will see it rise to another level.

Foxtel

IF 2017 was a breakthrough year for Australian women in sport, then 2018 will see it rise to another level.

Images of the Matildas and W-League striker in post-goal celebration mode were beamed in News broadcasts to lounge rooms across the country.

After the Tournament of Nations – where the Matilda’s also downed the US and Brazil – Sam Kerr was the name on every sporting fan’s lips.

That love continued as the nation cheered Sam and the Matildas on when they returned home for friendlies against Brazil.

“Sam Kerr was huge,” says Amanda Lulham, sports journalist for The Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph.

“I rang up the Australian Olympic Committee and the biggest crowd for a standalone women’s event in New South Wales had been the Opals at the Olympic Games, but the Matildas smashed that record at Penrith and then again in Newcastle (15,000 and 18,000 respectively).”

“The extra attention the Matildas got last year actually helped people recognise their faces and their personalities.”

Kerr concurs.

“People have commented that the boy’s team feels untouchable,” Kerr told Foxtel in October last year, “Whereas they can have a conversation with us girls; they know us by name, because the fan base is smaller. We enjoy that and appreciate it because we haven’t always had it.”

But of course it was not only Kerr who made an impact. Players like Lisa De Vanna and captain Elise Kellond-Knight also stood out, and as the W-league culminates in the Grand Final on February 18 and the Matildas take on local rivals in the 2018 AFC Women’s Asian Cup in April, we’re sure to see a few more young female football stars cement their place in the Australian sporting consciousness in 2018.

From a round ball to a Sherrin … has there been a more successful sporting franchise rise so quickly anywhere else in the world as the AFLW?

The level of demand from fans around the season opener saw it moved to a bigger ground, and even then thousands of people were locked out of the game, forcing AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan to publicly apologise.

And on the same weekend the opening round of the inaugural league attracted more than 1.7 million viewers nationally.

By the end of the season the AFLW was one of the top five most tweeted about sports in Australia.

Again, it’s the personalities that broke through and Lulham is fascinated by the “cross-coders” that bring a heightened level of athleticism to the sport.

“Ash Brazill is a well-known netballer and she will be playing for Collingwood in both the netball and the AFLW,” says Lulham.

“Erin Phillips is obviously an elite athlete (in basketball as well, from which she retired from earlier this month), and she’s made that cross-over and is a real star.”

Already the league is growing with every game of the home-and-away season live on Fox Footy.

But nowhere does Australia dominate the rest of world like women’s surfing.

Since 1998 Australia has taken out an impressive 16 world titles and 2018 is shaping up as another cracker.

“We’ve got more Australian women on WSL tour than any other nation and it’s going to be a precursor to the Olympic Games where surfing is being introduced to the Olympic Games for the first time in Tokyo in 2020,” says Lulham.

“And we’ve got some real stars – six-time world champion Steph Gilmore, two-time world champion Tyler Wright and Sally Fitzgibbons who has fallen agonisingly short so many times it’s ridiculous. They’re three of the best surfers in the world. Can Tyler do three in a row?”

The three opening salvos of the WSL Women’s Tour in March at the Gold Coast, Bell’s Beach and Margaret River will be a strong indicator of the frontrunners in 2018.

And with the Opals heading over to the Women’s Basketball Cup in Spain in September all eyes have been upon the form players of the WNBL with Townsville Fire or Melbourne Boomers fighting it out in the finals series this month. Suzy Batkovic for Townsville and Liz Cambage for the Boomers have had outstanding seasons.

Will they be on the plane to Spain?

Stay tuned.

Fox Sports will be showing live coverage of the Westfield W-League, 2018 NAB AFL Women’s Competition, World Surfing League and WNBL, together with Hyundai A-League, 2018 Toyota AFL Premiership Season, 2018 AFL JLT Community Series, 2018 NRL Telstra Premiership, 2018 Vodafone Super Rugby season, 2017/18 NBL Season LIVE, 2018 Virgin Australia Supercars Championship and FIA Formula One World Championship™.

Originally published as They Are Women, Hear Them Roar