'After hosting the 2023 World Cup, surely that was a statement to push the league, make it fully professional and pay the players what they are worth.' Ellie Carpenter said that in January. Nothing changed. That's the story of Australian football in a sentence.
Every four years, Federation Square fills up, Darling Harbour turns green and gold, and millions of Australians suddenly care deeply about a game they'll largely ignore for the next 1,400 days. The Socceroos face Turkey on June 14 in Vancouver, and the cycle begins again.
But this time the hangover is going to be harder to ignore.
The numbers don't lie
Just under 24,000 fans watched the Socceroos beat Cameroon 1-0 at Accor Stadium in Sydney recently. Before the 2006 World Cup, 95,103 packed the MCG to watch Lucas Neill and Marco Bresciano beat Greece. That's not a dip in interest — that's a collapse.
The Socceroos also drew just 16,764 for a midweek game against Curaçao in Melbourne. Unless you follow the game closely, you probably didn't even know it was on. That invisibility is the real problem.
In the women's game, the minimum wage for senior A-League Women's players sits at $25,750. Scholarship players earn $12,800. Carpenter described it plainly: embarrassing. The lowest minimum salary across all women's professional sport in Australia. After hosting a Women's World Cup. Let that land.
Sam Kerr won't come home to finish her career here. Neither will Steph Catley. Why would they?
Structural rot runs deep
Western United's licence was put on a 12-month hold last August. The Newcastle Jets nearly folded over a historical tax debt. Imagine either scenario playing out in the AFL or NRL. You can't — because it wouldn't happen.
The broadcast situation isn't helping either. A-League coverage lives behind a Paramount+ paywall, with Channel 10 showing one game per round. That deal expires at the end of the current season, and it's hard to picture rival networks scrambling to replace it. Former Manchester United and Chelsea goalkeeper Mark Bosnich went on SEN Radio this week and called for the men's competition — which launched in 2005 — to be scrapped and rebuilt from scratch. He's not wrong to raise it.
There's no Premier League connection pulling casual fans in, either. Harry Kewell, Tim Cahill, Mark Viduka — those names gave Australians a weekly reason to watch European football and care about domestic football by extension. Nestory Irankunda at Watford and Mohamed Touré at Norwich are showing promise in the Championship, but the Championship isn't the Premier League. The gravitational pull simply isn't there.
- Paltry crowds at A-League Women's fixtures, often played at suburban grounds with limited transport access
- Kick-off times scheduled before 5pm at some venues
- A Professional Footballers Australia report found 66% of female players and 43% of male players reported sport-psychological distress
- No promotion or relegation system to generate genuine competitive stakes
- Fixtures scheduled in Brisbane's January heat, conditions that would test even the most committed supporter
Two betting scandals in recent years added reputational damage to an already fragile product. Football Australia's governing record since 2006 — the last time the Socceroos genuinely captured the country — makes for grim reading.
The fixes aren't complicated to identify: shift both competitions to a March-September calendar, introduce a second division with promotion and relegation, get players paid properly. But Football Australia has had nearly two decades to act on variations of this same list.
'Some girls that are maybe older in their career or just about to finish, they probably don't want to go back and finish their careers in Australia, because of where the game's at,' Carpenter said. That's the most damning verdict possible — the country's own best players don't want to come home.
