Waltzing Matildas

Three years after co-hosting an epic FIFA Women’s World Cup, Australia is sole host of the Asian Football Confederation’s AFC Women’s Asian Cup 2026.  Regional powerhouses Japan, Korea DPR, China PR and Korea Republic will compete with the Matildas and seven other teams for this major trophy.

This is a key moment for the team that emerged in 2023 as Australia’s most valuable national sport team brand, and has attracted big crowds when playing in Australia ever since.  The importance of the Matildas goes well beyond women’s association football (soccer) to women’s sport in general and to their place in society as a whole.  Recent research, for example, has demonstrated the deep connection between historical masculinist claims to dominance over women and gender-based violence in sport.

The Matildas will have to work hard to maintain their elevated position in Australian sport culture and to improve their standing in the world game.  FIFA’s current world rankings place them 15^th, well behind their highest ever position of 4^th in 2017/8.  In Asia, Japan and Korea DPR are above them at, respectively, 8th and 9th in the world.

It is conventional in Australian sport to link an individual’s and team’s success to their popularity, and the Matildas’ form has been patchy to say the least since that bright winter of 2023.  Even then it could be coldly recalled, among the widespread exhilaration and record television ratings, that the team lost three of its seven matches, including the third-place playoff against Sweden.

Their much-anticipated participation in the 2024 Paris Olympics failed at the group stage, leading to media and wider Olympic team rumblings about excessive “pampering”, and some resentment from better-performed Australian teams in less publicised sports like women’s rugby sevens.  The Matildas’ form was also frankly poor in the four-team SheBelieves Cup in the USA in early 2025, when they failed to win a match and came last.

Since then, their playing level has generally improved in a string of friendlies.  Under new head coach Joe Montemurro, there is some optimism that the Matildas can emulate the 2015 Socceroos’ success under Ange Postecoglou by winning an AFC Asian Cup on home soil.  The Socceroos are currently 27^th in the world, behind Japan (19^th), Iran (20^th) and Korea Republic (22^nd) in Asia.  Their next challenge comes soon in June when, before kicking a ball, they must first come to terms with the turbulent atmospherics of the 2026 FIFA men’s World Cup hosted by Donald Trump’s United States, and its frequent antagonists Canada and Mexico.

The contrasting positions of men’s and women’s football in Australia invites some scrutiny.  The Professional Footballers Australia (PFA) 2024/25 A-League Women Report reveals that, despite equal pay and conditions at the national level, the lower strata (especially women’s) of the football pyramid is badly underdeveloped.  This is a pattern observable in many other countries, where the elite game (especially men’s) has become progressively detached from the clubs that support them.

It is no surprise, given these problems, that A-League Women (ALW) struggles to appeal to the top Matildas players signed to major European clubs like Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester City, and Olympique Lyon.  In light of the foul, misogynistic online abuse that the Matildas and many other sportswomen must endure, they must be tempted sometimes not to take to the pitch at all.

The Matildas’ performance on the field and reputation off it has, it must be observed, been affected by events surrounding their captain and most celebrated player, Samantha (Sam) Kerr.  She has now returned to the team after an extended layoff through injury, and negative global headlines after being tried and acquitted in 2025 of racially aggravated harassment of a white, male police officer in London.

The charge was clearly over-reach by the British justice system, but Kerr’s conduct on the night in question, concealment of the matter during the 2023 World Cup, Football Australia’s decision not to sanction her, and the all-round refusal to take media questions on the matter, have caused some disquiet.

Sam Kerr’s tribulations after her brilliant World Cup goal against England in Sydney in 2023, and teammate Cortnee Vine’s mental health struggles after her wildly welcomed winning penalty earlier against France in Brisbane, demonstrate how quickly fortunes can change in sport.  The Matildas will be hoping to return soon to the sublime cultural place that was the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup.

They have every incentive to do so.  The 2026 AFC Women’s Asian Cup functions as the qualifying mechanism for next year’s FIFA Women’s World Cup in Brazil.  The Matildas will aim at the very least to be among the six teams to qualify automatically, rather than be forced to go ‘the long way round’ via the FIFA Play-Off Tournament for the last two places allocated to the AFC.

An underwhelming performance at home would surely take some of the shine off Australia’s favourite team.  But to triumph in style in a tournament they have won only once in 50 years (in China, 2010) would, just as certainly, cement the Matildas’ position at the apex of Australian sporting culture.

First, they will have to escape from Group A, which contains Iran, Korea Republic (21^st, whose team almost boycotted in protest at inferior conditions), and their first opponent, the Philippines (41^st).  This not quite the mythical ‘Group of Death’ that haunts every football tournament of substance.  Perhaps, pending successful knockout and finals phases, the nation’s favourite team could even replay the glory of 2023 by having the word ‘Matilda’ declared the Australian word of the year.