With a quarter of the 2020-21 W-League season already completed, the big question of whether the exodus of senior Matildas and other internationals would affect the league’s quality and entertainment factor has been emphatically answered.
The first three rounds have already produced some jaw-dropping moments and goal of the season contenders, from Canberra United midfielder Grace Maher’s half-field lob to Sydney FC winger Princess Ibini’s outside-of-the-box curler, and the full-field slalom by Melbourne Victory’s Lisa De Vanna.
But what’s been most encouraging is that young, Australian players have been at the heart of many of them.
Right now, almost half of the league’s 20 individual goal-scorers are younger than 23, as are three of the five multiple goal-scorers so far this season (Cortnee Vine, Rosie Galea and Emily Condon).
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Youth is shining in other areas of the field, too. Two of the players who’ve created the most goal-scoring opportunities across the league are under 23, as are almost half of the top ten for passes in the opposition half. Five of the league’s nine starting goalkeepers also fall into this age bracket.
The production of the next generation of Matildas has become an increasing concern for Football Australia, whose recent Performance Gap study found a significant lack of depth below the current “Golden Generation” of national team players.
Generation next
One of the areas of focus in the report was the availability of competitive match minutes for younger players, finding that the number of W-League minutes played by Australia’s youth internationals (Junior Matildas and Young Matildas) has fallen from 60 per cent to 22 per cent over the last decade.
However, the 2020-21 season looks set to change that. As of the end of round three, 40 Australian players under the age of 20 have represented their respective W-League clubs, with 10 having played each of the 270 minutes available so far.
According to Football Australia’s women’s technical adviser Rae Dower, this is exactly what’s needed at W-League level to “bridge the gap” identified by the report — the first steps towards building the next generation of senior Matildas.
“It’s taken some teams a couple of rounds to find their feet, but the pleasing thing from our perspective is that there’s a lot of younger players who might not have even secured a contract this year already having match minutes,” Dower says.
“There was never an idea that we weren’t going to have the players, it was more, ‘OK, let’s look and find those next best players and bring them into these elite club environments.’
“Then it’s over to the clubs to get them to show what their wares are in the league. Some have already taken their opportunity with both hands.
“One thing that’s been really great has been the amount of long-range goals. We’ve got kids that have just gone, ‘You know what? I’ll give this a crack,’ and bang.
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Trevor Morgan, Football Australia’s technical director, says national team staff will be watching this season particularly closely with the aim of encouraging W-League clubs to continue giving opportunities to young Australian players, including the possibility of young player quotas.
“We’re going to get weekly updates about how many under-20 girls are playing, how many minutes they’re playing and some of their stats,” Morgan says.
“There’s a chance for us to share data we find, that would support the continued playing time for those young players.
“In the A-League last year there were studies done by Football Australia of what the ball speed was like. The ball speed actually went up, and that may have pointed to winter [playing conditions], but it didn’t go down even though there was a much larger number of younger players.
“So we’ll be looking for those sorts of trends to encourage clubs to continue giving young girls a chance in light of the performance gap report.”
While they’re hesitant to name names, both Dower and Morgan have been impressed with a number of W-League players who were called into the Women’s National Team Talent ID Camp held in Canberra last year and who have translated those lessons and expectations into their current performances.
“It’s fair to say that a number of those players who went down there went, ‘Oh, they’re actually looking at us!’ and I think have gone away from that with a real confidence and a real self-belief that they’re not too far away,” Dower says.
“That intrinsic motivation is there. Young players [are] taking leadership roles as well — another key aspect of the game that’s important.
“They’re the really pleasing things to see outside the X’s and O’s of what’s happening on the field; when you see young players take initiative.
‘This is our time to shine’
One of the players called into that Talent ID Camp was Sydney FC midfielder Taylor Ray. After bouncing back from two ACL tears, the 19-year old has played almost every minute for the Sky Blues and scored her second professional goal in their 2-1 win over Newcastle last week.
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Ray, who’s also studying for her Masters in Physical Therapy, said that the clearer air provided by fewer senior internationals this W-League season is already having an effect on her motivation and performances.
“It’s definitely something in the environment that I can see,” Ray says.
“At Sydney, you can tell. Everyone’s so competitive; every training day, we’re fighting for our starting positions. No matter what it is, you’re putting 100 per cent work into it. It’s about who’s going to take on that role and who’s going to be more of a leader now, to show everyone else in the league what we’re capable of.
“Ante [Juric, Sydney FC head coach] and I have spoken recently about how, for me to take my game to the next level, I need to be shooting more.
“I need to be getting on that field constantly. I need to have that confidence to take on players. Because, yes, this is our time to shine in the W-League — to hopefully promote ourselves for going overseas or playing for the Matildas, which is most of our end-goals.
“Look at me, look at Princess [Ibini], look at all these other girls coming through the ranks. It’s actually becoming easier to get noticed now because you have your national team coaches in Australia to look at you.
“I’m still a young player but I’ve been at Sydney a bit longer, so now is my chance to show up-and-coming players how we do things, and I also get to work on my own game as well.”
Following the success of the first Talent ID Camp, Dower and Morgan say Football Australia are planning to host another one in April, after the conclusion of the W-League.
While its format will depend on how the pandemic plays out in Australia and Europe, Dower says the camp will act as a kind of carrot to motivate players throughout the rest of the season — putting them front-and-centre for a possible ticket to Tokyo in July.
“We want to give them a really good reward for a great W-League season,” she says.
