PITCH PERFECT Inside women’s soccer with Stephanie Brantz
Presenter Stephanie Brantz reveals why women’s soccer is the game of the moment
The finest female soccer stars are back in full force in the W-League – and sports presenter Stephanie Brantz says there’s never been more of a buzz about women playing the game. “It’s a really exciting time for women’s sport in general,” says Brantz. A lot of the momentum around women’s soccer has come about in recent months thanks to the collective bargaining agreement for the national teams, a historic deal which offers the Matildas the same pay and conditions as the men who play for the Socceroos. It was a victory not just for the women who have fought to have their sporting skills recognised, but also encouragement for future generations of female soccer stars.
“The agreement was a good news story for football at a time when it really needed it,” Brantz, 47, tells WHO. “It’s important for the quality of the football, because as we know, when you pay someone to do a job professionally, then they can focus on that and the standard can only improve. Whereas prior to that, we had W-League players who were holding down one, sometimes two jobs to be able to afford to play football and then they had to take leave when they went away to play, they were struggling to be able to afford to have families. It was really a huge sacrifice.”
The win also put Australia on the map as a trailblazer for equal rights, with the US national women’s soccer team paying particular attention as they battle it out in court against their country’s soccer federation in a controversial pay discrimination case.
“They have been fighting for equal rights for probably a lot longer than our women have, and the US women’s team being the number one in the world, they deserve to be recognised as much, if not more, than their men’s team,” Brantz explains. “They’ve been really excited about what the Australian women have been able to achieve and key people involved in their case have been in touch.”
There are currently 400, 000 registered female players, and Brantz is confident that seeing the success of star players like Sam Kerr will only inspire younger generations to pursue soccer as a realistic profession. “It’s now a career pathway – it used to be that we’d have young girls who would play football up until their teens, and then we’d lose them because they’d have to go and get what we like to call a ‘proper job’,” Brantz says. “But now football can be a proper job. And certainly with Sam, she’s shown that at the top of your game, you can attract a really healthy elite athlete income.”
Kerr is now one of the highest-paid female players in the world, after inking a deal worth nearly $2 million to play for Chelsea Football Club. Brantz says the former Matildas’ captain’s new role is a “shame for Perth”, but is ultimately a positive reminder of all that women in sport can achieve in 2019. “We’ve seen the crowds that the Matildas can now attract,” says Brantz. “You would be lucky to read a match report the next day in years gone by, where now there’s a preview, there’s personal interest stories, there are highlights.”
“They were struggling to afford to have families”