Foul called on W-League pay
THE majority of our female soccer stars say they may be forced to turn their backs on the game if W-League standards don’t improve.
This is according to a wideranging survey conducted recently by the players’ union.
The survey reveals it actually costs W-League players an average of $2237 a season to play the game, with many athletes forced to cover their own health insurance, gym memberships and travel costs.
A staggering 85 per cent earn less than $5000 for the entire W-League season, with a quarter of players on less than $500 for the campaign which begins with pre-season training in September and ends with finals in February.
Female soccer players have hatched an ambitious plan to create a minimum $3.6 million player pool that would see 60 Australian players signed to minimum $60,000 centralised contracts by the start of the 2017-18 season.
The focus is on bridging the gap between top-earning Matildas – who can net between $50,000 and $100,000 annually – and the bottom rung of players.
Professional Footballers Australia and Football Federation Australia have started preliminary talks after the tabling of the thorough report into the state of the women’s game.
Some 111 players were polled and players on Friday received final copies of the survey.
With the advent of women’s AFL and the likes of netball and cricket dramatically improving their pay deals for women, one unnamed WLeague player said soccer was at risk of losing the code war.
“Other codes are making great headway, and internationally more nations are putting the necessary resources behind women’s football,” she said.
“If we don’t act and really back the W-League, Australian football will be left behind.”
Pay conditions have improved substantially since the W-League started in 2008, but most clubs still operate well below the $150,000 salary cap.