“I think we always knew,” says Moya Dodd, as she reflects on the growth of women’s football. Dodd, a former Matildas vice-captain and trail-blazing sports administrator, represented Australia at the 1988 Fifa Women’s Invitation Tournament. The event in southern China was a test-run for the first Women’s World Cup in 1991.
Next month, Australia will co-host the the 2023 World Cup; with 1m tickets already sold, it is expected to be the most-attended women’s sporting event in history. Women’s football has come a long way since the Matildas walked out for their opening match of the 1988 tournament, beating Brazil in the summer heat in Jiangmen. But Dodd says even then they had no doubts about the sport’s trajectory.
