The transformative effects that England’s hosting of the 2022 Women’s European Championship had on its domestic game are well known in Australia. The country got its version of this phenomenon when it co-hosted the 2023 Women’s World Cup and its domestic competition, the A-League Women, basked in the reflected halo’s light as it grew to 12 sides, secured a new collective bargaining agreement increasing spending limits and became the first Australian football code to introduce a full home-and-away women’s season. There were record crowds and TV ratings.
Come the start of 2025-26, however, on the eve of Australia preparing to host its own continental showpiece, the 2026 Women’s Asian Cup, and those heights feel increasingly bygone. Most of the news dominating the buildup for the new year has been less than ideal, the coming campaign seeing the league – a closed competition without promotion and relegation – contract in size for the first time since Central Coast went on hiatus before 2010-11. It will do so after Western United’s teams were placed into a period of “conditional hibernation” amid their embattled attempts to stave off collapse.
