Diagonal Pass

Melbourne Victory will face Perth Glory on Saturday looking to make up for the Round 2 defeat by Sydney FC (ouch). This is the one televised W-League match on the ABC this weekend, though with tickets priced at $5 per adult I don’t think I’m being unreasonable in bloody well hoping that people’ll turn up to cheer on Victory Women.

Perth Glory also goes into the match fresh off a defeat to the Central Coast Mariners. Both the Mariners and their opponent this weekend, Canberra United, will be looking forward to the return of their young players from the Asian U-19 Women’s Football Championship qualifiers. Canberra especially will be hoping its three Young Matildas will be able to start, with Caitlin Munoz out a few weeks due to a knee ligament strain and Amy Chapman not entirely fit.

League topper Sydney FC will travel to Adelaide looking to consolidate its lead — and I say this with no bitterness (really), but Sydney looks to be the favourite to win the inaugural W-League title. Newcastle Jets will play at home against Queensland Roar, with Roar’s Jenna Tristram having the misfortune of being the W-League’s first major injury casualty so far this season.

FourFourTwo Australia has its usual W-League preview here. Fiona Crawford’s most recent post for the W-League blog at the site picked up on an issue I think some of us have been muttering into our drinks about:

With just one W-League match broadcast per week it’s incredibly difficult for women (and men) to consistently follow their chosen teams (not to mention for me to report on them) and I do wonder: If you can’t see it, can you support it?

I’m not ungrateful. I repeat, I am not ungrateful that the ABC broadcast the match. I am indescribably appreciative that they have stepped up to the plate and are broadcasting any matches at all. I am simply, Oliver Twist-ly saying that ‘Please sir, I want some more’.

The ABC half-time break broadcast includes highlights from the other matches, which is fantastic, but which also begs the question: If they’re able to show highlights, someone must be recording the games — is it not possible to televise them, even if it’s over the web or in the wee, TV-wasteland hours of the morning?

The Queensland Roar v Adelaide United match commanded 125,000 viewers, out-rating the A-League. Ah, the magic of putting football on free-to-air TV. Like Fiona I’m not saying that the ABC’s doing a shitty job, but one broadcast per weekend is too cautious an investment even for a league still in its infancy. When all’s said and done, yes, you’ve got to still put backsides on the seats in stadiums (though a proper stadium atmosphere is a bit of an ask right now when you’ve got teams being shunted off here and there) — can’t do that without publicity, can you? We’ve still got a long way to go, but there’s reason for optimism so let’s get this thing right from the get-go.

Maybe this is an opportunity for fans to put their hands in and get things going, because waiting for the ABC to broadcast a second match every weekend could take a while (I’m not even going to talk about how the FFA and A-League clubs dropped the ball on the W-League). I think Canberra is a great example of community organising around the W-League: support from other football codes and a community radio filling in the gaps by way of podcasts and a live commentary of Canberra United v Central Coast Mariners streamed online.