Former All Whites captain Ryan Nelsen pens an open letter to Kiwis ahead of “one of the largest events on the planet” coming to New Zealand.
As a proud New Zealander and footballer, I can’t wait to witness the Fifa Women’s World Cup coming to Australia and New Zealand.
It is one of the largest events on the planet, and I think most Kiwis won’t know what is going to hit them. I just hope they don’t blink too long and miss it before it is all over.
Living in the United States, I am lucky enough to see every day how big the women’s game has become in the past few years. And not just in this country.
The Americans have been miles ahead of everyone else for many years, but the rest of the world is catching up fast, so New Zealand and Australian sports fans can expect some titanic battles.
My daughter is lucky to be growing up in a country where women’s sport has been getting more investment than any other place in the world thanks to Title IX. This law for equal opportunities in education was extended in 1994, meaning universities had to invest the same amount in scholarships for female students as they put into their male sports programmes.
This came hot on the heels of the US winning their first Fifa Women’s World Cup in 1991, and suddenly women’s football through the college system received this incredible boost that has produced so many world-class players.
To put that in perspective, I recently mentioned on Sky TV that it might be harder to get into the US women’s football team than to win the Rugby World Cup with the All Blacks, and I copped a bit of flak for that back home. Of course, it was tongue in cheek, and I love our All Blacks, but I was just trying to make a point that the US coaches are spoilt for choice in numbers that we can’t even fathom.
What the Americans have demonstrated is that if you put time, effort and financial support into women’s football, like any other aspect of life, great things can happen. We are now seeing this with women’s football all over the planet.
As a former captain of the New Zealand men’s team, I have to admit that I never fully understood the lack of funding and the gulf in support between the men and women’s teams over the years.
Having a daughter and being surrounded by women who have done some incredible things under circumstances that were very difficult made me realise my own weakness in not seeing the enormity of the inequalities all around me.
As an elite athlete, I was so concentrated on playing and winning for our country that I got a bit of tunnel vision and didn’t fully see what was happening in the women’s programme.
You are busy doing your own stuff, and we obviously supported the women as football fans – but I didn’t look closely enough and deep enough to realise the inequality in what they had to deal with.
When I look back now, and I have shared this with several of the Football Ferns, if I could rewrite my time and go back there when I was the All Whites captain, I would be battling their corner so much more than I did.
Sadly, it wasn’t until I spoke to fellow female Fifa ambassadors, for example, that I fully grasped the massive gap in quality of resources and opportunities in football and other sports.
Now that federations and clubs are finally giving the women’s game the support it deserves, we see this amazing development all over the world.
Tactically and technically these women are just as good as any male player and I think the women’s game has developed its own unique brand that is fantastic to watch.
For years and years, these players all needed day jobs, as well as trying to be high-performance athletes, training after work and being expected to turn up on the weekend to perform at a high level.
If you listen to them and hear about their sacrifices, you realise these semi-professional or amateur players are in fact a lot more professional than some of their male counterparts.
If the gender roles had been reversed, and some male players who are doing well now had to overcome the same obstacles, many would have ended up giving up or just playing in the social leagues.
The sad reality is that women footballers never got the same support as men, because the decision-makers did not really consider it a valuable commercial brand.
But look how quickly that has changed – the top women’s teams are filling stadiums and billions are watching the major women’s competitions.
I fully agree with the stance Fifa president Gianni Infantino is taking over TV rights with some of the European nations. It is not just the governing body or the national federations that need to step up but all sectors of the game, including television stations, advertisers and the media. All need to come up with the goods for these athletes.
We have all seen the great things that happen when the women get the investment and support they need to fulfil their potential.
The growth of the game is just phenomenal and it is only accelerating.
I think the people of New Zealand are incredibly lucky to be at the centre of the football universe at the exact time when the women’s game is about to burst onto a level that few would have imagined a few years ago.
The Fifa Women’s World Cup is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see these super athletes, many of whom will soon be household names in every corner of the world, and we will be able to see them up and close in Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington and Dunedin.
So don’t blink too long.
