Fifa Women’s World Cup: How football in New Zealand will be boosted by the World Cup effect
Nothing wins the hearts and minds of Kiwi sports fans like a World Cup.
The opening game of the Fifa Women’s World Cup proved the point beyond all doubt. It was a triumph forthe fans – 42,137 of whom filled Eden Park – and to the delight of players, supporters, and no doubt, tournament officials, New Zealand’s Football Ferns, nine to one underdogs, tipped over Norway 1-0.
Whatever happens now, women’s football is getting a boost that will no doubt be reflected in schools and in junior grades for years to come.
Having the best teams in any sport play on our home grounds is exciting in itself.
When the New Zealand team excels, the fever generated can be extraordinary.
Hannah Wilkinson’s brilliantly struck goal at Eden Park is a golden moment that should inspire a whole generation of schoolyard strikers.
World Cups can tip perceptions on their heads.
Think of the Black Caps at the 2015 Cricket World Cup.
Just four months before the tournament started here and in Australia, the New Zealand team had a brutal meeting in which they came to the realisation, as one player would later tell me, that they were perceived by their own public “as kind of dicks”.
Under what we now call the Bazball leadership of Brendon McCullum, they flung themselves into the Cup tournament, made the final, and, to their slight astonishment, found themselves not only held up as an example to every other team in the world, but also being sought after for selfies and autographs by Kiwis who would once have walked on by.
In 2022 the Black Ferns didn’t have a poor image before the women’s Rugby World Cup. The problem was they didn’t really have any image at all.
Bring on the massive spotlight of the World Cup, and before you could say “Ruby Tui” there were huge, enthusiastic crowds in Auckland and Whangārei, television ratings equal to All Blacks tests, and the Ferns, quite rightly, became Kiwi sporting icons.
As will hopefully be the case with the Football Ferns, all our women rugby players needed was a national stage to show their skills on.
The World Cup effect is not a recent phenomenon.
The 1987 Rugby World Cup arrived when rugby, in Auckland especially, was in dire straits.
Parents opposed to the 1981 Springbok tour, and then the 1985 rebel Cavaliers tour to South Africa, had steered their children away from rugby. Player numbers in primary schools were decimated. One North Shore club saw their junior team numbers halved.
What amounted to a bright sunshiny day for rugby came with a cup-winning All Blacks side, whose charismatic leader David Kirk had turned his back on the Cavaliers.
As the All Blacks did in ‘87, with a stunning opening win over Italy, the Football Ferns beating Norway, a team ranked 14 places ahead of them in the world, have set the tournament alight here.
Before the triumph at Eden Park, there was a chance the barrage of hype leading into this World Cup could prove to be a slightly embarrassing case of overexcited advertising.
There was nothing overstated in the build-up about international interest in women’s football. There’s a staggering worldwide television audience for the cup, and in the last 12 months the England team has twice played internationals in front of crowds of more than 80,000 people at Wembley.
But closer to home, the Football Ferns hadn’t been setting the world alight in their lead-up games, and a hiding from Norway could have killed off Kiwi interest and ticket sales in one stroke.
New Zealand now head to Wellington on Tuesday as overwhelming favourites to beat the Philippines. It’d be a major surprise if the stadium wasn’t full.
