FA relies on an assessment by their History Committee but it doesn't pass the pub test.
In the Daily Telegraph of 23 July, journalist Selina Steele set out a case for why the group of women referred to as the '1975ers' should be recognised properly as Matildas.
The 1975 squad took part in a six-nation tournament known as the Asian Football Confederation Women’s Championships, now called the Asian Cup. They finished third against teams from New Zealand, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong.
For those who do not have access behind the paywall, the key points of Steele's article include:
The 1975 team thought they would receive formal recognition as the 'first Matildas' after lengthy deliberations with Football Australia (FA).
However, after the official statement came from FA in May 2022 welcoming them team to the “football family” (as if they were not already part of it) they were not acknowledged as Matildas nor assigned official playing numbers.
In a recent meeting with the FA, all but one of the 1975 players present indicated that they would not accept the peace offering from the FA. They made it clear that they would continue to pursue their claims to be recognised as genuine Matildas players, just as the women from the other five teams who took part in the tournament have been recognised by their respective football associations. The one player who dissented from the majority view was Julie Dolan, who was one of three from the 1975 squad who played in the team officially recognised as the 'first Matildas' and who has cap number 1.
After some discussion about Steele's article on social media, the FA's Peter Filopoulos shared FA's full response to the journalist. Amongst other things, it says that, on the advice of their History Committee - the members of which are unknown to me - the team “did not meet the criteria to be categorised as an Australia Senior Women's National Team”, although FA does “recognise the 1975 team as the first women's team to represent Australia in an internationally sanctioned tournament”.
While history is always relevant, there are other considerations too: fairness, justice, common sense, historical context, gender equity - and the pub test.
FA did not share the criteria they or their History Committee relied upon to make the assessment, but presumably it was the FIFA Statutes in place in 1975 in respect of international matches between teams. The oldest copy of the Statutes I have available is dated 2001. In Article 55 it is stated that “international competitions representing national associations must be approved by the Executive Committee of the Federation”. It is reasonable to assume the 1975 version was similar, in which case the assessment is curious.
Steele's article makes it clear that there is no doubt that the Australian Soccer Federation headed by the late Sir Arthur George approved the 1975 team's participation in what was, for all intents and purposes, the first Women's Asian Cup tournament.
The view of the historians is apparently that because “there was not a competitive process to select the team”, it is not really an Australian team.
But this ignores one important part of history, and that is historical context.
In 1975, the then nascent Australian Women’s Soccer Association was responsible for state and national championships but they were not involved in international competition and could not be because they were not the official member of FIFA - the ASF was.
Instead, all women players were invited to self-nominate for the Asian tournament, noting also that they had to pay their own way to participate in the tournament.
Most of the players subsequenty selected in the 1975 squad were sourced from one club in Sydney, St George Budapest which had won the 1974 championships.
This is a not dissimilar selection process to the 'original Socceroos' in 1922, whom we recently celebrated.
As Nick Guoth and Trevor Thompson relate in their book Burning Ambition - The Centenary of Australia-New Zealand Football Ashes:
“The 1922 squad was an even division of eight players apiece from New South Wales and Queensland, the two states coughing up the cash to make the tour possible.”
In other words, the selection process was not based on identifying the top players, but on which state federation could afford to send players to New Zealand, and who their top players were at the time.
Guoth and Thompson also note that ”The modern notion of a national team being eleven players picked for no other reason but to obtain the desired result was a long way off.”
Even for the men's national team, they note that it was “well into the second half of the 20th century” before national team selection became based predominantly on merit.
The state of the women's game fifty-three years after the men played their first international was at a similar stage of development as the men in 1922.
Indeed, as Guoth and Thompson, Greg Downes in Dedicated Lives, and Peter Kunz in Chronicles of Soccer in Australia, all relate in their respective books, the women's game, while present, was more or less forgotten for decades.
The attitude towards women's football - even in 1974 when the AWSA was formed - is typified by a story from Elaine Watson OAM in Downes's Dedicated Lives. She relates that her name was put forward by a committee to be involved in the AWSA because a male colleague on a local Brisbane Juniors comittee said “he wasn't going to have anything to do with the women's competition”.
Steele's article quotes nonagenarian journalist and historian Ted Simmons suggesting that a solution for the 1975ers would be to recognise the 1975 team as Matildas; and, rather than start again with the cap numbers, allocate Roman numeral cap numbers to the 1975 squad who do not otherwise have a cap.
This seems an elegant solution that is fair, just, displays common sense, recognises historical context, and treats the 1975 women the same as the 1922 men.
And it passes the pub test. It's difficult to find a reason just why the FA would not want to embrace, recognise and celebrate these women.
The 1975 team came third in a six-team tournament in Asia. They had the Australian coat of arms on their shirts. They wore green and gold. They competed as Australia with the ASF's blessing, in a FIFA sanctioned tournament.
How much more Australian can they be?