Football in Australia
Football has the highest level of community participation of all team sports in the country, with more than 1.7 million Australians playing football, including nearly 300,000 women.
Football has a rapidly growing participation base among young Australians. Some 700,000 young people aged between 15 and 24 years and a further 500,000 children under the age of 15 years are regular participants in clubs and competitions.
Complementing the grassroots participation, Australia has flourishing community and elite football competitions. A strong national club competition, the A-League.
Internationally, the Australian national team enjoys ever-increasing success and status, and includes a growing number of top-class players.
Football is enormously popular among the multicultural, sports-loving Australian people. The world game has grown in this nation and continues to flourish.
National Teams
Australia has eleven national teams for both men and women at different age groups.
The senior men’s team is known as the Socceroos, while the senior women’s team is known as the Matildas.
The significant majority of players in the Socceroos team play in overseas leagues around the world including England, Russia, Turkey, Germany, the Netherlands, the USA and Korea to name just a few.
The moment of qualification for, and the subsequent participation in the 2006 FIFA World Cup™ in Germany, united the Australian people like no other sporting achievement in recent memory, and cemented football in the hearts and minds of millions of Australians.
We were the second nation to qualify for the 2010 FIFA World Cup™ in South Africa after our first campaign as part of the Asian Football Confederation.
Many players in the Matildas also play in overseas leagues (such as USA and Norway) in addition to Australia's own national domestic league competition, the W-League.
Domestic competitions
A-League
The premier domestic men’s competition is the A-League, which was established in 2005.
Comprising teams representing cities or regions, the A-League has been popular from the start and is continuing to attract new fans.
Every game is broadcast live to television and played in some of Australia’s best sporting venues.
The twelve clubs are:
W-League
The premier domestic women’s competition, the W-League, commenced in 2008.
Comprising seven of the A-League
teams (Adelaide, Brisbane, Central Coast, Melbourne, Newcastle, Perth and Sydney) as well as Canberra United, the W-League has one match each week broadcast live to television as well as a weekly broadcast highlight package.
To date, the competition has provided entertaining and competitive football to an active supporter base across Australia. The live national television broadcasts have attracted more than 113,000 viewers each week. The establishment of the league was an important step in the creation of a development and competition pathway for women’s football in Australia.
National Youth League
Initiated in 2008, the National Youth League (NYL) is the national youth competition conducted by FFA, underpinning the national elite men’s competition, the A-League. Participants in the NYL are amateur players aged from 16 to 21 years.
The NYL teams are supported by football development programmes at the relevant State Institutes of Sport, catering for players aged 14 to 16 years.
