AFC continue #ItsMyGame campaign following 2019 Asian Cup

After a successful campaigning stint during the 2019 Asian Cup earlier this year, the AFC is pushing on with the goal of raising awareness for women who both work and play in the soccer industry.


With the Women’s World Cup only just finishing up, now is an ideal time for the AFC to reach out to as many people as possible.

It’s also notable that this media release has come during a time when USNWT captain Megan Rapinoe has been in the news promoting the women’s game. Many people have been lauding her and her opinions, but there is still a large contingent who don’t appear to be moving with the times.

Rapinoe has been making serious headlines and with this in mind, the AFC clearly want to generate more positive news when so many people still feel the need to negatively influence the women’s game.

The AFC’s media release from Monday night can be found in full below:

The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) continues the “It’s My Game” campaign which celebrates the role of women working in football. In the latest segment, the AFC focuses on Svetlana Kashuba of Kyrgyz Republic and how she plans to shape women’s football.

Kashuba enjoyed a notable playing career for Kyrgyz Republic and after hanging up her boots, she is now striving to make a difference in the sport as the women’s football manager in her country.

Respected by her peers and looked up to by young female footballers, Kashuba rose through the ranks by representing her national team in the U-16 and U-19 women’s competitions before playing at the club level in Kyrgyz Republic.

She looks back fondly at how she started playing football and the memories serve as a reminder of how important her current position is.

“I walked with a friend from school and she told me that neighboring stadiums had football trainings only for girls. I was very interested because I could express myself by playing with other girls.

“Before that, I only played with boys. I was always the only girl among them, so I wanted to go and see women’s football. When I saw only girls playing, it motivated me even more.

“I joined the training and with the very first kick I hit the crossbar! The coach told me, ‘You will play and train with us.’ That inspired me because it was my dream to find a place where I could show my potential,” Kashuba recalled.

She is delighted to see how women’s football has developed over the years and hopes the momentum will continue.

“Looking at the girls now, I can see that they play football with more enthusiasm and the number of girls playing the sport is steadily growing. More and more girls are playing football in schools and we have more women’s teams. We are very happy to see so many women’s teams taking part in competitions at a very young age.”

Kashuba believes that women have a huge role to play in football and hopes more will join her and make a career in the sport as a result of the “It’s My Game” campaign – which has reached more than 800,000 fans so far and have received more than 300,000 views on the AFC’s digital platforms.

“Football is not just a game, it is our life and we must prove to ourselves and those around us that we can be successful. I hope that we will see more participation of women not only on the field but also in senior positions in the future,” she said.

To watch the full video, please click here.

AFC #ItsMyGame statistics so far:

Facebook: 351,949 impressions, 251,153 Reach, 51,732 video views
Twitter: 193,176 impressions, 24,663 video views
LinkedIn: 25,032 impressions, 3,732 video views
Instagram: 500,362 reach, 236,922 video views

*ENDS*

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Football SA Commits $100,000 to Referee Fuel Subsidy as Cost-of-Living pressure Mounts

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Football South Australia has announced a fuel subsidy scheme for match officials across its semi-professional competitions, allocating up to $100,000 for the remainder of the 2026 season in response to rising fuel costs that the governing body says are threatening the delivery of fixtures across the state.

The subsidy, effective immediately, covers referees officiating across the RAA National Premier League, Apex Steel Women’s National Premier League, Apex Steel Women’s State League, HPG Homes State League 1 and State League 2. The subsidy spans senior, reserves and under-18 competitions across both men’s and women’s football.

Under the metro scheme, reimbursements will be tiered against the average Adelaide unleaded petrol price recorded each Friday, applying to all matches played in the following seven-day period. Officials will receive $30 per match day when the average price sits at $3.25 or above, $25 between $2.75 and $3.24, and $20 between $2.35 and $2.74. No subsidy applies below $2.34. For regional matches, referees travelling to Port Pirie, Barossa and Whyalla will see their per-kilometre reimbursement rise from 88 cents to $1.26 when petrol prices exceed $2.35.

All subsidy payments will be funded directly by Football SA, with no cost passed to competing clubs.

The Economics behind the Whistle

Fuel prices in South Australia, as across much of Australia, have been running at elevated levels against the backdrop of an ongoing imperialist war on Iran that has sent shockwaves through global oil markets. Iran’s targeting of the Strait of Hormuz, through which a significant proportion of the world’s oil supply passes, has disrupted shipping and contributed to price surges that are being felt at service stations in Adelaide as acutely as anywhere.

For match officials, who are overwhelmingly volunteers or low-paid part-time workers travelling to multiple venues across a season, those price surges are not an abstraction. They are a direct financial disincentive to take on appointments, particularly in outer metropolitan and regional areas where travel distances are significant and the cost of attending a game can approach, or exceed the payment for officiating it.

The consequences are cancelled fixtures, forfeited points, disrupted seasons and players who stop turning up to clubs that cannot guarantee them a game.

“This initiative recognises the critical role match officials play in delivering competitions,” CEO Michael Carter said in the announcement, “and aims to reduce the impact of travel costs across the 2026 season.”

A Structural Problem, a Seasonal Solution

The subsidy applies only to the 2026 season. Football SA has been careful to frame it as a response to current conditions rather than a permanent structural change. The $100,000 allocation is described as subject to fuel prices remaining at current levels, with the final amount invested likely to vary as the weekly threshold calculations play out across the season.

That framing is honest about what the scheme is and isn’t. It does not resolve the underlying question of whether referee payments in community and semi-professional football are adequate relative to the demands placed on officials. It remains a question that transcends the current fuel price environment and will outlast it. What it does is buy time and goodwill in a moment when both are in short supply.

Sport, and football in particular, depends on a volunteer and semi-volunteer workforce that is increasingly being squeezed by the same cost-of-living pressures affecting every other part of Australian life. When the price of petrol rises, the people who feel it first are not the players or the clubs, it’s the officials, the committee members and the volunteers who make the infrastructure of community sport function.

Football SA’s decision to absorb that cost rather than pass it to clubs is a recognition that the referee pipeline is fragile in ways that are not always visible until it breaks. The SAPA review into South Australian football, released earlier this month, identified referee development and retention as one of the most pressing structural challenges facing the game in the state, recommending greater investment in recruitment and suggesting affiliation fee subsidies for clubs that bring new officials into the system.

Friday’s announcement does not go that far. But in a season already defined by uncertain economic and geopolitical circumstance, the levy sends a clear enough signal about where Football SA’s priorities lie.

The fuel levy will be calculated each Friday using average Adelaide prices listed on Fuel Price Australia, with payments made to officials on the regular weekly schedule.

Football West mourns passing of women’s football pioneer Barbara Gibson, aged 95

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Football West has acknowledged the death of Barbara Gibson, an Honorary Life Member of the organisation whose administrative career across five decades fundamentally shaped the landscape of women’s football in Western Australia. She was 95.

Gibson’s contribution belongs to a period in Australian sport when women’s participation existed largely outside formal structures and was tolerated at the margins of a game whose governing bodies were built by and for men. That she spent decades building those structures anyway, and that the game in Western Australia is materially different because she did, is the measure of her legacy.

She did not begin playing football until her 40s, turning out for Inglewood Kiev before redirecting her energy almost entirely into administration. In 1975 she became Secretary of the Western Australian Women’s Soccer Association, a role she held for a decade alongside the position of Treasurer. As long-standing Manager of the Senior State Women’s Team, she oversaw international tours to Malaysia in 1977 and India in 1980.

Gibson was elected President of the WAWSA in 1986, the same year she joined the broader administration of the game as Assistant Secretary of the Soccer Federation of WA: a dual role that positioned her as a bridge between the women’s competition and the wider governing structure at a moment when that connection was neither guaranteed nor assumed.

Her influence extended beyond Western Australia. As the WAWSA’s representative at all Australian Women’s Soccer Association delegate meetings, she helped shape national policy at a time when the decisions made in those rooms determined whether women’s football in this country had a future at all.

Gibson was inducted into the Football Hall of Fame WA in 1996 and received the Australian Sports Medal in 2000.

“She gave decades of service to our game and to female football in particular,” said Football West CEO Jamie Harnwell. “When we marvel at the incredible spectacle of over 70,000 fans turning out to cheer on the Matildas in a major international final, we should also remember the pioneers of the women’s game, such as Barbara, who helped lay the foundation stones.”

The cultural legacy Gibson leaves is one of institutional persistence. The willingness to build, advocate and administer within systems that were not designed to accommodate the work she was doing. The women currently playing in Football West competitions, coaching junior teams, sitting on club boards and representing Western Australia at national level do so within structures that people like Gibson constructed from the outside in.

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