Football Victoria has named its 2026 Female Football Week Award winners, recognising five women whose contributions across playing, coaching, refereeing, volunteering and community leadership represent the human infrastructure behind the most significant period of growth in Australian women’s football history.
The announcements come in the final days of Female Football Week, a ten-day national celebration that has taken on particular resonance in 2026 following a record-breaking AFC Women’s Asian Cup on Australian soil. The tournament filled stadiums, broke attendance records and generated a level of public enthusiasm for women’s football that governing bodies are now under pressure to translate into something lasting. These five recipients are among the people who will determine whether it does.
Brooke Wyatt of Trafalgar Victory FC has been named Volunteer of the Year. Her contribution was coordinating the MiniRoos, managing match days, organising club events and driving recruitment efforts that have helped the club field new junior teams. Wyatt’s work is the kind of work that keeps community football functioning without ever appearing in a match report. Wyatt has also been central to strengthening Trafalgar’s women’s program, building the welcoming environment that determines whether female players feel the club was built with them in mind.
Karishma Wijeyesinghe of Victoria Park FC has been recognised as Community Champion of the Year. Serving simultaneously as Senior Women’s Liaison Officer, voting committee member and club captain while maintaining a demanding professional career, Wijeyesinghe has built the women’s program infrastructure that clubs across the country require. Her presence at the decision-making table at Victoria Park is precisely the kind of representation that shapes whether female players feel the game is for them from the moment they walk through the door.
The cost of showing up
Chelsea Phillips of Mt Eliza SC has been named Player of the Year in a recognition that goes well beyond her captaincy of one of the club’s most successful Under-18 groups. Over the past year, Phillips faced a serious neurological health condition that temporarily affected her vision and mobility. She continued attending training and matches throughout, supporting teammates from the sidelines and maintaining a leadership presence during a period when most people would have stepped away entirely. Her club has described the impact on those around her as profound; a reminder that what players model for each other in difficult moments shapes the culture of a program far more than results alone.
Hannah Riess has been named Referee of the Year for her rapid progression to NPL Women’s Under-20 officiating level and her active mentorship of emerging referees across Gippsland. Female referees remain significantly underrepresented at every level of the game in Australia. The pipeline that will change that is built by people like Riess, those experienced enough to progress, invested enough to bring others with them rather than simply move ahead alone.
Building the pipeline that sustains the boom
Natasha Groves of Darebin Falcons has been recognised as Coach of the Year for her work across junior, senior and women’s social football programs, including her delivery of Football Victoria’s PlayHER initiative and her completion of advanced coaching accreditation. Groves has consistently created environments at Darebin where women and girls new to the game feel genuinely welcome, addressing the retention challenge that sits directly behind every participation surge the women’s game generates.
Taken together the five recipients illustrate something the attendance figures from the AFC Women’s Asian Cup cannot. Record crowds are the visible outcome of decades of invisible work, by volunteers, coaches, referees and community builders who showed up long before the cameras did, and who will still be there long after the tournament has moved on.
