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The Man Who Built a Women’s Football Program from Nothing is now an Award-Winning Gender Equity Leader
Eight years ago, Spring Hills Football Club did not have a girls’ team. Today it has one of the most recognised women’s programs in Melbourne’s west, a senior NPLW side, and a head coach who has just been named Gender Equity Leader of the Year at the Melton City Council Volunteer Achievement Awards.
Tom Markovski, Spring Hills’ NPLW Head Coach, received the award at a ceremony coinciding with National Volunteer Week, recognised for his community leadership, promotion of gender equality and commitment to advancing the status of women and people of all genders in sport. The recognition comes from outside the football community entirely, awarded by a local council celebrating volunteers across every sector of civic life in one of Melbourne’s fastest-growing regions.
Building from scratch
When Markovski arrived at Spring Hills, women’s football at the club did not exist. His first act was to champion the establishment of the club’s first all-girls team, a process that required persuading a club culture built around men’s football that the investment was worth making.
Women’s football in community clubs has historically struggled to access the same facilities, scheduling priority, coaching resources and institutional support as the men’s game. Clubs have been slow to invest in programs whose return is less immediately visible than a senior men’s premiership, and in a growing outer-suburban community like Melton, where volunteer capacity is finite and demand across every program is high, the case for building something new always has to compete with the urgency of maintaining what already exists.
Markovski made the case anyway, and kept making it across eight years of coaching senior and junior NPL teams while simultaneously building the structural foundations of a women’s program designed to outlast any individual’s involvement. The club’s first all-girls team became multiple junior girls teams. Those junior teams created the pipeline for a senior women’s side. The senior women’s side created visible pathways for younger players to see where the game could take them within their own club.
The outcome is a program that Spring Hills now holds up as central to its identity rather than supplementary to it. The club has become a leader in female participation in Melbourne’s west, and recently made history within the NPLW Victoria structure by fielding junior teams coached entirely by female coaches, a milestone that reflects the depth of the program Markovski helped build.
What the Award Recognises
The Melton City Council’s decision to name Markovski its Gender Equity Leader of the Year places his work in a frame that extends beyond football. Melton is one of the fastest-growing local government areas in Australia, a diverse and rapidly expanding community where the institutions that bring people together, like schools, councils, sporting clubs, carry an outsized responsibility for social cohesion.
Mayor Cr. Lara Carli, speaking at the awards ceremony, reflected on the role volunteers play in communities like Melton’s. “Volunteering creates friendships, strengthens communities and builds a sense of belonging,” she said. “It helps people feel connected, supported and valued, and those things are more important than ever in a growing and diverse community like ours.”
For the girls now playing football at Spring Hills who were not playing anywhere eight years ago, Markovski’s contribution is not abstract. It is the specific and concrete fact of having somewhere to play, someone to coach them, and a pathway that leads somewhere.
The Global Institute of Sport (GIS) has opened new opportunities for students who want to build careers in football. GIS has partnered with the World Football Summit (WFS). The partnership offers two exclusive scholarship and internship opportunities.
Students can gain practical experience while studying. They can also build industry contacts and learn how the global football business works.
Two Football Industry Roles
The first opportunity focuses on partnerships and commercial development. Students in the Partnership Executive Intern role will support WFS commercial activity. They will learn how football organisations build and manage partnerships.
The second role focuses on clubs, leagues and federations. The Club, League & Federation Relations Intern will support WFS relationships with football organisations. This includes key stakeholders inside football.
Both roles give students direct exposure to the business side of the sport.
International Experience
The placements also offer flexibility. Full-time students can complete a six-month internship or placement. WFS will tailor the experience to each student’s profile and availability.
Part-time students can complete two six-month placements. This gives them exposure to different areas of the WFS business. Students may work remotely or at the WFS headquarters in Madrid. The final setup will depend on the student and WFS requirements.
A Global Football Network
WFS has built a major international football network since its launch in 2016. The organisation has hosted events across 11 countries. More than 44,600 people have attended its events. Its network now includes more than 153,000 football industry professionals.
WFS events have also featured major football figures. These include FIFA President Gianni Infantino, Ronaldo Nazário, Rio Ferdinand, Didier Drogba and Javier Tebas. The partnership gives GIS students access to this wider football ecosystem. It also connects academic study with real industry work.
Applications Open for 2026
Applications opened on 18 August 2026. New and existing GIS students can apply. The deadline is 14 September 2026.
For students targeting careers in football business, the opportunities offer a direct route into the industry. They can develop commercial skills and can build professional networks. They can also gain experience with the relationships that drive modern football.
To learn more about the GIS scholarship program click the link here.
Football can't police its way to a better future. It needs to build a culture of belonging, accountability and membership that lasts beyond any one administration.
Security manages risk. Membership builds culture. Football Victoria’s greatest legacy won’t be another policy – it will be a connected football community that outlasts today’s administrators.
Every time crowd trouble makes headlines, football tends to reach for the same solutions: more police, more security, stronger sanctions and another statement condemning the behaviour.
But football membership could offer another layer of accountability by creating a stronger relationship between supporters, their clubs and the game.
The recent South Melbourne and Preston Lions fixture has once again placed supporter behaviour under the spotlight. The match finished 0-0, but the football was overshadowed by the actions of a small group of supporters. Football Victoria condemned the behaviour and launched an investigation, while Preston Lions also condemned the conduct and indicated it would cooperate with authorities.
Those responses are necessary. The overwhelming majority of supporters attend football to support their clubs and should be able to do so in a safe and welcoming environment.
But incidents such as this should force a bigger conversation. Instead of continually asking how we punish those responsible, perhaps we should be asking how we build a football environment where accountability is embedded into the relationship between the supporter, the club and the game.
England confronted this challenge more than three decades ago.
Following the dark era of football hooliganism throughout the 1970s and 1980s, English football underwent a fundamental transformation. All-seater stadiums, CCTV, intelligence-led policing, professional stewarding and Football Banning Orders all played important roles in changing the match day environment.
But one principle sits underneath many of those reforms: knowing who your supporters are.
Football became less anonymous, and accountability became more achievable.
Football Membership Makes Accountability Possible
A membership card alone will never eradicate hooliganism. England did not solve football violence simply by introducing membership; it built an integrated system of policing, stadium management, intelligence, sanctions and supporter engagement.
Football membership can, however, strengthen that system.
When someone becomes a member, they are no longer simply an anonymous person purchasing a ticket. They have a relationship with the club. In Australia, that relationship can be even stronger because club memberships commonly provide prepaid match admission and voting rights.
That creates both privileges and responsibilities.
If a member repeatedly breaches a club’s code of conduct, there should be meaningful consequences beyond being removed from one match. Membership can be suspended, voting rights revoked and access to tickets, digital services and other member benefits restricted where appropriate.
The objective isn’t to punish supporters collectively. It is to give clubs and governing bodies the tools to identify, manage and sanction individuals while protecting the overwhelming majority who simply want to support their team.
Membership doesn’t replace policing. It strengthens accountability.
Australian Football Already Has the Foundation
Australian football does not need to start from scratch.
Our existing club membership structures already provide a direct relationship between supporter and club. Members can have voting rights, prepaid gate admission and a formal stake in the organisation they support.
The problem is that the relationship often ends at the turnstile.
Football Victoria has an opportunity to take that existing foundation and build something much bigger: a connected football membership ecosystem across Victorian football.
Imagine every supporter receiving a Football Victoria Membership ID linked to their club membership, ticket purchases, attendance, volunteer history, coaching and referee accreditation, junior participation and other interactions with the game.
That identity could become the gateway to the entire football experience.
Visual reference: Manchester United digital membership platform. What could a connected Victorian football membership experience look like?
One Membership. One Platform. One Football Community.
A centrally managed digital platform could provide members with access to live-streamed matches, club news, fixtures, results, exclusive content, merchandise, hospitality, voting, community programs and other services.
For clubs, it would create a direct and trusted relationship with their supporters.
For Football Victoria, it would create a statewide football network. For supporters, football membership becomes more than an annual transaction; it becomes their digital identity within the game.
This is where the proposal moves beyond supporter behaviour and into commercial sustainability.
Football Membership Is a Commercial Asset
The biggest misconception in Australian football is that membership is simply a marketing product.
It is not.
Football membership can become one of the game’s greatest commercial assets.
Every club talks about attracting sponsors, but sponsors increasingly want more than a logo on a shirt or perimeter board. They want access to audiences, measurable engagement and data.
A club with a strong membership base can demonstrate a genuine, identifiable community. It can communicate directly with supporters, promote merchandise and hospitality, measure engagement and provide sponsors with a more compelling proposition.
Now scale that across Victorian football.
Club websites, live streams, fixture pages, newsletters, digital memberships and content platforms collectively become a significant commercial inventory.
Football Victoria could develop statewide commercial partnerships across that network while allowing clubs to maintain their existing local relationships.
Every live stream, digital banner, fixture page, newsletter and member portal becomes valuable commercial inventory.
Revenue generated through that central digital ecosystem should be transparently redistributed across the game.
Football Victoria generates new commercial income. Participating clubs receive a share based on an agreed model that could consider active memberships, digital engagement, live-stream audiences and commercial performance.
That changes the economics.
Clubs are no longer operating entirely as individual commercial islands. They become part of a larger football marketplace where growth in membership and engagement creates value for the entire game.
Building Football’s Digital Infrastructure
The opportunity isn’t simply another membership database.
It is football infrastructure.
Imagine a single platform connecting club memberships, voting rights, match admission, live streaming, club news, supporter communications, merchandise and participation across the state.
It could also give Football Victoria a much clearer picture of the football community.
Not just registered players, but members, supporters, volunteers, coaches, referees and families actively engaged with clubs.
That data matters.
When football is competing for facilities, funding and political attention, credible evidence of community demand is far more powerful than assumptions or isolated attendance figures.
A connected football membership system could give policymakers a clearer understanding of the people behind the game and the scale of the community being served.
The South Melbourne–Preston Fixture Should Be a Catalyst
The recent fixture should not simply become another disciplinary matter that disappears once sanctions are handed down.
It should prompt a broader examination of whether Victorian football has the systems required to create stronger supporter accountability.
There is a legitimate place for security, policing, stewarding and sanctions. But these should sit within a broader framework that connects clubs with their members and gives supporters a genuine stake in the culture they help create.
The goal should not be to turn football into a sterile environment. Passion is one of the game’s greatest assets.
The goal is to protect passionate support while making it increasingly difficult for a small minority to hijack the experience for everyone else.
Football membership can be part of that solution.
A Legacy Beyond Today’s Administrators
Football administrators often ask themselves how they will be remembered.
Will it be another strategic plan? Another governance review? Another infrastructure announcement?
Those achievements matter, but systems create legacies.
The administrators who transformed English football are not remembered simply because they installed CCTV or introduced stronger sanctions. They are remembered because they helped fundamentally change how football operated.
Football Victoria has the same opportunity.
Imagine being the administration that built Australia’s first integrated football membership ecosystem: one that strengthens supporter accountability, creates recurring commercial opportunities for clubs, provides government with credible participation data, increases sponsorship value and connects supporters with their clubs through one trusted platform.
That is a legacy.
Football doesn’t need another reactive policy after the next crowd incident. It needs infrastructure—not just concrete and steel, but digital, commercial and community infrastructure capable of supporting the game for decades.
Because the greatest asset in football isn’t the grandstand, the sponsor or even the competition.
It is the people who choose to belong.
If Victorian football has the courage to transform football membership from a ticketing product into the foundation of accountability, community and commercial growth, it can do more than respond to the next incident.
It can change the way football is experienced, governed and commercially sustained for generations.
History shows us that football doesn’t change after one incident.
It changes when leaders have the courage to build systems that make the next one less likely to happen.
