FV Head of Futsal outlines future plans: “We want to host a National Championships in Victoria”

Avatar

Football Victoria (FV) Head of Futsal Anthony Grima believes Victoria is the perfect place to host an edition of Football Australia’s National Futsal Championships in the coming years.

Speaking with Soccerscene, Grima, who was recently appointed Head of Futsal at FV, explained the hosting of significant futsal events was desirable in the wake of the governing body’s plans to revamp the small-sided game in the state.

“Personally, I would love to see us showcase major futsal events in this great state of ours, such as the Football Australia National Futsal Championships,” he said.

FV Head of Futsal Anthony Grima

The 2021 Football Australia National Futsal Championships were cancelled due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, with state federations still waiting for confirmation of its return in 2022.

Hosting rights to future Futsalroos matches, when reinstated, are among the notable futsal events that are also being targeted by the governing body to assist the rejuvination of the local tourism industry.

FV recently outlined their ambitions to unite the futsal community, by providing the sport with an increase in investment into resources needed to appropriately govern futsal in Victoria.

The state federation’s direction of the sport will be underpinned by the following strategic priorities:

  1. Formally recognise the sport of futsal within Football Victoria’s existing Strategic Plan 2019-2022 ‘FootbALLways’ to facilitate its growth, including in schools and to foster the increase and development of players, coaches, referees, futsal clubs and Futsal centres in the broader futsal pathway.
  2. Provide futsal competition providers and futsal clubs with a genuine value proposition to partner with Football Victoria via a revamped affiliation and support program to grow and develop futsal together as a unified futsal community.
  3. Integrate futsal within the implementation of Football Victoria’s current Facilities Strategy and advocate for increased and improved futsal facilities with local, state and federal government for the benefit of all futsal competition providers and futsal clubs across Victoria.

According to Grima, the final priority listed, centred around the importance of facilities for futsal, highlighted the need for all factions of the small-sided game to be on the same page.

“Ultimately, if we don’t work together, it’s the participants who suffer,” he said.

“Our main priority is to ensure that there are facilities for the players that are involved at a community level, but we do have some works in the pipeline that we’d love to see, such as a home of futsal in Victoria.

“There’s 40,000 players who play all across Victoria and a lot of those venues are not affiliated to Football Victoria at the moment, but we intend to speak to every single operator, every futsal club and even the indoor centre operators. I think it’s important that we all come under the banner and we support them as much as possible in a mutually beneficial system.”

Grima has been in constant dialogue with many futsal operators such as CEO of Futsal Oz Peter Parthimos, who had to endure a long stretch of inactivity at his centres due to the Victorian COVID-19 lockdown.

“Peter Parthimos has been one I’ve been speaking to regularly. I’ve known Peter across futsal circles for many, many, years.

“We are not here to compete with the providers, we are here to unite them, govern and lead them. They need direction, they need help, they need support. A lot of them have not seen their players for at least nine months, because the centres weren’t open.

“It’s really important to note, we should’ve been there providing them guidelines and support. That happened with the outdoor clubs, they got those guidelines whenever the state government released information (during lockdown), so I really felt for the futsal operators.

“So, we are here to reinvigorate them and also inspire the other states to learn from us and see how we can do things properly. We want to bring them on our journey, so when the national agenda is set up by Football Australia, everybody has been consulted and engaged properly and they know it is coming and they can be part of it.”

A strong emphasis on pathways for players, coaches, referees has also been put forward by FV, through the delivery of upcoming elite competitions such as the F-League (Victoria) and the FV State Futsal Championships.

Alongside this, both futsal referee and coach education courses will officially accredit and upskill referees and coaches from this month.

Grima, an experienced futsal and football administrator, is well placed to lead the sport into the future.

“My own experience in futsal has shown me that it is a sport with enormous appeal and potential,” he stated.

“As you can see, it is a big job ahead of us, but it is one that we are fully committed to.”

Previous ArticleNext Article

Victorian State Budget delivers $750,000 to football facilities as governing body signals more to come

Avatar
Image Credit: Shutterstock

Two of Victoria’s most prominent football clubs have secured a combined $750,000 in facility funding from the 2026 Victorian State Budget, in what Football Victoria describes as the beginning of a broader set of announcements for the sport from this year’s budget cycle.

Avondale FC will receive $500,000 to install lighting at Avenger Park in Avondale Heights, while Hume City FC has secured $250,000 for major upgrades at Nasiol Stadium in Broadmeadows, including a new LED scoreboard and improved lighting infrastructure. Both clubs compete in the Victorian National Premier Leagues and serve large multicultural communities in Melbourne’s north and northwest.

The announcements are modest in scale relative to the infrastructure deficit facing community and semi-professional football across the state, but their political significance extends beyond the dollar figures. They represent a tangible return on Football Victoria’s sustained advocacy campaign, which includes the Level the Playing Field parliamentary petition calling for more equitable government funding for football relative to other codes.

Facilities as Equity Infrastructure

The Avondale funding addresses a problem that has constrained the club’s operations for years. Avenger Park currently cannot be used at night, forcing the club to play matches at neighbouring venues or arrange temporary lighting for significant fixtures, including last year’s Hahn Australia Cup tie. The $500,000 investment will allow the club to host evening matches and training sessions on its own ground for the first time, removing a structural disadvantage that has affected scheduling, participation and the overall experience for hundreds of players each week.

For Hume City, the implications carry a specific equity dimension. Club President Ersan Gulum noted that upgraded lighting and facilities would directly support the growth of the club’s girls’ and women’s programs by providing better access to training environments and creating more opportunities for female participation.

“We have hundreds of players across all age groups utilising these facilities each week, and these improvements will help create an even stronger environment for excellence, participation, and community engagement,” Gulum said.

The connection between lighting and women’s football access is not incidental. Inadequate or absent lighting at community grounds disproportionately affects female programs, which have expanded rapidly in recent years but frequently find themselves scheduled into daytime slots because evening use of the facility is not viable. Infrastructure that enables night training and matches does not merely improve conditions. It expands the hours during which the ground can be used, directly increasing the number of teams and players a facility can serve.

The Political Context

Both clubs are located in state electorates where local members played an active role in securing the funding. Avondale celebrated the announcement with Parliamentary Secretary Sheena Watt, while Hume City acknowledged the support of local members in its public statement.

The pattern is familiar in Australian sports funding. Facility grants flow through electorate-level political relationships as much as through any centralised allocation process. Football Victoria’s acknowledgement of both Merri-Bek and Hume City Councils, in addition to the state government, reflects the layered advocacy required to move funding from budget allocation to ground-level construction.

Football Victoria CEO Dan Birrell praised both clubs and pointed toward further announcements.

“Both Avondale and Hume City are pillars in the Victorian football landscape, building strong and supportive communities around their top level junior and senior football programs,” Birrell said. “Professional level facilities like Avenger Park and Nasiol Stadium are critical for the development of Victorian football.”

Football Victoria has indicated more budget-related football announcements are forthcoming and has urged supporters to sign the Level the Playing Field petition ahead of the next Victorian State Election.

Football Victoria’s Female Football Week Awards Recognise the People Empowering Women’s Football

Avatar
Image Credit: Football Victoria

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.

Most Popular Topics

Editor Picks

Send this to a friend