Football Australia unveil Domestic Match Calendar for 2022/23

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Football Australia has today released the Australian Football Domestic Match Calendar for 2022/23 (DMC 2022/23) which outlines the key dates for elite men’s and women’s football competitions, alongside transfer and registration windows, for the period from 7 October 2022 to 7 October 2023.

Designed and implemented to align the game and harmonise Australia with key international football events and activities, the DMC 2022/23 provides clear windows for matches from the Isuzu UTE A-League Men, Liberty A-League Women, Australia Cup, and National Premier Leagues (NPL) to be played, enabling administrators and teams to progress their planning for Australian football leagues and competitions accordingly.

Having extensively consulted with key stakeholders including Australian Professional Leagues (APL), Football Australia via the DMC 2022/23 has regulated that FIFA international windows for men’s and women’s football will be observed throughout 2022/23, with A-League Men’s and Women’s competitions to pause while the respective Australian senior national teams are in action.

To view the Australian Football Domestic Match Calendar for 2022/23, please click here.

This move will ensure that players selected for national team representation will not miss club matches during the periods in which they are on international duty, supporting an increase in match minutes for the individuals chosen to represent the Socceroos or Commonwealth Bank Matildas.

FA DMC

Football Australia Chief Executive Officer, James Johnson, explained that the DMC 2022/23 is a significant tool for Australian football that will help the game to capitalise on several major milestones over the coming year.

“With the Domestic Match Calendar 2022/23 now finalised, staff at Member Federations, the APL, and Football Australia, as well as clubs within the Australian football ecosystem, can more thoroughly plan their activities for the period from 7 October 2022 and 7 October 2023,” Johnson said via press release.

“There are many major milestones that the game can capitalise on over the next 12-to-18 months, with the tailwinds of Australia’s participation at this year’s FIFA World Cup™ in Qatar, and co-hosting of next year’s FIFA Women’s World Cup™, to help underpin interest in the A-Leagues, NPL competitions, and the Australia Cup.

“With clear windows for match activity now set, we can work collaboratively on maximising the opportunities that exist within player pathways, as well as think and act strategically about the promotion of the sport, ensuring that each area of the game has the best possible opportunity to engage fans, sponsors, and audiences both domestically and internationally.

“Pleasingly, we will see a significant amount of Australia Cup football prior to the commencement of the A-League Men season in early October. This could see our domestically-based Socceroos players being exposed to a good amount of competitive football prior to the FIFA World Cup™ in Qatar.”

“It has taken a collaborative, team effort to finalise the DMC 2022/23, and we acknowledge stakeholders from across the game for contributing to this important piece of work,” Johnson concluded.

Key dates/features of the DMC 2022/23 include:

  • Isuzu UTE A-League Men’s 2022/23 Regular Season to commence from Friday, 7 October 2022, with the 2023 Grand Final to be contested on the weekend of 26-27 May 2023
  • Liberty A-League Women’s 2022/23 Regular Season to commence from Friday, 18 November 2022, with the 2023 Grand Final to be contested on the weekend of 29-30 April 2023
  • Final match of the DMC 2022/23 to feature the 2023 Australia Cup Final on Saturday, 7 October 2023
  • National Premier Leagues 2023 Seasons to commence from Saturday, 4 February 2023 (men’s) and Saturday, 11 February 2023 (women’s) respectively
  • Placeholder between March 2023 and September 2023 included for establishment of new National Second Tier competition (men’s)
  • Player welfare windows included in both men’s and women’s calendars to ensure players can obtain rest/annual leave between seasons/elite football commitments

To view the Australian Football Domestic Match Calendar for 2022/23, please click here.

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Football Australia Expands Mental Skills Program for Match Officials Amid Sustained Focus on Referee Retention

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Image Credit: Football NSW

Football Australia has confirmed a second national webinar for match officials, led by sports psychologist Dr Liam Slack, extending a referee development series introduced after strong engagement with an initial session on managing match-day pressure.

The upcoming session, themed “parking with purpose,” will focus on decision-making strategies designed to help referees process on-field calls and reset attention quickly across a match that can present hundreds of individual decisions. Dr Slack, who also consults with The Football Association and the AFC Referee Academy and previously spent over a decade as a performance psychologist with the Professional Game Match Officials Limited in England, brings substantial elite-level experience to a program open to officials at every level, from grassroots to professional.

The theme builds on work Dr Slack has already delivered within Australian officiating. He recently led a session with Football Australia’s National Referee Academy on the same concept, framing the ability to consciously park a decision and refocus on the next phase of play as a trainable skill rather than an innate trait, one that separates officials who reset quickly under pressure from those who don’t. He has also addressed more than 100 Football Australia elite match officials and staff on developing a stronger match-day mentality, an indication of how embedded this psychological framework has become across the officiating pathway rather than remaining a one-off intervention.

The expansion of the webinar series reflects a broader shift in how football administrators are approaching referee attrition. Rather than treating retention purely as a recruitment or pay problem, the program signals an institutional acknowledgment that the psychological demands of officiating, particularly the compounding pressure of split-second decisions under public scrutiny, are a material factor in whether officials remain in the game.

It rests alongside other measures adopted across Australian football in recent years, including visible identification programs for junior referees and structural reviews of referee departments at state federation level, all aimed at the same underlying issue: a shrinking pool of match officials relative to demand.

Football Australia has not detailed metrics for assessing the program’s impact on referee numbers, though the recurring engagement of an internationally credentialed specialist across multiple tiers of the officiating pathway suggests sustained institutional investment in the approach.

How Australian Support for the World Cup Has Changed Since 2022

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Federation Square 2022; Image Credit: AFR

Sodden, rowdy and 7,000-strong, the crowd that gathered at Federation Square before dawn on Saturday for Australia’s clash with the United States offered a vivid illustration of how much, and how little, has changed in Australian football support since Qatar 2022.

The scenes themselves were familiar: fans queuing from 2am, flares lit during the anthem, a barrier breach as the precinct hit capacity within minutes of opening. But the fact the screening happened at all says something about the shifting institutional weight football now carries in Australia.

Just this May, the Melbourne’s Arts Precinct had decided not to screen Socceroos matches at Fed Square this tournament, citing crowd damage and arrests during a 2022 World Cup screening. Football Australia publicly pushed back, and the Victorian Government ultimately overturned the decision, with security and police presence increased to manage the risk. That a state government intervened to guarantee a public screening reflects how central these gatherings have become to football’s standing in Australia, not just as a peripheral fan event but a piece of cultural infrastructure worth a premier’s political capital.

A Tournament Inherited, Not Just Attended

The scale of public interest now sits on a different foundation than it did in 2022. Football Australia’s most recent National Participation Report recorded an 11% increase in total participation to 1,911,539 people, with women and girls’ participation rising 16% to 221,436. Industry analysis attributes much of that growth to the “Matildas effect” following the home Women’s World Cup in 2023, projecting 407,000 new junior participants by 2027 on the back of that tournament and Football Australia’s broader infrastructure strategy. Whatever happens to the Socceroos in the United States, the crowd at Fed Square this year is drawn from a participation base substantially larger than the one watching from lounge rooms and pubs in Qatar.

That shift shows up in how fans say they’ll engage with this tournament regardless of results. New industry research found 79% of intended Australian viewers plan to keep watching the World Cup even if the Socceroos are eliminated, an 11-point increase on 2022, suggesting interest is becoming less tied to the national team’s results than it once was. The same research found television remains dominant, with 88% of viewers planning to watch on TV, rising above 90 per cent for evening and weekend matches, even as audiences increasingly split their attention across streaming and second screens.

Crowd Behaviour as the Unresolved Question

What hasn’t shifted is the tension over crowd conduct at public screenings, and what it costs football’s civic standing when things go wrong. The Melbourne Arts Precinct’s chief executive was explicit in 2026 that damage and behaviour during 2022 screenings were the basis for initially declining to host watch parties this time, despite trouble-free crowds during the 2023 Women’s World Cup.

Saturday’s flares and barrier breach will likely feed that same debate going into the knockout stages, even as the broader numbers tell a story of a sport with a far deeper public footing than it had four years ago. The Fed Square images from 2022 prompted other Australian cities to scramble together live sites once the Socceroos reached the knockout rounds, reflecting a pattern likely to repeat if Australia progresses from Group D, with Friday’s match against Paraguay now carrying outsized weight for a campaign that began with what fans, by their own description, considered horrible refereeing and a result short of expectations.

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