Football Victoria CEO Kimon Taliadoros: “We have a demand for playing football exceeding the ability to provide opportunities”

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Kimon Taliadoros played for some of Australia’s biggest clubs in the National Soccer League, and joined Football Victoria (FV) as president of the federation in 2015 before becoming Chief Executive Officer (CEO) in February of this year. He spoke to Soccerscene about the challenges he has faced so far at FV, increasing participation in football, and how sport serves as an escape for many in our community.

Q. What challenges have you faced as CEO of FV?

Taliadoros: Football has the most significant challenges, however the most significant opportunities, because we part of the global game. Within Victoria, we have an extremely competitive marketplace with Melbourne effectively being the hub for Australian sport, and Australia’s national sports – cricket, AFL, basketball, and netball. The extremely competitive local market competing for resources, support and athletes remains the ongoing challenge for football.

Q. How can FV further engage upcoming athletes to win them over to football?

Taliadoros: We believe that if we can attract people to try football in any of its numerous formats – small-sided, full-sized, social football, futsal, boys, girls, men, women, people of all backgrounds and genders – and we can produce an enjoyable game day experience we can continue to develop that relationship with the sport, that will turn into a lifetime engagement with the sport in a number of different ways – as a player, as an official, as a volunteer or as a fan. We hope to engage with someone who enjoys the benefits of a lifetime relationship with football.

Q. How important is having pathways for inclusion in football?

Taliadoros: It is critical that football is accessible for all. It is Football Victoria’s obligation to ensure that it is available to everyone. From a gender perspective, we set ourselves a target of 50/50 participation by 2027 back in 2018, and we committed to achieving that not only from a playing perspective but also from a refereeing, coaching and administrative perspective. At the very heart of our purpose is to ensure the football experience is available to everyone who lives in Victoria.

Q. Phil Brown mentioned increased participation in Powerchair Football is a goal for Capital Football, does FV have any similar goals?

Taliadoros: We intend to expand all our programs in Victoria until we meet demand, including for blind football, AAA, women and girls, wheelchair and power football. This satisfies the goal of being accessible, which is a really important word, ensuring it is available for all. This covers a range of criteria, including the format, the cost, and the convenience. This has been the heart of our role as Football Victoria, as custodians of the game, and it remains our goal.

Q. The price of playing football in Australia is often discussed, how can we make it cheaper to play?

Taliadoros: It is a significant challenge for the football ecosystem. The football economy has historically relied on a user-pay system, so the grassroots has subsidised the football economy in Australia. There are two ways we can try to address the pricing issue. The first is to increase the supply of football, which would lead to a reduction in prices through more football more often, more clubs, and more facilities. The second element of that is being able to generate a football economy that results in the professional game being able to contribute to the development of football in much the same way as cricket, AFL, and NRL – the most popular professional sports in Australia – invest significantly in their communities.

Q. How do we achieve that?

Taliadoros: It’s the growth of our key brands. Our Socceroos, Matildas, our underage teams, and the FFA Cup. All those commercial brands and assets that are critical to being able to generate a commercial outcome that can be invested in grassroots to further develop and grow.

Q. Does the disruption from lockdowns have the potential to drive up prices and make football more inaccessible?

Taliadoros: Not necessary, the disruption may have an impact on clubs from an income perspective. From a sports perspective, the demand is high at all levels, increasingly so from a community sports perspective. Community sport is increasingly being recognised as essential to our social fabric, so that has resulted in a very strong interest in participation. I wouldn’t have thought that would have been an impact on cost, but certainly, it would have affected families in certain ways.

One area that has been affected, because it has had such a significant effect on small businesses, is the strain on clubs who typically rely on small businesses for sponsorship and support. There has been an impact on clubs from a revenue perspective. The other area we have seen impact is the number of volunteers. They have come in fewer numbers, which means the demands around COVID Safe community sport are considerably greater, so there has been an additional strain on clubs to put on their community football.

Q. We are seeing how important sport is to society, is football an escape for people in these times?

Taliadoros: Without a doubt. We know this because we’ve had three lockdowns, and for every lockdown we’ve had this year in Victoria, we’ve had constant demand on our communications that clubs are provided with the latest information to enable them to get back to playing as soon as possible. This is essentially driven by their players, their coaches, and their local communities. We have very strong evidence that community sport from a football perspective has a greater demand now, perhaps even more so than ever before.”

Q. What will be the biggest challenges for FV this year and going forward?

Taliadoros: Our biggest challenges remain the same as they have been for the past five years, and even before that. We have a demand for playing football exceeding the ability to provide opportunities. This generally means facilities, which is a challenge. The second greatest challenge is to ensure that we can drive effective take-up and participation from women and girls. We need to leverage the incredible Matildas, the home of the Matildas that is being built out at La Trobe, and the Women’s World Cup arriving in two years. Those are the two greatest challenges that will remain for Football Victoria.

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A Structural Fix or Stoppage? Will FQ’s New Referee Pipeline Solve its Shortage?

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Football Queensland‘s newly launched club referee framework is being presented as a game-changing solution to one of the most persistent operational problems in grassroots football: the chronic shortage of match officials. Will democratising and lowering the bar for entry saturate the gap, or exacerbate a skills shortage?

What the framework actually does

The core of the announcement is a free, 30-minute online module that certifies players or club members as club referees, creating a new category of match official below the formal FQ referee pathway. The stated goal is a 1 referee per team ratio within clubs, with these club-level officials intended to fill the gap at the grassroots end while the formal pathway continues operating above them.

Referee shortages at community level are not primarily caused by a lack of interest in officiating at the elite end. They are caused by the structural reality that organising and staffing fixtures for hundreds of junior and community matches each weekend requires a volume of officials that a centralised recruitment and accreditation model simply cannot generate fast enough. A club-embedded approach that lowers the barrier to entry addresses that supply problem at the point where it actually exists.

The framework’s strongest element is its acknowledgment that referee development is not a single pipeline but a layered ecosystem. By creating a supported entry point within clubs, the program recognises that people are more likely to begin something when the initial ask is modest and the environment is familiar.

The 30-minute online module removes cost and time as barriers, which are consistently among the most cited reasons people do not take up officiating. The integration with FQ’s broader resources and the explicit framing of club officiating as a stepping stone into the formal pathway is also structurally intelligent. A club referee who develops confidence and competence at the grassroots level is a more likely candidate for formal accreditation than someone approached cold by a recruiting drive.

Where the questions remain

The framework’s weaknesses are largely the weaknesses of any supply-side solution to what is partly a demand-side problem. Referee shortages exist not only because there are not enough officials but because the experience of refereeing is sufficiently unpleasant that retention rates are poor. Verbal abuse, sideline behaviour from parents and coaches, and the lack of adequate support structures mean that many referees who enter the system do not stay in it.

A 30-minute module and a club-based support structure does not directly address those conditions. If a newly certified club referee’s first experiences on the pitch involve the same patterns of behaviour that drive experienced officials out of the game, the framework risks building a pipeline that feeds into an environment that consumes referees rather than retaining them. Football Queensland’s existing Protect Our Game initiative and Three Strike Policy are relevant here, but the announcement makes no explicit connection between the new referee framework and the behavioural standards clubs will be expected to maintain around their own officials.

There is also a question of quality consistency. A 30-minute online certification, by design, provides a basic level of preparation. At the youngest junior levels, where match outcomes are secondary to development, that may be entirely adequate. But the framework’s success will depend on clubs implementing the structured learning and support it promises in practice, not just in principle. Clubs vary enormously in their administrative capacity, volunteer bandwidth and culture. A framework that works well in a well-resourced metropolitan club may deliver inconsistent results in a smaller regional association operating with a single administrator.

The broader structural implication

Perhaps the most significant question the framework raises is whether it represents a genuine investment in the referee pathway or a pressure valve designed to relieve immediate operational strain without addressing underlying conditions.

If the club referee model is understood as the entry ramp to a properly resourced and well-supported development pathway, it is genuinely valuable. Football Queensland’s 10-point referee plan, of which this forms one element, suggests the intent is systemic rather than cosmetic. The investment in Alex King as Head of Advanced Match Officials, the all-female referee courses and the appointment of Casey Reibelt as Australia’s first full-time female referee all point to an organisation that is thinking seriously about the full arc of official development.

But frameworks announced with language like “game-changing” and “record investment” carry an expectation of accountability that should be tracked. The meaningful measure of this initiative is not how many club referees are certified in its first season but how many are still officiating two and three seasons from now, and how many progress into the formal FQ pathway.

A referee pipeline is only as useful as its retention rate. That number will tell the real story.

What does the Football Victoria’s Annual Report mean for Victorian Football?

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Football Victoria has released its 2025 Annual Report and held its Annual General Meeting at the Home of the Matildas at La Trobe University, presenting a picture of a governing body managing rapid growth while laying the administrative foundations it says will be required to sustain it.

Total participation across all formats reached 96,095 in 2025, a 14 percent overall increase, with women and girls players across outdoor, futsal and social formats reaching 30,928. MiniRoos participation climbed to 39,827, volunteer numbers grew 7.4 percent and female volunteer participation increased 40 percent. Across community competitions, 47,481 fixtures were delivered across 5,016 team entries.

The numbers reflect the sustained momentum of women’s football in particular, a growth curve that has accelerated sharply since the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup and continued through the AFC Women’s Asian Cup held in Australia earlier this year. Football Victoria’s report documents that trajectory in participation data but also in the decisions being made about governance, infrastructure and who is shaping the sport’s direction.

Who is shaping the game

The AGM saw the re-election of Elenna Niteros to the Football Victoria board, having first been elected at the 2024 AGM. Niteros, a long-time player and volunteer, is described by the organisation as dedicated to ensuring diversity, equity and inclusion and the growth of women’s football are central to board decisions. The election also returned Peter Filopoulos, an experienced football executive with more than two decades across club, state, national and international organisations. Steve Forbes was subsequently appointed as a director to continue overseeing the organisation’s digital and systems priorities.

The composition of the board matters in ways that extend beyond individual appointments. Football Victoria operates under a 40:40:20 constitutional requirement for gender balance, and the report documents that 94 percent of clubs met that criterion in 2025. That figure, alongside the 100 percent of clubs meeting diversity and inclusion criteria, represents the most structurally significant governance data in the report. The decisions that shape who gets to play, where facilities are built, how budgets are allocated and which programs receive investment are made by the people in those rooms.

Chair Dr Angela Williams, in her first full year in the role, acknowledged the broader environment in which the sport is operating, noting that 2025 had not been easy for everyone and naming violence motivated by race, religion, gender and politics as unacceptable. Her statement that football would play its role in providing peace, belonging and kindness was framed not as aspiration but as responsibility.

Life membership and legacy

The evening included the formal welcome of Life Members from regional associations transitioning into Football Victoria’s statewide structure, alongside the announcement of two new Life Members: Eugene Brazzale, a legendary referee and mentor, and Maggie Koumi, recognised as a trailblazing female administrator.

The In Memoriam section of the annual report carries its own weight. Betty Hoar and Maria Berry AM, both described as foundational pioneers of the women’s game, were among five Life Members farewelled in 2025. Berry’s four-decade legacy included advocacy that tore down systemic barriers for women in sport. Hoar was an inaugural Hall of Fame inductee. The document also recorded the tragic passing of Heidelberg United NPLW striker Keely Lockhart, described by her club as a legend and an angel, known for her kindness toward younger players and her impact on the women’s game in Victoria.

Infrastructure and the years ahead

CEO Dan Birrell framed the year as one defined by progress, describing growth not as a statistic but as a signal that football matters to more people than ever and that communities believe in what is being built. The language is carefully chosen. Progress implies direction, and Football Victoria’s advocacy for infrastructure investment is the clearest indication of where that direction leads.

The Level the Playing Field campaign and the Parliamentary Friends of Football group both received mention in the CEO’s report as central to the organisation’s relationship with government. The recent Victorian State Budget delivered $750,000 to Avondale FC and Hume City FC for facility upgrades, and Football Victoria has indicated further budget announcements are forthcoming. The connection between booming participation and facility access, as Birrell noted, remains central to the organisation’s work with government and partners.

The practical implications of that work are not abstract. Facilities without adequate lighting cannot host evening training. Grounds without gender-inclusive changerooms communicate, without saying a word, who the sport was built for. The $343 million grassroots infrastructure fund Football Australia and Football NSW have sought from the NSW Government reflects the scale of the problem nationally. Victoria faces the same challenge, and the governing body’s political advocacy exists precisely because participation growth without infrastructure investment produces a sport that is larger but not meaningfully better.

With 96,000 participants and a board mandated to reflect the diversity of the community it serves, Football Victoria is in a stronger position than it has been. Whether the infrastructure and investment follow is the question the next decade will answer.

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