Western United Women’s Football Integration Manager Amanda Stella: “This process is just the beginning”

Staff Writer

Western United fielded its first ever women’s team in a curtain-raiser exhibition match against the Tasmanian state team at UTAS Stadium on Tuesday, April 19.

It was another big step in the club’s journey to the A-League Women competition. The club announced last year that it had been granted a license to join in the 2022/23 season, after the Wellington Phoenix expanded the competition to 10 sides in 2021/22.

With the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023 front and centre in the minds of many, women’s football is seeing massive growth across Australia.

But a desire for development requires continued investment. In a Q&A, Soccerscene spoke to Calder United president and Western United Women’s Football Integration Manager Amanda Stella about the journey to be able to field a team at all, backed by a strong connection between two teams.

How was the experience for the girls?

Amanda Stella: It was a good hit out for the girls, where it was a 1-1 game. It was pretty close with end-to-end chances.

Our girls were very spent by its conclusion. They played Bulleen the night before, so they were feeling pretty flat and had to pick themselves up. We had a couple of last minute injuries to a few girls and they couldn’t play, so it put the load back on some of them.

It was difficult, but it was an amazing experience and they were all very grateful they got to go. However it was the worst conditions for football. It was raining, and made for some miserable weather.

How did it help the players’ integration within Western United?

Amanda Stella: That night we stayed and watched the A-League Men’s game at the chairman’s function, and got some acknowledgement from the board and the chairman. Afterwards we went and had pizza with all the staff of Western United and the board that were there, which was great.

Everyone met up for a little bit of a get together later on in the night, and a lot of the men’s A-League team came along as well.

It was a great moment for the girls and a real taste of what it will be like when the club has the A-League Women’s team up and running.

Even for the Western United commercial teams and marketing teams – to meet the girls and spend some time with them – it was very well worth having everyone in the one place.

What have been the aims of the past year?

Amanda Stella: It is about getting Western United on track with having a women’s team, and all the things that go with that. It is a little bit of an extra workload for everybody, but also a good opportunity for the club to feel what it will be like to be a complete A-League club in both men’s and women’s.

There’s lots of positives, and a lot of hard work to come, but they’re a club that is extremely ambitious and are looking for success with their A-League Women team. This development squad will help get that started.

I would be suggesting there is still plenty of positions available to current A-League Women’s players and those from overseas to lift it up, but a lot of players will come from this group which will give them a great opportunity.

How has the connection with Calder United helped?

Amanda Stella: For the girls that are involved from Calder, it gives them an extra skill session every week, which is always a big bonus.

We have had two years of not a lot of football in Victoria, so that is probably number one, and to get the experiences we did in Tasmania. Some exposure on social media, like you guys wanting stories and photos of the girls and interviews with the girls out there, that’s only a positive.

Whether they all become A-League Women players or not, I think they are all grateful for the opportunities they have had and what still may come in the future.

The first team will not look the same as the second year team and the third year team. This process is just the beginning.

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All Six Female Officials at the 2026 World Cup Come From Concacaf, a Shift From Qatar’s Wider Spread

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Six women are among the 170 referees, assistant referees and video assistant referees FIFA named to its 2026 World Cup officiating list in April, matching rather than exceeding the number appointed at Qatar in 2022. All six, however, come from countries within Concacaf, a change from four years ago, when the same total was drawn across five separate confederations.

Referees Tori Penso of the United States and Katia Itzel García of Mexico were joined by assistant referees Brooke Mayo and Kathryn Nesbitt, both of the United States, and Mexico’s Sandra Ramírez, along with Nicaragua’s Tatiana Guzmán as video assistant referee.Penso took charge of the Group A match between Czechia and South Africa on 18 June alongside Mayo and Nesbitt, the first all-female on-field trio to officiate a men’s World Cup match, becoming only the second woman to referee at that level, after France’s Stéphanie Frappart at Qatar 2022.García refereed Netherlands against Tunisia in Kansas City on 25 June to become the third woman, and the first Mexican woman, to referee a men’s World Cup match.

By contrast, Qatar’s six women were drawn from UEFA, CAF, AFC, CONMEBOL and Concacaf: Frappart of France, Rwanda’s Salima Mukansanga and Japan’s Yoshimi Yamashita as referees, and Brazil’s Neuza Back, Mexico’s Karen Díaz Medina and the United States’ Kathryn Nesbitt as assistants.

A pathway built through Concacaf’s development system

FIFA Chief Refereeing Officer Pierluigi Collina described the 2026 appointments as drawn from the largest group of World Cup match officials in the tournament’s history, the product of three years of monitoring, seminars and assessment, with selection based, in his words, on officials being “the very best in the world.”

Penso’s own record illustrates how that system has worked for Concacaf officials specifically. She joined the FIFA international panel in 2021, the same year she became the first woman to lead an all-female team in a men’s competition organised by Concacaf, refereeing a World Cup qualifier.She had already become the first woman in two decades to referee a regular-season Major League Soccer match, in 2020, and went on to take charge of the 2023 Women’s World Cup final, the first World Cup final overseen by an American referee.García’s path ran through Liga MX, where she became the first woman in more than 20 years to referee a men’s match in March 2024.

Australia’s own contingent at the tournament, referee Alireza Faghani and assistant referees Andrew Lindsay and George Lakrindis, along with video match official Shaun Evans, does not include a woman among its four officials,positioning the current pipeline into men’s World Cup officiating as one running through a narrower set of confederations than the sport’s broader referee development system overall.

Research on performance shows a mixed but instructive picture

The appointments sit alongside a growing body of research testing assumptions about female officials in men’s football. A study in the Journal of Human Sport and Exercise, examining five seasons of the Maurice Revello Tournament, found female referees were not weaker than their male counterparts in adjudicating men’s matches.Separate research by Atılgan and Tükel, cited in a 2025 study of fan perceptions of referees, found women outperformed men specifically at the decision-making stage, with men showing greater hesitation and avoidance.

Findings on physical output are less uniform. A systematic review of physical demands in high-level matches found male and female referees covered broadly comparable ground, averaging 10.5 and 9.9 kilometres respectively, with similar volumes of high-intensity running.A separate comparison of Spanish first and second division referees found male officials produced higher peak-intensity output than female referees across the shortest, most demanding windows of match play, a gap researchers linked to aerobic capacity and flagged as requiring further study at international level specifically.Academic research published this year estimates women still make up roughly one in ten of the world’s accredited match officials across all levels of the game.

FIFA’s next major appointment cycle for women’s officiating is already under way, with match officials named this year for the 2026 FIFA U-20 and U-17 Women’s World Cups as part of preparations for the 2027 Women’s World Cup in Brazil.

Northern NSW Football’s Leadership Program Reaches 98 Graduates as Sport Moves Toward 2027 Gender Parity Targets

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Image Credit: Football Northern NSW

Northern NSW Football has concluded its 2026 Women’s Leadership Program, with 13 participants taking the total number of graduates to 98 women across the region since the program launched in 2023. The five-week program combined online modules with a two-day conference at Rydges Resort in the Hunter Valley, bringing together club volunteers, committee members, administrators and NNSWF staff from Newcastle, Macquarie, Northern Inland and Football Mid North Coast zones.

The program’s growth has been uneven year to year. It launched with two intakes in 2023, drew 25 scholarship recipients in 2024,then settled to 12 in 2025, which brought the cumulative total to 85 before this year’s cohort of 13.

The program was facilitated by Ann Odong, who founded The Women’s Game, Australia’s first dedicated women’s football website, in 2008,and later spent six years as Football Australia’s Media and PR Manager steering the Matildas’ program through multiple World Cups and Olympic Games,before moving into independent consulting work.

A pipeline built against a 2027 deadline

The program fits within a wider set of national targets football and the broader sport sector have committed to reaching within the next twelve months. Football Australia’s Our Game initiative, launched in 2021, set a goal of 50:50 gender parity across players, coaches, administrators and referees by 2027.Separately, the federally backed National Gender Equity in Sport Governance Policy requires all funded national and state sporting bodies to reach 50 per cent women or gender-diverse board directors by 1 July 2027, with funding to be withheld from organisations that fall short.As of the most recent Australian Sports Commission data, 22 per cent of chief executives and 25 per cent of board chairs across 65 federally funded national sporting organisations were women.

Programs built around confidence, networking and committee-level skills, the model NNSWF has run since 2023, are the mechanism most sporting bodies are relying on to close that gap, since board and executive vacancies typically draw from an organisation’s existing pool of committee members, volunteers and administrators rather than external recruitment.

This year’s cohort

University of Newcastle FC’s Charlotte Carey, one of this year’s participants, said the program had given her the confidence to pursue a career in football while developing skills applicable across other areas of her life. Fellow participants included representatives from Cooks Hill United, Westlakes Wildcats, Newcastle Olympic, Lake Macquarie City FC, Western Wolves, Gunnedah and District Soccer Association, Wauchope FC and Stockton Sharks, alongside three NNSWF staff members.

NNSWF Participation and Women’s Football Officer Jamie Bressan said the program had continued to provide women across the game with an opportunity to connect and build leadership skills, with topics covering effective communication, personality styles and team dynamics. Bressan pointed to the network the program builds among participants, drawn from clubs and committees across the region, as one of its central functions rather than the training content alone.

The 2026 cohort’s spread across four zones, Newcastle, Macquarie, Northern Inland and Football Mid North Coast, continues a pattern of the program drawing participants from outside the Hunter region’s largest population centres, consistent with its original design to make the conference and online components accessible to women in regional and remote parts of northern NSW through funded travel and accommodation.

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