What the future holds for futsal in Australia

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Credit: Football Australia

The return of the National Futsal Championships is a huge boon, according to two people key to the development of the game within Australia.

Last month Football Australia announced the return of the National Futsal Championships, pitting states against each other in a tournament that has been on hiatus since the start of the pandemic.

The Futsalroos – the FIFA recognised national team for Australia – have competed at eight FIFA Futsal World Cups, and the game has a rich history and strong participation in Australia.

The 2019 National Participation Report, produced by Football Australia (FA), shows the game growing in participation by 36% – with 63,031 registered players. The National Futsal Championships will feature close to 1,000 participants from over 100 teams being involved from states and territories across the country.

James Johnson, Chief Executive Officer of Football Australia, was pleased with the re-introduction of the National Futsal Championships and the reinvigoration of the F-League and looks forward to growing the futsal footprint in Australia.

“As part of our clear strategic agenda, we outlined a vision to create a national program for futsal and beach soccer by working closely with our Member Federations in a unified, inclusive and collaborative manner,” he said in a statement.

“With the culmination of this process, we are delighted that Football Queensland and Football Victoria will be hosting the National Futsal Championships in 2022 and 2023 respectively.

“There is a clear appetite throughout Australia for football to increase its imprint through futsal and beach soccer.  Queensland and Victoria now have the opportunity to showcase this and bring it to life over the next two years, in a way never seen before.”

The 2022 and 2023 Championships will be hosted in Queensland and Victoria respectively – two states that have embedded futsal within their overall organisational strategies.

Trevor Edwards, Head of Futsal at Football Queensland (FQ), is the tournament organiser for the 2022 National Futsal Championships. He believes that FQ is seeing success in futsal because they have linked it with their football strategy in the state.

“We see it as a game in itself, but also linked in with the entire football family,” Edwards told Soccerscene.

“We are looking to develop the F-League in Queensland into a conference style where we have northern, southern, and central competitions in the state. That might take a few years to get to, but that is our target for futsal.”

Anthony Grima, head of Futsal at Football Victoria (FV), explains that it is essential for Australian football to develop futsal alongside the 11 a side game.

“After the 2021 National Futsal Championships were cancelled due to the devastating impact of COVID-19 on sport and the community, we needed to work together to regain momentum, and confirm hosts for the tournaments in 2022 and 2023 to ensure our community had a calendar they could work towards,” Grima said to Soccerscene.

“The tournament is the pinnacle event for Futsal in Australia and is the largest of Football Australia’s national tournaments.”

The National Futsal Championships is seen as a way to strengthen pathways for junior development, as well as grow the game within Australia.

“It is essential from a state perspective. We would like to see that continue and grow. In previous years since the national F-League became defunct, there hasn’t been a pathway for juniors to make the national selection for the Futsalroos. We’d love to see that pathway come back and develop,” Edwards said.

“Not just your pathway for national teams, but also pathways and processes for really strong grassroots participation, coach education, and referee education.”

The F-League, Australia’s last national futsal competition, ended in 2016. Grima thinks that a relaunched national futsal competition is vital to the development of the game in Australia.

“A National Futsal League is crucial for any country who wishes to participate and compete in international tournaments,” Grima said.

“In addition to the National Futsal Championships, state-based F-Leagues could potentially link up with a National Futsal League that links all the champions together and forms the pathway for both male and female players, coaches, and referees.”

In recent years, the small-sided game has been recognised for its ability to supplement player development for football and also increasingly as a sport in its own right.

In 2016, a game featuring legendary Brazilian Falcao and Bayern Munich’s Douglas Costa drew a crowd of over 2,000 people in Melbourne.

With states collaborating towards a common goal, futsal will only continue to expand within Australia.

“There are many initiatives that we can plan to elevate futsal not just in Australia but on the world stage. It is clear that Football Australia, under the leadership of James Johnson, wants to grow the Futsal footprint in Australia,” Grima said.

“Futsal’s inclusion in the ‘XI Principles – for the future of Australian Football’ back in October outlined a vision to create a national program for futsal and beach soccer by working closely with the Member Federations in a unified, inclusive and collaborative manner.”

Edwards shared the same view as Grima towards growing the game.

“As a whole, we are excited as Member Federations to be involved in the development of futsal. We are excited with the collaboration that is happening, and I hope we can keep pushing the sport together so futsal continues to grow in this country,” Edwards said.

When the National Futsal Championships kicks off at the Gold Coast Sports and Leisure Centre on January 5, 2022, it will have the backing of the entire football landscape.

Those involved in the game are committed to see it be a grand return for the tournament, to ensure the continuing growth of the game is not only maintained, but expanded and elevated in the months and years to come.

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Victorian Labor commits $500,000 to Thornbury Football Facility as State Election Advocacy Intensifies

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Image Credit: Kat Theophanous MP Facebook

The Victorian Labor Party has confirmed $500,000 in 2026-27 State Budget funding to upgrade facilities at Mayer Park in Thornbury, with Northcote MP Kat Theophanous joining Darebin United juniors for a training session earlier this month to mark the commitment. The funding follows a public campaign by Football Victoria highlighting the ground’s deteriorating conditions, and lands within an escalating advocacy effort by the sport ahead of the next Victorian election.

The money will go toward upgrading the playing surface and planning a new pavilion at a ground that has received no infrastructure investment in over a decade, according to Football Victoria, despite participation at Darebin United more than quadrupling in that time. The club fielded five teams in 2021. It now fields more than 20, with over 300 players including more than 130 children under 12 and over 70 female players.

That growth has collided directly with the limits of the ground itself. Mayer Park has no drainage and no synthetic surface, and Football Victoria reported that Darebin United lost 23 training sessions in 2024 alone due to unsafe, waterlogged conditions. Club President Michael Slaughter described a pitch that was uneven and at times dangerous, particularly for junior and female players.

“I have been there for six years, and the club is at a stage now that we need something new,” Slaughter said in comments to Football Victoria earlier this year. “There’s only so many training sessions you can cancel, and then there’s the cost of finding alternative grounds indoors or outdoors, which isn’t ideal.”

A campaign that found its target

Football Victoria published a dedicated article in March calling on Darebin City Council to urgently prioritise redevelopment of Mayer Park, explicitly linking the club’s case to its broader Level the Playing Field campaign. Three months later, the funding arrived, not from council, but from the state government, attached to the local member’s name and delivered with a photo opportunity on the training pitch.

A club’s need becomes visible through governing body advocacy, a local member adopts the cause, and the funding is announced as a direct response to community need rather than as a line item in a broader budget process. Theophanous’s own account of the announcement makes the local framing explicit, describing the investment alongside free public transport, school upgrades and registration discounts as part of what she has billed as “easier, safer and more affordable” support for Northcote.

“Community sporting clubs bring Northcote locals together,” Theophanous said in her budget statement. “Through our Get Active Kids voucher program, we’re making sure the cost of fees and equipment doesn’t keep kids from playing the sport they love. And we’re also investing to make local clubs even stronger.”

Earlier this year, Avondale FC secured $500,000 for lighting at Avenger Park and Hume City FC received $250,000 for upgrades at Nasiol Stadium, both delivered through the same budget cycle and both paired with local member announcements. Mayer Park follows the same pipeline, a state government commitment, a local seat, a community club whose growth has outpaced its facilities, and a governing body using the win as evidence in a larger campaign.

The equity dimension

What distinguishes the Mayer Park case is the explicit role gender and accessibility played in Football Victoria’s advocacy. The governing body noted that unsafe pitch conditions were particularly dangerous for junior and female players, and highlighted that Darebin United maintains 40% female representation on its committee with seven female coaches, alongside its status as one of Darebin’s first 2-Star Club Changer accredited clubs, a Football Victoria program recognising clubs that actively remove barriers to female participation.

A club building one of the more credible female participation pathways in the municipality was, until this announcement, doing so on a ground its own administrators described as unsafe. Infrastructure investment of this kind does not simply improve playing conditions. It determines whether programs explicitly designed to grow women’s and girls’ football can function as intended, or whether they remain constrained by the same ageing facilities that have shaped community football for a decade.

What it means for the campaign ahead

Football Victoria has framed the Mayer Park outcome as one data point within its Level the Playing Field campaign, which continues to call for more equitable government investment in football relative to other codes. The organisation has indicated further football-related announcements are expected from the 2026-27 Victorian State Budget, with the upcoming state election positioned as the decisive moment for the sport’s broader infrastructure future.

For Slaughter, the immediate outcome is more concrete. “The funding is extremely important,” he said. “It allows us to deliver our football program and to grow. This will give them a place to come, to have fun and to enjoy their soccer”.

Whether that template, governing body advocacy, local political adoption, budget announcement, repeats consistently enough to address the scale of Victoria’s grassroots facilities gap remains the open question Football Victoria’s campaign is designed to keep in front of both major parties as the election approaches.

Football Victoria joins campaign to fight racism in sport

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Image credit: Football Victoria

With the launch of the Victorian Government’s Racism Doesn’t Belong in Our Game campaign, Football Victoria joins several sporting organisations in the state to ensure sport remains inclusive and welcoming for all.

 

About the campaign

Racism Doesn’t Belong in Our Game aims to raise awareness of racism in community sport, uniting organisations and associations like VACSAL, Vicsport, VicHealth and more.

Football Victoria, as the state’s governing body for the beautiful game, will affirm its commitment to ensuring football is a safe and inclusive place for all who play, coach or support by joining the campaign.

It reflects the leadership and guidance of the Centre for Multicultural Youth (CMY) and its CMSport initiative, a service provider with over 30 years of experience in supporting diversity in sports through training, coaching and mentoring, and consulting support.

“It has been fantastic to work with CMSport, CMY and the other sporting codes to bring this campaign to life,” said FV Executive Manager of Equity Growth and Government Relations Karen Pearce via media release.

“The Racism Doesn’t Belong in Our Game campaign started with a pledge from all seven codes to tackle racism, and I really do believe that we can achieve that as a cohesive group pulling toward the same goals.”

 

Strength in diversity

Australia is an immensely diverse and multicultural nation. According to numbers from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the population includes 8.8 million people born overseas, representing 32% of the population. 48% have a parent born overseas, while 4% is Indigenous.

It should therefore be expected – and indeed, welcomed – that Australia’s most-participated sport reflects this multiculturalism.

But for many who want to enjoy playing or watching football in their local community, incidents of racism continue to plague their experiences in the game.

“Research tells us over 56% of Victorian community sport have reported experiencing or witnessing racism, a truly alarming number,” Pearce continued.

“We look forward to working together to lower that stat as we try to stamp out racism in sport once and for all.”

Racism Doesn’t Belong in Our Game ultimately embodies not only the goal for all sport going forward, but the best way through which to achieve it.

That is, through unity and championing the diversity which makes Australia a nation to admire.

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