Moya Dodd remembers a lot about the pilot Women’s World Cup held in China in 1988. She remembers the oppressive heat in Guangdong province in early June. She remembers the novelty of huge crowds – 15,000 to watch Australia defeat Brazil, 16,000 to watch them lose to Norway – and the now-legendary players who took part: Sissi, Mia Hamm, Michelle Akers, Pia Sundhage, Sarina Wiegman. She remembers getting cheap haircuts and being quoted in the local paper and sewing her national team crest onto their tracksuits.
But most of all, Dodd remembers feeling like she was part of something special – something that was only just beginning. “It felt like the greatest opportunity we ever had to change the course of the women’s game,” Dodd tells Guardian Australia. “We craved international competition [and] we knew that a regular World Cup would help bring support from governments and others to grow the game.”
The idea for a women’s international tournament had been floated within Fifa just two years earlier after Norway’s Ellen Wille – the first woman ever invited to address the Fifa congress – asked the governing body to pay more attention to the women’s game. To the surprise of many, they did: the successful pilot saw the establishment of the first official Women’s World Cup in 1991.
“We knew we were playing the most popular game in the world and that it had been denied without reason to our mothers and grandmothers,” Dodd says. “It’s like watching a movie that you know is going to end well, relishing each twist and turn as the villains are eliminated and the plot finds its path to the inevitable conclusion.
“Really, denying women in football is like trying to defy gravity. It’s just inevitable that once the other half of the population gets access to the game, it will take off.”
The former Matildas vice-captain knows better than most what some of those villains look like. After retiring from playing in 1995, Dodd navigated the twists and turns of football governance and administration, joining the board of Football Federation Australia in 2007, the AFC executive in 2009 and the Fifa executive committee in 2013.
Even though the Women’s World Cup had been running for 22 years by the time she got to Fifa, Dodd’s early days at the international governing body were marked by glacial cultural changes. “Women’s football could be safely ignored [then],” Dodd says. “Critics could be brushed aside as irrelevant or impotent and there would be very few consequences, if any.
“In the time I was there, I noticed that women’s football began to be seen more as a ‘gold star’ issue in that you’d be recognised for doing something good for it. Now, it’s a ‘thing’.”
As a result of her time at Fifa, Dodd’s philosophy of change has become one of incrementalism. Being just one member on a committee of 27 – and one of the few without voting rights, having been co-opted instead of elected – she learned to exert her influence in slower, softer ways.
“I did my best to keep it on the agenda: for example, by presenting the ‘10 Principles of Women’s Football Development’ to the 2014 Fifa Congress in Rio, where they were approved. I [then] had several presidents approach me to talk excitedly about their new women’s programs. This was a tangible improvement in the level of attention it was getting.
“Regulatory and governance changes take a while to flow from Zurich to the rest of the world. They are just words on a page until somebody does something about them. That process takes work and requires political capital. I’d like to think the biggest impact lies ahead of us.”
It is the slow diplomacy of football governance that Dodd cites as one of the reasons Australia and New Zealand won the rights to host the 2023 Women’s World Cup. While both countries launched feasibility studies in 2017 – before combining for their joint bid in 2019 – Dodd acknowledges that the work within football’s various corridors to build Australia and New Zealand’s reputation began decades ago.
“Most change is incremental,” she says. “These big moments happen because millions of small actions have brought it about. There were many quiet achievers in and around Fifa who built Australia’s credibility through a genuine, long-standing commitment to the women’s game.
“We made attempts at hosting the Women’s World Cup on three other occasions that I’m aware of – 2003, 2011 and 2019 – and we did host the Asian Cup in 2006 and 2015. Hosting the Olympic qualifiers in February was another show of capability. These things matter in building confidence that we can be a competent and reliable host.”
Australian football has become increasingly marked by impatience, but the longer story of how the rights to host the Women’s World Cup were won is a reminder of how slowly the sport can work off the pitch. Dodd’s own contributions arguably began with that 1988 tour – helping put Australia on women’s football’s world stage – and ended with her more recent role on the “As One” bid committee, leaning into the networks she had helped build in the 30 years since.
“The growth of the Matildas on the world stage certainly helped underscore that we’re a serious football country,” she says. “That growth took millions of actions – all the training sessions, lamington drives, the parents’ commitment, the coaches, the canteen helpers, the referees, the players who play a league below the top, holding up the standards and forcing them to improve. The Matildas, and everyone who has built them over 40 years, sit at the top of a pyramid of effort and ambition, where everyone plays their part in lifting them higher.
“There was a small army of people you’ll never hear about – on the end of a phone or text, responding with a knowledgeable view or a point of influence or a contact to share. Everyone who has played those roles over decades of effort in women’s football should know that they helped create that moment, and there will be many more moments before 2023 is over.”
