A long road to the biggest stage

Helena Wiseman Guest writer

In the very early hours of 25 June 2020, the faces of the most committed football fans were lit by screens. A particularly important FIFA Council vote was being livestreamed. As the clock ticked past 3:47am New Zealand time, the anxious silence in New Zealand Football headquarters was shattered by elated cheers.

The Sydney Opera House lit up in green, gold, black and white. A similar lightshow adorned Auckland’s Sky Tower. Social media feeds filled with the words ‘As One’ - the name of the winning World Cup hosting bid. FIFA had announced that the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup would be held in Australia and New Zealand.

It was a pre-dawn moment of celebration many years in the making. In 2019 both New Zealand and Australia had begun work on bids for the 2023 tournament, one of the world’s largest sporting events and the pinnacle of women’s football. There was tournament-hosting pedigree on both sides of the Tasman Sea. Both nations had held successful FIFA agegroup tournaments - New Zealand doing so most recently as the setting for the 2015 Under 20 Men’s World Cup. On their own, both Australia and New Zealand could have put forward credible cases, but by the close of 2019 the two nations’ football federations had realised that together they made a formidable hosting pairing.

The prospective co-hosts’ intention was to use their geographical and cultural alignment to provide a stage for FIFA’s first-ever 32-team women’s World Cup, an opportunity that could leave a legacy for young girls in both nations. Football Australia and New Zealand Football together saw the bid as a chance to showcase and extend their efforts to make football accessible to all girls and women, and to bring the best players on the planet to their shores.

Helena Wiseman lives and plays football in Auckland. She started writing about her football teams in high school because no one else would. Helena interned at New Zealand Football and worked as the communications officer at the New Zealand Football Foundation. You can read her full article on the FIFA Women's World Cup in The New Zealand Collection 2023. Visit collectables.nzpost.co.nz to find out more.