Australia and NZ catch football fever

A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.

Opinion

The finalists have been decided for the FIFA Women’s World Cup on Sunday and while the dream run of our co-hosts Australia has fallen short of that ultimate stage, the tournament has been a massive success on both sides of the Tasman.

Enthusiasm down under for “the beautiful game” has been at fever pitch, with record crowds turning up for what have been some thrilling matches and great goal-scoring action.

More than 700,000 fans attended the 29 matches in this country while more than a million tickets have been sold for the games in Australia — with their run to the semifinals and the expanded 32-team format helping to set Women’s World Cup attendance records. FIFA said this week the average crowd for games across the 10 venues so far had been 28,900, more than 4000 above the historical average at the eight previous Women’s World Cups.

The Matildas’ 3-1 loss to England in Wednesday’s semifinal was watched by 11.15m Australians — a record for any TV programme in the country.

NZ Football chief executive Andrew Pragnell says the success of the tournament will “supercharge” what is already the biggest and fastest growing organised team sport in New Zealand.

“This tournament has seen a colossal change in the way football, and particularly women’s football, is seen in New Zealand,” he said.

That deserved finalists England and Spain have both never made a world cup final before, but are traditional powers on the men’s side, can also only be good for the game.

England are the European champions, while the fast-improving Spanish side have translated recent dominance at the youth level (they hold both the U17 and U20 FIFA world cups) to their seniors — personified in rising star and one of the players of this tournament, 19-year-old super sub Salma Paralluelo.

Spain’s 2-1 semifinal victory over Sweden on Tuesday was watched by a sell-out crowd of 43,217 at Eden Park — equalling the highest attendance for a men’s or women’s match here.

That record was first broken on the opening day of the tournament when 42,137 saw New Zealand beat Norway in Auckland — the broadcast of which was watched by more than a million New Zealanders, our biggest TV audience for a football match in two decades. It was surpassed when Spain’s last-16 win over Switzerland and Sweden’s quarterfinal victory over Japan both drew capacity crowds of 43,217 to Eden Park.

The record match attendance for the 2023 edition is 75,784 for three games under a restricted capacity at Sydney’s Stadium Australia . . . which is a sell-out again for the final, kicking off at 10pm NZ time on Sunday.