City of Hobart begin $1.3 million project to support women’s football

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Football Tasmania
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A $1.3 million City of Hobart project to help level the playing field for young women and girls has kicked off at the home of the New Town White Eagles Soccer Club with a major overhaul of the team’s change rooms and sporting pavilion.

The significant upgrade will see the old, separate toilet block demolished and replaced by new public toilets attached to the new sporting pavilion.

The project is expected to take up to five months to complete and has been partly funded through the Tasmanian Government’s Leveling the Playing Field Grants Program, which provided $450,000 for the project.

The City of Hobart is contributing another $850 000 to the project as part of its commitment to levelling the playing field for young girls and women and people with disabilities.

“Participation in women’s sport is surging across Australia, and the number and quality of sporting facilities plays a key role in encouraging and sustaining this growth,” City of Hobart Acting Lord Mayor Helen Burnet said in a statement.

“The New Town White Eagles Soccer Club, which calls Clare Street Oval home, is no exception, but the ability for more girls and young women to get involved with the club is hampered by the current condition of their change rooms and sports facilities.

“The current change rooms, which were built in the 1970s, have no accessible toilets or lockable showers and are poorly lit.

“This project will create a new, beautifully designed sports pavilion with four modern change rooms, two accessible toilets and ten lockable shower cubicles – it will also see two separate change rooms created for umpires with their own showers and toilets.

“The City of Hobart encourages greater participation in sport by everyone who wants to play and the upgrades to the Clare Street Oval change rooms will support this.”

Clare Street Oval is home to the New Town White Eagles Soccer Club, and is used by Sacred Heart School, New Town Cricket Club and the local community.

“Some young sports people, including girls and people with disabilities, may have felt excluded previously because of less than welcoming facilities,” Burnet added via Football Tasmania.

“Everyone deserves safe and secure sporting facilities that help them be the best they can be at their chosen sport.

“The City of Hobart is pleased to partner with the state government to level the playing field for everyone.”

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Victory unites with Roasting Warehouse in culture-led partnership

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Image credit: Melbourne Victory

The Melbourne-based anf family-owned business will join the Victory family, uniting two institutions which represent the city’s culture and identity.

A partnership with local roots

As the newest partner of Melbourne Victory, Roasting Warehouse joins forces with a vital part of the city’s sporting landscape.

The club’s Managing Director, Caroline Carnegie, outlined why the partnership bears so much value to both parties.

“We are excited to collaborate with Roasting Warehouse, a community-oriented destination for high-quality coffee, proud of its foundations in Melbourne,” said Carnegie via official media release.

“Football and coffee sit at the epicentre of Melbourne’s culture. The two go hand-in-hand, consistently at the centre of the conversation that stirs Melburnians, which is no different to the conversation sport and Melbourne Victory stir in the State.”

Indeed, this is a partnership which combines the identity, passions and culture of an entire city, therefore giving it the foundations required for long-term, mutual success.

Representing the best of Melbourne

Both Victory and Roasting Warehouse are hugely successful in their respective industries. They are institutions with community-oriented philosphies, who pride themselves on craft and quality.

“We’re incredibly proud to partner with Melbourne Victory, a club that represents the heart, passion, and ambition of Melbourne,” revealed Roasting Warehouse Head of Brand, Alexander Paraskevopoulos.

“As a Melbourne-founded, family-run business, supporting a team that means so much to the local community feels very natural for us.”

Furthermore, through their high-quality blends, Roasting Warehouse will look to prepare Victory’s players and staff for high performances on the pitch as the seasons nears completion.

But this is about far more than just fueling athletes.

This is a partnership which embodies and unites two of Melbourne’s greatest strengths and cultural markers – a connection forged from the city’s very own DNA.

 

For more information about Roasting Warehouse, click here.

Football NSW supports Female Coaches CPD as Women’s Football Surges

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Football NSW has used the platform of the AFC Women’s Asian Cup to deliver a targeted professional development workshop for female coaches, bringing together scholarship recipients for an evening of structured learning and direct engagement with elite women’s football.

Held at ACPE last month, the session was open to female coaches who received C or B Diploma scholarships through Football NSW in 2025. Coaching accreditation carries a financial cost that disproportionately affects women, who are less likely to have their development subsidised by clubs or associations operating in underfunded community football environments. Scholarship access changes that equation at the point where many women exit the pathway.

Facilitated by Football NSW Coach Development Coordinator Bronwyn Kiceec, the workshop focused on goal scoring trends from the tournament’s group stage, with coaches analysing attacking patterns and exploring how those insights could translate into their own environments. The group then attended the quarter-final between South Korea and Uzbekistan at Stadium Australia.

The structure of the evening mattered as much as its content. Female coaches in community football rarely have access to elite competition environments as a professional resource. The gap between the level at which most women coach and the level at which the game is analysed and discussed tends to reinforce itself. Placing scholarship recipients inside a major tournament, as participants rather than spectators, closes that gap in a way that a classroom session cannot.

Female coaches remain significantly underrepresented across all levels of the game in Australia. The pipeline that will change that depends not only on accreditation access but on the professional networks, peer relationships and exposure to elite environments that male coaches have historically taken for granted.

The workshop forms part of Football NSW’s ongoing commitment to developing female coaches through scholarships and structured learning opportunities.

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