Football Coaches Australia upholds the need for fair pay and suitable employment conditions in coach survey report

Avatar
FCA

Football Coaches Australia (FCA) – Australia’s national Association for supporting qualified coaches at professional, semi-professional and community levels – have today released a report outlining the importance of upholding fair pay and suitable conditions for coaches. The report coincides with the Australian Professional Leagues’ (APL) announcement of an expanded Liberty A-League season, and Football Australia’s (FA) recently published Domestic Match Calendar (DMC), for the period of October 7, 2022 to October 7, 2023.

The report comprises the results of two independent surveys conducted by FCA, during Season 2021-22, in partnership with The University of Queensland. The first – a National Premier Leagues (NPL) and A-Leagues (APL) coach survey – was conducted in October 2021, and the second – a Liberty A-League coach survey – was conducted in March 2022

The report can be read in full HERE.

Throughout FCA’s discussions with Australian football’s professional and semi-professional coaching cohort, it was made clear that many did not feel secure enough in their employment to negotiate contract terms, especially where there is not a Collective Agreement in place, which can lead to the potential exploitation of coaches, particularly in women’s football.

The release of the survey report aligns with FCA’s discussion with FA, and the APL, regarding the adoption of an A-Leagues coaches’ standard contract and a national grievance resolution process.

Consultation between FCA and the APL will be an ongoing process. A joint FCA and APL working group, comprising FCA Executive Committee members Phil Moss, Sarah West, Catherine Cannuli, Brad Crismale and Glenn Warry, and APL senior management Danny Townsend, Greg O’Rourke, Helena Dorczak and Emma Burrows, will undertake these discussions over the coming months.

Football Australia (FA) has previously committed to shifting cultural perceptions by focusing on women in leadership within their membership of ‘Male Champions of Change’. A key focus of the FA plan is ‘How do we define gender pay equity in football and what steps and commitment is required to close the gap?’. As Australian football moves towards the conclusion of the FA Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Plan (2019-2023), FCA believes actions are now required to apply the gender equity framework for women coaches.

The Liberty A-League coaches believe that the expansion of the Liberty A-League makes the discussion around their employment conditions highly relevant. For many Liberty A-League coaches, their ability to sustain their coaching roles within their current portfolio football coaching careers, or in combination with their full-time jobs, is extremely difficult.

FCA has identified that there is an inequity regarding employment conditions, and what coaches are paid, in the A-League Women compared to A-League Men, and an inequity regarding what women coaches are paid. FCA believes the following will provide an excellent framework for all coaches – Men and Women:

  • A-League Standard Contracts/Grievance process.
  • Improved employment conditions and opportunities for coaches within the Liberty A-League.
  • Salary bands for Assistant coaches, Goalkeeping Coaches, Analysts.
  • Working with FA and APL to action the gender equity framework for women coaches within the FA Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Plan (2019-2023).

At this stage FCA have not completed any research into the commercial viability and funding model for the ALW. FCA is keen to work with the APL and Professional Footballers Australia (PFA) on this model.

Danny Townsend, Chief Executive Officer at the APL, stated:

“At the APL we are committed to creating and maintaining the highest standards and conditions for players and coaches in professional football. The FCA Coach Surveys Report has produced important findings that the game needs to address and we welcome the chance to work with FCA and other important stakeholders in the football pyramid to tackle them collectively.

“We support the move to standardise coaching contracts, and we also want to work with our clubs to increase the opportunities being given to women coaches in professional football, as well as safeguarding better conditions for all coaches across the A-Leagues.”

Phil Moss, Football Coaches Australia President, stated:

“The coach surveys that FCA conducts are a critical piece of work designed to give our members a voice on the challenges we face, specifically around working conditions. The results, in context, show we have work to do in terms of improving those conditions. Coaching is a profession – a highly skilled profession – which must have working conditions commensurate with the role.

“The proactive, positive and solution focused approach shown by Danny Townsend, and his team at APL, aligns brilliantly with ours and fills us with confidence that there is light at the end of the tunnel. Together we can work through the issues and arrive at a place that will play a significant role in taking the game forward in Australia.

“Increased opportunities for coaches in the men’s and women’s game is a great start and we are pleased to be working closely with APL and other stakeholders within the game to implement standardized working conditions, including but not limited to standard coaching contracts.”

Sarah West, Vice President Football Coaches Australia, stated:

“The expansion of the Liberty A-League is certainly a positive step in the right direction for Australian Football, however important steps must be taken to ensure it doesn’t thrust those working in the league deeper under the poverty line.

“Coaching is a demanding role with significant pressures, expectation and responsibility, and the wellbeing of coaches depends on the ability to earn a live-able wage which fairly compensates for their responsibilities and real working hours.

“As shown by the FCA Independent surveys of Licenced Football Coaches report, around half of the coaches and 75% of the analysts working in the Liberty A-League last year held a job outside of football and all of them found juggling both roles challenging. That’s not the best situation for Australian football.

“Furthermore, the number of coaches – Head Coaches, Assistant Coaches and Analysts – who are being paid less than the Australian minimum wage rings major alarm bells.

“We can’t expect to produce the best possible football product and be confident that our players are being adequately protected, cared for and their needs catered for if our coaches – the people ultimately held responsible – are stretched so thin just trying to pay the bills and keep their heads above water.

“This situation is also counter-intuitive to growing coaching talent, because many great people walk away before they reach their potential, due to the challenges of managing several jobs, families and maintaining good mental health.

“It’s great that the APL and other stakeholders have agreed to come to the table to address this important issue. If we don’t – there will simply be no enduring legacy left from next year’s Women’s World Cup.”

Previous ArticleNext Article

Football West’s Female Football Week draws record engagement from Metropolitan Perth to Remote Kunurra

Avatar
Image Credit: Football West

Football West has wrapped up its 2026 Female Football Week with activations spanning metropolitan Perth, regional Western Australia and national online platforms, as participation data from the state’s most remote football association underlined the scale of demand for women’s and girls’ football beyond the city.

Kununurra Soccer Association, situated in the East Kimberley more than 3,000 kilometres from Perth, recorded 47 new female registrations aged 7 to 12 across the first two terms of 2026 through Football West’s Junior Girls United program, representing a 30 percent increase in female membership that coaches Hannah Grominsky and Evie Marchetti described as overwhelming.

“The support from the community has been simply awesome,” Grominsky said. “We’re up to nearly 50 registered girls now. The majority of them have never played before or aren’t part of our association, so it’s great to give them a positive football experience in a comfortable environment.”

The program, supported by the Federal Government’s Play Our Way grant, now runs every Wednesday and has extended football activity into the cooler months of the Kimberley calendar, a season when the association would not traditionally operate. The result is a cohort of players new to the game, in a region where access to organised sport has historically been constrained by geography, infrastructure and seasonality.

Recognition across the state

Back in Perth, Female Football Week’s centrepiece event was the Women in Football Celebrate You Breakfast at the Sam Kerr Football Centre, featuring two panel discussions covering officiating pathways, coaching development and advocacy for women in football.

Subiaco AFC NPL Women’s head coach Christine Coppin, who is one of few women coaching at her level in the region, said events like the breakfast were critical to making the pathway visible for others.

“I’d love to see more women coaches putting their hat in the ring, both at junior and senior levels, realising that there’s more to football than just playing,” Coppin said. “They can stay involved in the sport as they get older in different ways.”

A regional Women in Football Breakfast in Albany drew more than 30 attendees, while a Girls Day Out event in the same city attracted more than 50 participants aged 6 to 16 for a come-and-try introduction to the game, extending the week’s reach into the Great Southern and reinforcing Football West’s stated commitment to building women’s football outside metropolitan areas.

Recognising those who make it happen

The week’s awards, nominated by the WA public, recognised five individuals whose contributions to female football across the state were judged most significant over the past year. Cassandra Paxman of Albany Rovers FC was named Coach of the Year, Georgia Whitelaw of Great Southern JSA and Albany JSA took Referee of the Year, Karen Harris of Carramar Shamrock Rovers FC was named Volunteer of the Year, Georgia Aiesi of Mandurah City FC received the Player of the Year award, and Melissa Spillman of Football Futures Foundations was named Community Champion of the Year— a recognition she also received at the national level.

Football West Female Football and Advocacy Manager Sarah Carroll said the week had reinforced both the momentum and the responsibility facing the sport.

“Female Football Week continues to showcase the incredible passion and growing appetite for the women’s game,” Carroll said. “It’s a reminder of how important it is that we keep working together to drive the game forward.”

The contrast between a packed breakfast at the Sam Kerr Football Centre and a Wednesday afternoon program in Kununurra working around wet season schedules captures something essential about where women’s football in Western Australia actually lives. The growth is real, and it is happening in places the cameras do not always reach.

Tasmania’s State Budget Commits $350,000 to Football Facility Planning as $80 million Home of Football Moves Closer to Reality

Avatar
Image Credit: Football Tasmania

The Tasmanian State Government has committed $350,000 in seed funding for the next stage of planning for Football Tasmania‘s proposed Home of Football, moving the state’s most significant football infrastructure project closer to construction and signalling political recognition that demand for rectangular facilities in Tasmania has outgrown what currently exists.

The funding, confirmed in the 2026-27 State Budget handed down last week, sits within an almost $200 million investment in sport and recreation across the budget and forward estimates: a package the government describes as designed to improve access and participation for Tasmanians of all ages. The football allocation is listed alongside a $25 million community sporting infrastructure commitment at Kingborough, $12.5 million for new multipurpose indoor sporting courts at New Town Bay, and $8 million for the Domain Tennis Centre redevelopment.

Football Tasmania CEO Tony Pignata OAM welcomed the commitment as an acknowledgement of the structural gap between participation numbers and available infrastructure, particularly in the state’s south.

“The State Government’s delivery on this commitment shows us that they understand that demand outstrips supply for rectangular facilities in the state,” Pignata said. “If we are to continue to grow and develop future Matildas and Socceroos, we need to invest in the infrastructure our game so desperately needs.”

The proposed $80 million facility would include six full-sized pitches, three synthetic and three turf, alongside four five-a-side pitches, modern changerooms for both men and women, and dedicated training facilities. The design is intended to serve every level of the game simultaneously, from grassroots junior competitions through to national-level tournaments.

From grassroots to A-League ambitions

Football Tasmania has framed the facility’s purpose across a deliberately wide range of uses. At the community end, it would provide a permanent home for junior games and regional tournaments that currently compete for limited rectangular ground availability across the state. At the elite end, it would create the capacity to host national competitions including the Emerging Matildas and Emerging Socceroos Championships, flagship state competitions such as the Statewide Cup finals, and potentially, in time, an A-League team.

That last ambition is the most significant and the most distant. Pignata was measured but direct in raising it, situating a Tasmanian A-League club alongside the NBL’s Jackjumpers, the WNBL’s Jewels and the AFL’s Devils as part of the state’s emerging identity as a home for national sporting competition.

“One day down the track, we anticipate this would become home to our very own A-League team, so that we take our rightful place in the nation’s elite competition,” he said.

The pathway from planning funding to A-League admission is long and would require sustained political and commercial support well beyond the current commitment. But the logic is consistent with how football infrastructure investment has worked elsewhere in Australia. The facility comes first, and the competitive pathway follows. Without a purpose-built ground that meets the standards required for elite competition, the conversation about an A-League team cannot begin in earnest.

The equity dimension

The inclusion of modern women’s and men’s changerooms in the facility’s design carries more weight than it might appear. Community and semi-professional football facilities across Australia have historically been built to male standards, with women’s changerooms added as afterthoughts or not included at all. That inadequacy has been consistently identified as a barrier to female participation and to the hosting of women’s competitions at venues that cannot accommodate them properly.

A purpose-built facility that treats women’s infrastructure as a design requirement rather than a retrofit positions the Home of Football to serve the growth of women’s football in Tasmania in a way that existing facilities cannot. The state recorded 41,395 registered football participants in 2025, a number that has been growing and that the current rectangular facility stock was not built to support at this scale.

Additionally, the government’s Ticket to Play program, which provides eligible children with two vouchers worth up to $100 each for sporting participation, and the Ticket to Wellbeing program offering $100 vouchers to eligible seniors, represent indirect but meaningful support for football participation across the state’s communities.

Pignata also acknowledged outgoing Football Tasmania President Bob Gordon, who he said had dedicated almost a decade to the organisation and had been instrumental in lobbying for this and other facilities across the state.

The $350,000 planning commitment is a beginning. The $80 million facility it is intended to progress remains subject to further government investment and development approval.

Most Popular Topics

Editor Picks

Send this to a friend