Football NSW announce funding for community ground lighting

On Wednesday this week, Football NSW released a statement declaring that they had received $300,000 that will go towards upgrading lighting fixtures for community clubs across the state.

This is a wonderful move by Football NSW, continuing to give to the community as they know they are their most important stakeholders. Their ‘Let’s Light Up Football’ campaign has now received over half a million dollars over the last year and a half.

The full press release can be found below:

Football NSW is delighted to announce the recipients of the second year of its highly successful ‘Let’s Light Up Football’ Campaign with 17 clubs/council’s being recently selected to receive funding.

Year Two of the Let’s Light Up Football Campaign has seen another $300,000 from the Community Investment Fund spread across NSW to provide much needed lighting upgrades for community football clubs across the state. The key objective of this Campaign is to incentivise a joint funding approach whereby matching contributions from a club and/or association is combined with local council support.

Together with projects supported in 2018, the Let’s Light Up Football campaign has now seen a total of $600,000 invested by football resulting in a further $5.8 million by clubs, associations and local councils. The key outcome is that over the first two years, 34 football fields in NSW will now be lit as a result of this campaign.

Football NSW CEO, Stuart Hodge commented, “Football NSW is thrilled to once again provide much needed funding to football clubs across NSW”.

“Improving field lighting is a fantastic opportunity for councils and clubs to increase the capacity of fields in a time when green space is scarce – none more so than in many of our associations in metropolitan Sydney”.

The recent NSW State-wide Facilities Audit revealed that lighting is a major concern across the state with 32% of fields not having lighting. For a sport predominantly played in the winter months lighting is a crucial element of any football facility allowing more hours for training and playing”.

“Lighting is a simple and effective way to improve a large number of community facilities for football”.

“The Fund was oversubscribed which again clearly demonstrates the need to light football fields across the state. Clubs are bursting at the seams and in some cases, there are multiple senior teams training on one full sized football field simply because there are not enough fields with lighting in their local area” further added Mr Hodge.

Fourteen grounds from metropolitan Sydney will be the beneficiaries of upgraded lighting with the remaining three projects, from as far south as Eurobodalla to as far west as Narromine, being from Regional NSW.

Successful applicants from the second year of the Let’s Light Up Football fund are as follows (alphabetical order):

The Community Investment Fund is a joint initiative of both Football NSW and Football Federation Australia (FFA) and is made possible by the FFA’s annual grant to Football NSW.

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Marie-Louise Eta makes history as new Union Berlin head coach

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Image credit: FC Union Berlin

In an historic appointment, Eta will take over as head coach of Union Berlin until the end of the season.

History in the making

Previously the first female assistant coach in Bundesliga history with Union Berlin, Eta will now take the reigns of the men’s first team on an interim basis.

Currently, the club sit in 11th place in the Bundesliga table, but with only two wins so far in 2026, relegation appears an all-too-real prospect, and one which the club is desperate to avoid.

“Given the points gap in the lower half of the table, our place in the Bundesliga is not yet secure,” said Eta via official media release.

‘I am delighted that the club has entrusted me with this challenging task. One of Union’s strengths has always been, and remains, the ability to pull together in such situations.”

Eta will begin as Union’s new head coach with immediate effect, and will be in the dugout for the club’s matchup against Wolfsburg this weekend.

 

A step into an equal future

Eta’s appointment signals a major step towards a more level playing field in the football landscape.

Furthermore, Eta joins other coaches including Sabrinna Wittmann, Hannah Dingley and Corinne Diacre who, in recent years, have blazed a trail for female coaches to step into the men’s game.

Wittmann currently manages FC Ingolstadt in Germany’s third division, and was the first female head coach in Germany’s top three divisions.

In 2023, Dingley became caretaker manager of Forest Green Rovers, and thus the first woman to lead a men’s professional team in England.

Diacre, now head coach of France’s women’s national team, managed Ligue 2’s Clerment Foot between 2014 and 2017.

 

Final thoughts

The impact therefore, is that Eta’s appointment will show future generations of aspiring female coaches that men’s football is an equally viable and possible pathway as the women’s game.

The time is now to level the playing field.

And while it may be a short-term role, its effect on attitudes towards equality and fair opportunities in the game will hopefully resonate long after the season ends.

How Football Victoria’s Opens Board Nominations will Address the Game’s Rapid Growth Demands

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Image Credit: Shutterstock

Football Victoria has opened nominations for two board director positions ahead of its Annual General Meeting on May 25, with the governing body explicitly seeking candidates with expertise in investment and fundraising, digital innovation, and people and culture to meet the modern challenges facing football administration in Australia’s most populous football state.

Nominations close at 6pm on Monday April 20. All candidates will be assessed by an Independent Nominations Committee against the requirements of FV’s 2024-2028 strategic framework, which is built around five pillars: clubs and competitions, participants, pathways, facilities, and the organisation’s future direction.

The appointments arrive at a moment when football in Victoria, and nationally, is navigating a participation boom that has significantly outpaced the infrastructure, governance and financial frameworks built to support it. The game is growing faster than the systems designed to manage it, and the people who sit at the top of those systems will determine whether that growth becomes sustainable or starts to work against itself.

A Sport at Crossroads

Football is now Australia’s largest club-based sport, and Victoria sits at the centre of that story. Participation numbers have climbed sharply in the years since the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup, and more recently the successful AFC Women’s Asian Cup, with junior registrations in particular placing pressure on community facilities, volunteer workforces and competition structures that were not designed to absorb growth at this pace.

The consequences are visible at ground level. Councils across Victoria, many of which did not anticipate the scale of football’s expansion when planning their sporting infrastructure, are now confronting a facilities gap that is measurable in cancelled training sessions, overloaded grounds and clubs turning away players for want of adequate space. Drainage, lighting, changeroom access and pitch availability, have become pressure points that no amount of elite-level visibility can resolve from above.

The incoming board directors will inherit that problem directly. Football Victoria’s strategic framework names facilities as one of its five core pillars, and the organisation’s ability to make the case to government, councils and private investors for the kind of sustained infrastructure funding the sport requires will depend significantly on the financial and advocacy expertise sitting around its board table.

Football Australia and Football NSW recently called on the NSW Government to establish a $343 million grassroots facilities fund in response to the same structural pressures. Victoria faces an analogous challenge, and the director recruitment process signals that FV is aware its board needs people who can drive investment portfolios and revenue streams, not merely administer existing ones.

The Commercial Dimension

The case for bringing investment expertise onto the board extends beyond facilities. Australian sport sits within a $41.7 billion economy, and football’s share of that landscape is growing in ways that create both opportunity and complexity. Broadcast rights, commercial partnerships, digital platforms, and the expanding role of sports betting in the revenue structures of sporting codes are reshaping how governing bodies at every level think about financial sustainability.

Football Victoria’s competitions, including NPL, state leagues,  and an increasingly significant women’s program, represent a substantial commercial asset that has historically been underleveraged relative to its scale. The appointment of directors with investment and fundraising competencies is a direct acknowledgement that the next phase of the sport’s growth in Victoria will require a more sophisticated financial strategy than the one that got it here.

The digital innovation competency sits alongside that commercial imperative. Football is generating more data, more content and more participant interaction than at any point in its history in Australia, and the governing bodies that build effective digital infrastructure now will be better positioned to manage participation, retain players and engage communities at a scale that was not previously possible.

Governance and Equity

Football Victoria’s nomination process includes a constitutional requirement for 40:40:20 board composition. It translates to 40 percent identifying as women, 40 percent as men, and 20 percent of any gender.

The equity means decisions made at the board-level, about facilities investment, participation pathways, and community engagement have a direct impact on who gets to play, where and under what conditions. A board composition that reflects the diversity of the football community it governs is better placed to identify the structural barriers that data alone does not always surface.

FV CEO, along with the Independent Nominations Committee, will assess candidates against the full range of competencies outlined in the strategic framework, including governance experience, demonstrated involvement in football as a player, coach, referee or administrator, and an understanding of the broader football ecosystem.

The sport is at an inflection point. The foundations have been laid by decades of community building, volunteer labour and grassroots investment. What happens next, whether the participation boom becomes a lasting structural shift or a wave that recedes from insufficient infrastructure to sustain it, will be shaped in no small part by the quality of leadership at the governing body level.

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