A quiet revolution is happening in Southland sport. Our girls are becoming very good at football. Very good!

Close to half the playing shirts handed out for the 2021 Under 15 Southern United Academy (8 out of 23 players), the pinnacle of girls and women’s football, based in Dunedin have been captured by Southland girls.

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Southland girls who also represented their province as undefeated champions in all South Island Competitions during the past two years are excelling.

It is an achievement that has not gone unnoticed by NZ Football who have included this group of players in their Player ID programme in preparation for wearing the National Jersey.

Grace Pilsworth unleashes the ball for Southland United against Central Otago. Photo: Football South

The girls are from a mixture of Southland clubs, Hannah Hargest (Gore Wanderers), Tessa Hayes (Queens Park), Abby Johnstone and Bella Jubb (Thistle), with the majority Grace Pilsworth, Maisy McDonald, Lucy Dermody and Isla Smith playing their football with Old Boys’.

These girls have chosen their sport well. The 2023 Women’s World Cup is set to be ground breaking and New Zealand is set to win big time.

For the first time, the tournament will include 32 teams, up from 24 teams at previous tournaments. That means more matches, bigger crowds and more viewers – and more revenue for host cities including Dunedin.

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The tournament is scheduled to take place between 10 July and 20 August 2023.

The tournament is expected to make a massive profit – estimated to be in the tens of millions of dollars from ticket sales, and hundreds of millions of dollars from tourism and other benefits to New Zealand’s economy. 

The biggest impact is expected to be in the growth of women’s football in New Zealand. It is likely that close to 50 per cent of all registered players in New Zealand will soon be women.

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Such an outcome is not without precedent. France enjoyed a stunning net economic gain of €284m (NZ$482 million) from hosting the 2019 Women's World Cup, much of it coming from spending by tourists.

That tournament had a record total of 1.12 billion viewers on television and digitally.

The New Zealand tournament will likely outpace that by a significant margin, and surpass the 3.9 billion cumulative audience who watched the 2011 Rugby World Cup. 

A total of 1.5 million fans are estimated to attend the tournament, which would be another record also beating the 2011 Rugby World cups attendance of 1,477,294.

USA Superstar Alex Morgan extended her deal with Nike after the 2019 World Cup taking her total endorsements to US$4.2 million.

Studies have suggested that female sporting role models such as Alex Morgan who scored five goals in the opening group game for the USA Women’s team in the last Women’s World Cup are important role models, reinforcing girl’s interest in physical activity and being involved in elite sport.  

The New Zealand women's national football team, nicknamed the Football Ferns, are currently ranked 22nd in the world, with the Matilda’s, Australia’s national team, seventh.