Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Treasury) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to congratulate the organisers of the Total Girl Soccer Tournament held over the weekend in my electorate. Total Girl Soccer is the biggest all-girl soccer tournament in Australia. The film Bend it like Beckham may have brought girls’ soccer into the public conscience but Total Girl has given a whole generation of girls in Australia the opportunity to give soccer a go. It is the brainchild of a dedicated group of Ballarat parents who became frustrated that, whenever they attended soccer tournaments, the girls always seemed to be an afterthought—drawn at grounds at the very back of venues. The tournament commenced in Ballarat in 2005, with 370 players, and it has rapidly grown. There were 780 young women players in 2006, and this year 1,050 young women under the age of 16 participated, with some 3,000 spectators. These young women came from right across the country, with clubs from country Victoria, Melbourne, New South Wales and Queensland. The team from Queensland—Waterford—coming the furthest, had to hold sausage sizzles for some 12 months in order to raise the money to attend. Next year, clubs from New Zealand and Kuala Lumpur will be participating.

The Total Girl Soccer Tournament has distinctive pink soccer balls, pink safety padding around the goalposts and pink T-shirts, which I would like to show the House—they have ‘No boys allowed’ on the T-shirt—and now they have special pink strips. These things have made playing soccer a really cool thing for girls in Ballarat to do. Since the Total Girl Soccer Tournament started in 2005, the number of registered girls playing soccer locally has risen from 45 to 300, and the number is expected to double in the next two years. The girls play each Saturday, and the Deputy Leader of the Opposition and I have had the opportunity to see the great skills these girls have developed, having visited them at a training session last year.

At a time when we are desperately looking for ways to get young people to increase their participation in sport, Total Girl Soccer has managed to provide a great outlet for girls playing sport. They have provided a supportive, safe environment for them to learn the skills of soccer but also to experience the fun of participating in a team and a tournament where they get to test their skills against girls from right across the country. Because Total Girl Soccer is a club tournament, it provides the average club player with the experience of a large tournament rather than what normally happens, which is that representative teams of the best players are sent.

I want to congratulate the tournament coordinator, Bryan McCormick, and all the volunteers who worked so hard to put the tournament on, from referees, to coaches, to people staffing the food stalls and providing and organising the accommodation and all the myriad tasks that make up such a huge event. It was no mean feat for a group of volunteers to put on an event with 1,000 players and some 3,000 spectators. The tournament, the highlight of Total Girl, is what we the public see, but the real work lies in all that is done in providing to clubs the information to participate, setting up the tournament, finding the volunteers, assisting the clubs to come and, most importantly, encouraging and supporting the girls in the game of soccer. Total Girl has also added greatly to the local economy in Ballarat, with every hotel and motel room booked out over the weekend, and I am sure all of our food outlets experienced the benefits as well.

As the tournament has grown so rapidly, there is a need for financial assistance to administer the event. I will certainly do all I can to try and assist Total Girl to secure funding from state and federal government sources. I encourage any sponsors who may be listening to this debate to have a good look at Total Girl if you are interested in finding a grassroots sporting event to support.

Again I want to congratulate Total Girl Soccer for bringing soccer to a whole new generation of girls. In Bryan McCormick’s words: ‘What has become obvious is that, given the opportunity, there are very large numbers of girls who wish to play soccer. The aim of Total Girl is to make sure that they are given that opportunity.’ Total Girl Soccer in Ballarat has certainly done that and much more.