How Victoria's new Home of Matildas will set the benchmark for women's sport facilities in Australia

There's not much there now besides a couple of flat, bare acres of dirt dotted with heavy yellow machinery.

But in just over a year's time, this empty plot of land at La Trobe University in Melbourne will be the site of one of the most advanced women's sport facilities in the entire Asia-Pacific region.

Last May, the Victorian government announced the biggest funding grant in the history of Australian football, dedicating just over $100 million — on top of the federal government's $15 million a year earlier — to construct a state-of-the-art Home of Matildas centre in Bundoora, north-east of Melbourne.

The facility will be part of a larger precinct at La Trobe University Sports Park that also includes a state rugby union centre as well as the offices of Football Victoria, but the real focus of the centre will be women's football, with a number of bespoke quirks and characteristics within and around the facility that are aimed at maximising current and future Matildas players.

Currently, just one-fifth of football grounds across Australia have change-rooms for women, with thousands of potential players turned away due to a lack of available facilities.

It is something Football Australia is planning to address as part of their Legacy '23 project, particularly through the creation of a Female Football Facilities Legacy Fund.

This fund will be distributed to clubs and associations around the country to help them construct and upgrade change-rooms, pitches, lighting and drainage in order to capture the expected boom in female participants during and after the 2023 Women's World Cup, hosted in Australia and New Zealand.

They would do well to consult Football Victoria on exactly how to go about it.

Matthew Green was the senior executive