Player drain emerges as key issue amid concern over W-League's structure

The return of American Lynn Williams to Western Sydney was supposed to rekindle the club’s W-League campaign and spark a triumphant run into the playoffs. Preparations could continue in earnest ahead of last weekend’s derby, in which Wanderers hoped to continue in the vein of their 5-0 shellacking of Sydney FC earlier in the season, and harness the form of their star striker. But what the Wanderers got was the late news that Williams would not be rejoining the side, as well as a 3-0 defeat.

“I would like to thank the Wanderers for taking a chance on me and seeing me as a vital part of the team,” Williams said. “I would also like to thank them for understanding the unique circumstances that I am in and wishing me all the best going forward in my pursuit of being on the Olympic team.”

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Williams arrived in Parramatta with the Olympics in mind, having missed out on a World Cup berth last year. And her W-League performances, on the back of her 2019 NWSL form, have catapulted her into contention for a place in the USWNT squad for the Tokyo Games. No club would deny a player this opportunity.

Yet, for all of the hype and hope for history-making generated by the acquisitions of Williams, Kristen Hamilton and Denise O’Sullivan, it’s difficult to escape the feeling that, should Wanderers finish in the playoffs for the first time in their history, the 2019-20 W-League season might end tinged with some regret for its full potential not quite being realised.

The Williams development speaks to something deeper than Wanderers’ now kneecapped season, however. Increasingly pressing is the wider issue of how the W-League can – and should – position itself within the rapidly shifting ecosystem of women’s club football, and the extent to which it allows itself to be subject to this ecosystem’s demands.

At the beginning of the season, Football Federation Australia’s head of leagues Greg O’Rourke told Guardian Australia the ambition for the W-League was for it to be “one of the top five leagues in the world”, and that it wasn’t intended to be “the plug league” in an intended formal partnership with the NWSL. Attracting top tier players and keeping them in the W-League is vital to allaying this perception.

The 19 January to 15 February transfer window, several months after those comments, saw six players capped at international level (Hayley Raso, Caitlin Foord, Chloe Logarzo, Mary Fowler and now Williams) depart Australia (not including guest players), while just one – Lindsay Agnew, Sydney FC’s Canadian international – came in.

Given the transfer window closes a month before of the W-League’s semi-finals, top-tier player traffic is only going to be one way. This somewhat undermines the W-League, if players of the calibre of Williams et al can leave and clubs can’t replace them so close to the competition’s apex. It’s difficult to escape the reality that the league doesn’t help itself here by being a nine-team competition with 14 regular season rounds (or 12 games per team), without a full home-and-away schedule.

Results such as Adelaide’s dismantling of Wanderers just before the international break and Perth Glory’s demolition job on Brisbane Roar last weekend demonstrate the trend for the W-League’s weaker sides to come into their own in the competition’s latter stages, when already out of finals contention. Purely on the basis of attracting players through game time on offer, the W-League further limits itself. Competition length will continue to become a more vital part of the conversation.

These issues emerge in stark contrast to the plans of the various leagues challenging the W-League. The 2020 edition of the NWSL is slated to kick off on the weekend of 18 and 19 April, with its playoffs to be played on 7 and 8 November, and the title to be decided the week after (exactly a year after this season’s W-League kicked off). There is no confirmation yet as to what the 2020-21 W-League season will look like – but presumably it will be in a form accommodating the NWSL calendar. In contrast we already know that the first season of Japan’s revamped professional women’s league is planned to run from September 2021 to May 2022.

The 2019-20 W-League season is a slightly unusual one in that it’s sandwiched between the two pinnacle events in women’s football – the World Cup and the Olympic Games. It was perhaps inevitable that it would be caught up in the storm of domestic women’s football’s rapid development. It is certainly frustrating that it can only react.

The next season will come at the beginning of a three-year spell in which focus is building towards the 2023 World Cup – possibly on home soil. The onus is on W-League decision makers, therefore, to react by being proactive. And they need to get a move on – before more of the league’s players do.