"Change has to be driven from the bottom up": Bonita Mersiades speaks to FourFourTwo about corruption, the Women's World Cup and the growth of the game

Bonita Mersiades has been at the heart of Australian football since the 1990s. A multi-faceted, multi-talented author, publisher, corporate affairs practitioner and administrator she is also the driving force behind Sydney's Football Writers Festival ahead of this summer's Women's World Cup.

She is now back at the forefront of the sport she loves having been ostracised for exposing the corruption around the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bids, which she discovered while working for Australia's attempt to host the men's finals.

It was Mersiades who first raised concerns about Australia's bid consultants and their relationships with corrupt FIFA officials such as then vice-president Jack Warner, who has subsequently been banned from football for life for receiving $5 million to vote for Russia 2018.

Out of a job and out of favour, the resourceful Mersiades started to focus on writing and a change of emphasis in her career. It led to the formation of Fair Play Publishing and the publication of a vast number of award-winning football books and a festival.

She made time in her busy schedule ahead of the 2023 World Cup finals to speak to FourFourTwo about her career, what we can expect as fans from a football tournament down under and what it is like to take on FIFA and live to tell the story...

What is it like being a whistleblower?

Right now, it's not so bad. I have a good relationship with [Football Australia] chairman Chris Nikou and CEO James Johnson. But it has been very tough as I am sure any whistleblower will tell you. When it all first happens you're an outcast. People don't want to talk to you. Only when people start to realise 'hang on, she was telling the truth the entire time' and you are vindicated does it change. Gradually, people come back and be friendly. It's been very tough. People ask, 'would you be a whistleblower again?' And the short answer to that is 'yes.' But you pay a huge price.

Can you still enjoy being a football fan having seen the corruption up close?

You get to the point where you divorce it. You can still be a football fan and enjoy the game but still be disgusted at some of the corruption that goes on and the way the game was run. I got to that point where you don't ever lose sight of why you love the game in the first place. As an Australian and a very keen supporter of our national teams, you certainly don't stop loving the Socceroos or the Matildas.

Do you think awareness of FIFA scandals can put people off playing and covering football?

I fundamentally don't think it will. One of my hopes is that young people become aware of these issues, become engaged in them and work towards wanting a better type of FIFA and football. World football administration pretty much globally needs needs change from the bottom up and from the top down. I don't think it'll stop people playing. As a player, it's just fun. You're not going to stop that. I am encouraged as part of the Football Writers Festival that we've received articles from people in 16 different countries and the majority of those articles are very issues based. I quote my great, late friend Andrew Jennings, who said: 'if you want to be a journalist, and you want to be an investigative journalist, sport is a great place to start.' There's just so much in it, whether it be football, the Olympics or whatever, and there's some great investigative journalists around you can help. It is very rich in pickings, that's for sure.

What challenges did you face as the first woman to manage the men's Australian team?

I was team manager of the Socceroos which was a very unusual role for a woman then and still is now. To clarify, I don't mean management in terms of coaching, but in terms of operational management. The challenges started with the fact Australian football was hardly on the map in the late 90's. That probably hasn't changed an awful lot, but it has improved. The biggest challenge was the lack of funding and trying to convince locals to support the local game. We still haven't captured the hearts and minds of people. The A League is not well supported. People will support their national teams, but they don't necessarily support a domestic league competition. The team manager, Frank Farina, didn't get any certainty about budgets or even how many games we would play in a year.

And life as a woman in a man's world?

The one thing that everyone expected that I would sort of encounter would come across would be sort of sexism amongst a whole lot of young male players. And I have to say that was never the case. I treated them a little bit like I would treat my sons and they probably treated me like they would treat their mums. The relationship with the players was always positive, respectful. To this day there's not one of those players I couldn't ring up and have a chat.”

How has the women's game developed in Australia during that time?

The women's game back then was barely even thought of. They were not part of the Football Association then and were so desperate for media coverage that the person who ran women's soccer at the time convinced all the players that they should pose nude for a calendar, inspired by the Calendar Girls movie. There was a competition and we were producing high-quality players even at that time, but you'd be lucky to have 50 people at games. There was no national women's league at all. We started The A League Women in 2008 when I was head of corporate and Public Affairs with the Football Association. We started it as the W League and it's now called A League Women. The performances of the Matildas and high-profile players like Sam Kerr, Steph Catley, Caitlin Foord, etc have brought more attention too.

How important is the Women's World Cup for the growth of the game in Australia and New Zealand?

I probably have a slightly different view about World Cups then other people. First of all, we will run a very good World Cup. We've got track records at running major international sporting events. People will enjoy it - they'll love it! That includes both visitors internationally as well people domestically. We will support our national team to the hilt. If they don't make the final, it won't be because of lack of support off the field.

What lasting impact will it have on the game there?

Like most World Cups, it'll have an impact on young people wanting to play and aspiring to be like some of those players in the short term. But the medium to longer term, I'm not sure that anyone's really measured that. My concern is, hat we focus too much on what's going to be six fantastic weeks, and not enough about what comes after. The game here has a chronic financial challenge. Will the Women's World Cup solve that and allow us to put more money into elite player pathways player development, getting more young kids into the game? Everyone hopes that's the case.

How does Australia hosting the finals sit with your relationship with FIFA?

As an Australian, I'm very happy to have it here and Australia and New Zealand will co-host a great event. Having said that, I don't think the decision-making around it was very transparent. It was taken in the middle of the first year of COVID. And it was obvious to Blind Freddie that Australia and New Zealand were going to win. We were the ones who had closed our borders and we had hardly any COVID cases at the time. As well as the fact as I write in my book, Whatever It Takes, FIFA has had this long-standing concern about what the development of Oceania so it was only sensible for Australia and New Zealand to join as co-hosts.

How did you react to FIFA's proposal to have Visit Saudi as a major sponsor for the finals?

I mean, you couldn't make this up! I still don't know whether it's one of those rumours that FIFA floated on the basis that they wanted to gauge the reaction, which just shows you how stupid they are! It would be an insult on almost every level that Visit Saudi would be a major sponsor of a World Cup and a women's one too. This Women's World Cup is being held in the two countries who were the first to to give women the vote in the at the beginning of the 20th century. Both Australia and New Zealand have very strong commitments in terms of gender equality, LGBTQI rights, you name it, and then Saudi Arabia!? It would be the ultimate sports washing for them to have their advertising appear across screen as people are watching the World Cup here.

Do sports fans forget about human rights during major sporting events? 

It does to an extent. I've seen it with people that I know, who went to Qatar 2022. Do they know what the issues are? They know me, they've read my book, they know what went on with the 2018-2022 bids. But they switch all that off and say 'Australia won four games so therefore, this is fantastic.' From our perspective, Australia's performance getting through to the second stage that's that's all anybody focused on in the end. This is where the media have a derelict in Australia.

What can visitors to the World Cup expect to experience at the Football Writers Festival in Sydney? 

It started off as a way of bringing a few authors together to talk about their books and allow people to ask questions about them. Like-minded people get to discuss issues that you're all passionate about and concerned with. It's been highly successful. We also bring in journalists along with the authors administrators, national team coaches and we have had players too. At this year's festival one of our international guests will be Thomas Hitzlsperger, who played with Aston Villa and for Germany. We also have a number of Socceroos and former Matildas attending. We tagline it as 'for readers, writers, thinkers and dreamers.' One of my hopes is that the international people coming will also find it interesting to learn about First Nations Football and what football can do to help advance reconciliation in Australia. It's an important issue. It's been curated by an emeritus professor, John Maynard, who is an Aboriginal man and an Aboriginal scholar.

How important is it for more women to get involved in football?

That is a really good question. The obvious answer to that it's very important. Some people think that it is enough to have senior women in senior positions, but change has to be driven from the bottom up. Grassroots clubs can make simple changes that can help encourage more women to get involved. In my role for Women IN Football we did a survey a couple of years ago that discovered something like 67% of women involved as volunteers at a grassroots club had some sort of experience of sexism. That would range from being asked things like 'what would you know about football? How would you understand the offside rule?' It ranged from that to much more darker incidences.