Four Nations Tournaments
Football Australia hosts National Football Teams from around the world either as international friendlies or competitive qualification matches.
Whether it’s a single international match, or a four-team tournament with six fixtures over a nine-day period, cross-functional teams come together to:
· Negotiate and fulfill agreements with host cities, commercial partners, broadcasters, suppliers
· Support high performance standards and environments through management of travel, accommodation, meals and training sites
· Engage communities, media, and other stakeholders to foster connection with matches and support tournament legacy
· Deliver safe and enjoyable matchday experiences for attendees, players and officials
The delivery environment is highly cross-cultural, public facing, time sensitive and involves frequent engagement with a range of different stakeholders, who often have objectives that are separate to yours.
In 2022, I led teams in the planning and delivery as Tournament Director, project managing two competitions with very different objectives – take a look!
AFC U-17 Asian Cup Qualifiers
The AFC U-17 Asian Cup Qualifiers - Group G was a continental youth qualification tournament involving the U-17 Men’s National Teams from Australia, China PR, Northern Mariana Islands and Cambodia played in October 2022 over nine days with three match days.
The tournament was hosted in Shepparton, Victoria, a regional town with a population of 70,000. This marked the first youth qualification tournament hosted in Australia since 2009, and the first time competitive Asian qualification fixtures were hosted in an Australian regional community.
Almost 200 participants traveled from 14 different countries to compete, administer or officiate, and across the three match days, there was a total of 2,768 spectators through the turnstiles - with 1,117 attending the Australia v China fixture on the final day.
The tournament saw extensive engagement with the local community, working with schools, civic organisations and football clubs to run programs that involved more than 1,000 people. This also included visits and activations at schools, the annual agricultural show, and providing opportunities at the match venue for community groups to run corporate functions and fundraisers.
The local paper - the Shepparton News - provided daily coverage of the tournament, supported by articles in international media outlets one of Australia’s national mastheads.
Broadcast rights deals were negotiated to see the matches aired in China and Cambodia, and ticketing information was localised for the diaspora communities of the teams participating in the competition as part of a cross-cultural marketing strategy.
Pacific Women’s Four Nations Tournament
The Pacific Women’s Four Nations Tournament was an international friendly competition involving the Australian U-20 Women’s National Football Team and the senior women’s national football teams from Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Fiji, played in November 2022 over nine days.
Delivered in partnership with Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade under the PacificAus Sports Program, the tournament was played in Canberra, ACT, with teams based at the Australian Institute of Sport. These were the first women’s international fixtures played outside their local region of Oceania for several of the participating teams.
On and around the training ground, supporting high performance environments and developing the technical level of the visiting teams was a priority, with Australian coaches and administrators working closely with the Pacific teams on capacity building.
Off-field, time was spent building stronger ties between the participating teams, with visits to various High Commissions and Embassies, the National Zoo, tourist landmarks like Canberra’s Mt. Ainslie and Sydney’s Botanic Gardens, and culminated with a Tournament Dinner hosted in the Australian Parliament House’s Great Hall with Australian Government representatives.
Football Australia worked with Australian and Pacific media to maximise coverage of the tournament, with content appearing on television, in print and for consumption digitally. This effort was supported by managing a Media Unit, with visiting journalists from each of the participating countries.
