5. THE WIDER THE PAY GAP, THE SLOWER THE REVENUE STREAM

Not only do females receive less professional sporting opportunities than males, they also face larger barriers to compete at their best, and therefore attract more fans to generate more revenue.

If female athletes aren't given the same basic resources as men to compete at the highest level, how can you expect them to show they are worthy of greater revenue in the first place?

One of the features of the new Matildas pay deal simply meant they weren't packed in like sardines with us in economy class on planes to matches.

Now you can be as disparaging towards female sport, but you can’t tell me if Neymar had to sit next to a 130kg bloke and a crying baby on a 15 hour plane trip to Paris he’d be able to excite packed crowds at the Stade de France.

Don't get me wrong, I don't like the snobby airplane stewards and that bloody curtain any more than you do, but if I saw a Matilda next to me in economy I would rightfully feel she was hard done by.

Female athletes have less access to training equipment, medical staff, recovery procedures, dieticians and chefs, grounds and practice pitches, travel arrangements, assistants and worst of all, those futuristic jetlag-preventing sunglasses that the Socceroos have.

Without even remotely the same playing field, how can you argue that they should be able to produce the same quality product?

It's not a chicken or the egg scenario. You have to have equal preparation before you can expect an equal result.

With the resources they have at their disposal, Australia’s female sporting sides are already over-achieving dramatically. If we at least give them the same basic treatment as our men’s team for the same work, it wouldn’t surprise us if we got twice the bang for our buck.

But this doesn’t even begin to explain how much female athletes are overachieving…