Fire up the barbie and start herding those sheep our Aussie and Kiwi brethren, because one of the biggest sporting events on earth may be flying Down Under in 2023.

The Women's World Cup is one of the fastest growing shows on earth, drawing in a tidy 1.12 billion viewers in its last French iteration. This means, if we're successful, that the 2023 Women's World Cup would likely be the second biggest sporting event in Australia's history.

We're talking 32 of the world's best football teams and every legend of the world game descended upon our sunny shores, with the entire region basking in the round-ball shaped spotlight.

It doesn't get any bigger than this. This is our shot. So if you're a boffin at FIFA, listen up. This is why we're gonna host the World Cup.

1. IT'S NEVER BEEN HELD IN THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE BEFORE!

First things first, let's air some dirty laundry here. There have now been 10 Women's World Cups held, casting all the way back to 1991, and half of the entire planet has never hosted.

What's wrong with the southern hemisphere? Why have the USA and China hosted twice and yet us southerners, home to some of the most passionate football nations in the world (and us) always missed out?

There is a severe need to right some historical wrongs here before FIFA opens itself up to some accusations of bias and corruption - two insults we would never dream launch upon such a pristine and godly organisation.

The fact remains that a southern hemisphere team has never won the WWC because they haven't been given a proper leg up by FIFA's eurosnobs.

The women's game has reached a nexus where its popularity is set to explode in popularity and financial clout across Europe over the next few years.

However, sustainable growth can only be formed by ensuring that women's football expands into broader markets. People are going to get pretty darn bored of the USA vs a Euro giant pretty darn soon.

So that's decided then, the World Cups coming down south (sorry North and South Korea and Japan). But that still leaves four other southern bidders in the pot. Time to stir things up a little...

2. BRAZIL IS OVERRATED

Okay, we won't actually start slinging excrement at our opposing southern bidders, we're far too civilised for that in the land of bloomin' onions. But let's take a look at who the competition is:

  • Brazil
  • Argentina
  • Colombia
  • South Africa

We will make one subtle point: of these four bidders for the WWC, only Colombia are yet to host the men's World Cup.

So not only do FIFA have the chance (read: obligation) to take the WWC to a hemisphere it's never been to, it also has the opportunity to take it somewhere that's never experienced the incredible thrill of hosting a World Cup before.

Not that we're any novices at the whole hosting biz, we've had our fair share of shindigs before...but we'll get to that later.

What's more important are the facts here. South Africa and Brazil have hosted the men's version in the past decade, which makes them incredibly uninspiring selections and reduces the amount of fans that will be willing to travel, given a significant proportion would have already visited in 2010 and 2014.

Meanwhile, Argentina held the event in 1978 and together with the Colombians, will host Copa America in 2020. All this means a whole lot of football going down for our opposing bidders while Asia and Oceania is left firmly in the cold.

Not to mention, this would be the first ever jointly held WWC. The history writes itself.

But there is one more factor to consider.

Australia are ranked eighth in the world, having just spanked our next best opponent Brazil (11th) at the 2019 World Cup, not to mention shellacking them 6-0 not long ago.

On the other hand, Colombia (25th), despite having 10 times the population, are even behind New Zealand (23rd). Don't even get us started about Argentina, who we trounced at the Cup of Nations, back in 35th position.

One of the world's best football nations can't even crack the top 32 in the women's game and you're considering giving them hosting rights over the eighth best team in the world?

Don't make us laugh in our onions.

3. WE THROW AN EXCELLENT BASH


Alright, now that we've made it very clear why our opponents' plethora of sporting events make them poor choices, let's talk about why our history of hosting incredible sporting events makes us a no-brainer.

Remember the Sydney Olympics? Of course you do. They were the best olympics of all time (bugger off London). They're not our words, either. No less than IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch, said:

"I am proud and happy to proclaim that you have presented to the world the best Olympic Games ever."

They specifically changed the way the IOC describe Olympic games after Sydney because they meant it, the Sydney Olympics really was the best sporting event ever held.

Nearly 50,000 volunteers, fireworks off Sydney Harbour Bridge, Fatso the Fat-Arsed Wombat as a mascot. We can even exhume Roy and HG for the tournament.

The crazy thing is that we managed to get the entire world excited about a sporting event with competitions like Show Jumping, Trampolining and Greco-Roman Wrestling. Held purely in Sydney.

Sydney is incredibly beautiful, don't get us wrong, but it's also a dour place full of blanched executives and show jumping shouldn't even be a sport.

If we managed to make the Sydney Olympics the best sporting event on earth, imagine what we could do with a purely football tournament held across the entire country, including the sporting and culture capital Melbourne, where this writer may or may not be from.

4. THE TELEVISION AUDIENCE WOULD GO BANANAS


The number one argument made against Australia by twits like Sepp Blatter is that a World Cup couldn't work here because of the time difference.

The argument goes that while us Aussies and Kiwis will all happily wake up in droves to watch World Cups, Premier League, Champions League and NWSL bleary-eyed each weekend, Europeans are a sensitive lot that desparately require their eight-hours of beauty sleep.

Well, how about the 3.7 billion unique viewers that tuned into the Sydney Olympics on TV huh, Sepp? That's a record by the way.

Just like the 15 million tourists that make the 20-hour plane trip to Australia and New Zealand each year, it turns out that if you have a product this good, people can't resist. And our product is really good, Sepp.

Hell, even if we have a rubbish product, like Neighbours, foreign audiences still lap it up.

What these boardroom executives forget is that ever since the days of Crocodile Dundee and Skippy the Kangaroo, the wider world has had a unique fascination with exotic Australia.

Turns out that anything we do, whether it's world-class sporting events or rampant climate change denial, the rest of the world can't help but pay attention.

And we're sure they'd be equally interested in New Zealand if they knew it existed, which the World Cup is sure to shine some light on.

So FIFA, here's a lesson for you: France may have been a ripping success, but just like a French Kiss, everything is better Down Under.

5. TOGETHER WE'RE THE GREATEST COUNTRY ON EARTH...


What other bidder on this list can offer one of the world's most mountainous countries and one of its flattest in one package?

What about snowboarding, skiing, bungee jumping and extreme sports on some of the world's most picturesque mountains?

Not your thing? Well you're just a hop across the pond from some of Earth's most ancient tropical rainforests and incredible diversity of wildlife. We're a region where the most inane flightless birds go hand-in-hand with the world's most dangerous predators.

Still not enticed? Well you're just a skip across the dividing range from the globe's most blistering deserts and awe-inspiring rock formations, caves and canyons.

And if you're a city-slicker, well, so are we. Hell, we even put skyscrapers on the world's greatest beaches.

We have the most urbanised population on earth because even the likes of Brisbane have a level of beauty that most other people on the planet aren't lucky enough to comprehend.

Wellington, Melbourne and Sydney have all been voted the most liveable cities in the world. Even Adelaide is in the top 10 and if you don't know how weird that sounds then you've clearly never been to Melbourne, Sydney or Wellington.

Our only actual boring city, Canberra, even had the common decency to rule itself out of the WWC hosting equation.

All this means that an Australian / New Zealand World Cup bid is comparable to a World Cup bid from the entiriety of Europe combined.

Just without all that pesky culture.

6. TOGETHER, WE'RE UNTAPPED SPORTING GODS

I think we made our point with the whole 6-0 against Brazil thing that the old 'Australia and New Zealand aren't football nations' argument isn't going to fly around here.

Maybe, FIFA, you're actually a little bit scared of letting us host the World Cup.

Perhaps you've seen the way that between our two small countries, we dominate practically every other female and male team sport we enter across the world.

Whether it's the gritted-teeth world of rugby or the gentle past-time of lawn bowls, you can be sure if there's a winner's podium there'll be a Kiwi or an Aussie on top. Which must frighten the begeezus out of Europe and the USA.

Our two nations are well aware that football is the final frontier, but let's make one thing clear. This joint bid isn't about making the World Cup the new Trans-Tasman trophy. We promise, if you let us host the World Cup, we won't start tampering with the ball.

We're just bored of dominating all our usual sports. Beating up England and each other just isn't that exciting anymore. But Europe you know exactly what that feels like. You've been facing off almost entirely against each other for decades now.

Let's start breaking down sporting walls and letting a little more actual competition in.

7. WE'RE A WHOLE NEW MARKET, DUMMY


We all saw earlier this year that when it comes to the prowess of the players on the pitch, the WWC is every-bit as skilled and entertaining as its male counterpart. But there are still a few key factors that separate the men's and women's competitions.

There is the rich history of the men's World Cup. But we've made it very clear that in order to start forming a serious WWC history, not only do we have to stage it in the southern hemisphere, we also need to take a plunge on nations that have never hosted the men's event.

There is also the TV audiences and relative marketing spend. Again, we've spoken about how an OZ / NZ WWC would draw incredible television audiences across the globe and deliver a new era of advertising windfall for pies and beer commercials.

But the one big thing that still separate the male and female tournaments and by extension creates the financial divide, is the broad market. Well, we think we could set the precedence that the Women's World Cup so badly needs.

We could attract a new generation of travelling fans with our abundance of tourism-friendly destinations. We could set new records for fans in the stands with all our-encompassing love of sport.

What's more, we could build a whole new generation of female-football obsessed fans in a currently largely untouched market.

Together we're the world's 12th largest economy, with 30 million potential football fans boasting one of the highest per-capita incomes, life expectancies and standards of living.

Give us a World Cup, not so we can show the rest of the world how to play football, but so we can show the rest of the world how to live.

8. WE LEAD THE WORLD IN WOMEN'S SPORT FOR A REASON


In all seriousness, we're far from perfect hosts.

We acknowledge that we live out in the sticks, we tend to drink a little too much, we may wear gumboots at the table and okay, we don't like the main dish that's on offer as much as some of our South American counterparts.

But the Women's World Cup isn't just about the event itself, is it?

At its heart, the WWC is a symbol of gender equality. That women can do anything men can and that playing like a girl is actually a bloody fun thing to watch.

In that sense, this event can't just be treated like a game. This is sport at its most serious.

And while we may not take ourselves seriously as countries, we do take ourselves very seriously about sport. We spend a lot of time self-deprecating, but there are some things we're very proud of.

We are global leaders in female sporting participation, athlete pay and event attendance. Over 3.3 million Aussie women attend sporting events each year. We boast - both contemporarily and historically - most of the best female tennis, cricket, netball, swimming, athletics, surfing, rugby and racing competitors of all time. Three of the top six attended female sporting leagues worldwide are in Australia.

In fact, we have some of the most inspiring females in the world across all walks of life. Have we mentioned Jacinda Ardern?

In so many ways, we are setting the benchmark for all others to follow.

Like everyone, we still have so much more to do. But this entire article is about the fact that we know we're not perfect. Unlike many others, we are doing something real about it.

So FIFA, the ball is in your court. Help us change the world, one kick at a time.