What Parents Carry in Tasmania’s State Team Journey

It was hard not to notice the latest Emerging Matildas results.

My first reaction, if I am honest, was anger.

Who do we blame?
What is going wrong?
Why does Tasmania keep finding itself here?

Perhaps that anger came from recognition, because after decades in Tasmanian football, these scorelines still sting precisely because they are so familiar.

But that reaction did not sit well with me for long.

Every goal conceded is carried by a child, a young player who loves this game and has dared to aspire higher.

Every scoreline reflects not just a result, but the effort, hope and vulnerability of young footballers representing their state as bravely as they can.

So I found myself asking a different question:

What does this actually feel like for the families and players inside the experience?

I spoke with the parent of one Tasmanian player, anonymously, to allow honest reflection without placing a family or child under public scrutiny. What follows is one family’s lived experience of a system many of us see only through results.

The scoreboard never tells the whole story

What emerged was not bitterness or blame.

It was pride in the journey, belief in the value of the experience, and realism about the hard truths of elite youth football from a small state.

“It’s the journey, not just the game,” she told me.

She spoke not only of her daughter, but of the wider group of girls, watching them grow through pressure, disappointment and shared ambition.

“These girls share the joy and the heartbreak,” she said. “That matters.”

What struck me most was how often she spoke about the whole squad rather than just her own child, proud not only of one daughter’s effort but of a collective group of girls carrying Tasmania together.

And despite the defeats, she would do it again.

“To watch her giving the best in Australia a crack is worth every cent.”

What families really invest

The financial cost is substantial.

Around $3,200 is the direct cost of sending her daughter to the tournament itself.

Then come the additional costs: months of statewide travel for training, petrol, accommodation, flights, car hire, family travel to attend the championships, kit and all the incidental expenses that gather around representative sport.

For this family, the true cost will exceed $6,000.

But money is only part of it.

There are months of planning, hours on the road and family schedules constantly rearranged around training camps and football commitments.

This is not simply paying for football.

It is committing a family to a dream.

Dreams need realism too

“Don’t crush their dreams,” she said. “But keep it realistic.”

Tasmania is a small football state competing against jurisdictions with vastly larger player pools. New South Wales and Victoria can field multiple teams in each age group. Tasmania cannot.

That tyranny of numbers is real.

Many Tasmanian families, she said, came into this tournament buoyed by last year’s Origins success, believing Tasmania might arrive as one of the stronger sides.

But national championships are another level entirely.

“Origins compared to Nationals is like comparing the Hobart Cup to the NPL,” she said.

It is a sharp comparison, but an accurate one.

For her, realistic success is not national titles.

“Top eight would be massive for our kids.”

That feels like a benchmark worth hearing.

Not every loss tells the same story

One of the most revealing parts of her account was Tasmania’s match against Queensland.

Tasmania did not win.

But in her view, it was the side’s best performance of the tournament.

The girls pushed Queensland hard enough that their opponents kept their first goalkeeper on the field throughout.

That detail stayed with her.

It meant Tasmania had made one of the strongest states take them seriously.

“They didn’t get the win,” she said, “but we were proud of their play.”

Heavy defeats can flatten public perception into a single narrative of failure, when tournaments are really made up of smaller stories: moments of courage, competitiveness and progress that do not always show on ladders.

The emotional cost of heavy defeats

But heavy defeats leave their mark.

Some losses, she admitted, are emotionally brutal.

A scoreline like 13–1 is not forgotten when the whistle blows.

Young players carry those moments back into dressing rooms, hotel rooms and long nights away from home.

At national tournaments, defeat happens in full public view, which makes resilience even harder won.

And it raises a difficult question:

At what point does exposure to elite competition remain constructive learning, and at what point does repeated heavy defeat begin to erode confidence rather than build it?

That is not a criticism of players.

It is a question every development pathway must ask itself.

The questions families still ask

Her strongest concern is preparation time.

She believes selections should happen much earlier, as soon as current programs finish, giving squads longer to train together before facing the strongest teams in Australia.

More time together would mean:
better cohesion,
better tactical understanding,
less rushed preparation,
and more time for families to financially plan.

She also raised something I have heard before in Tasmanian football circles: some parents are unclear how selections are ultimately made.

Whether that perception is accurate or not, it matters that it exists.

If engaged families inside the system do not fully understand selection logic, Football Tasmania has a communication challenge.

And beyond selection lies the bigger unanswered question:

What exactly is the pathway trying to achieve?

Is it:

• identifying one or two elite players for national pathways?

• exposing Tasmanian players to higher-level football?

• building competitive state teams?

Without clear public benchmarks, families are left to interpret the system through results alone.

And results rarely tell the whole truth.

Losing, resilience and the small-state dilemma

I have lived this pathway too.

I went through it with two of my own sons years ago, watching Tasmanian teams walk into national tournaments knowing the odds were often against them.

Ken has always said that in football, losing can become a habit, not because players stop trying, but because repeated defeat shapes expectation.

The harder question for Tasmania is how to break that cycle when the tyranny of numbers is real.

How does a small state build belief when larger states arrive with deeper squads and stronger depth?

There is no easy answer.

But children are often more resilient than adults imagine.

That was true in our family, and it is true in this parent’s story too.

Young players recover faster than we think.
They absorb setbacks differently.
They turn disappointment into determination in ways adults often underestimate.

More than football

Perhaps her most important line was also her simplest.

“This game is more than football. It is life skills and character building.”

That feels true.

These tournaments are not only about ladders and placings.

They are about young people learning:
how to compete,
how to lose,
how to recover,
how to persist.

That is not nothing.

But if Tasmanian families are investing this much money, time, emotion and faith into the pathway, then they deserve clarity in return.

Clearer benchmarks.
Clearer purpose.
Clearer communication about what success is meant to look like.

Because what parents carry in Tasmania’s state team journey is far heavier than a result sheet can ever show.