Tilly mania has well and truly swept the nation and you’ve very likely found yourself caught up in it at some point over the last month. Although they finished at number 4 in the Fifa Women’s World Cup, The Australian Women’s Soccer team impressed with their grit and determination on the field and humility and humour of it. But why are they called the Matildas?
When the team qualified for their first-ever FIFA Women’s World Cup in 1995, it was decided that they needed a nickname and Matildas was the chosen moniker. Their male counterparts have an equally interesting nickname of the Socceroos which came about in 1971.
The origins of the Matildas’ name
Prior to 1995, the team was referred to as “the Female Socceroos” but in a bid to make them sound more appealing to the general public and increase their brand value, SBS and the Australian Women’s Soccer Association ran a viewer competition to find a suitable name for the team.
Five nicknames were in the running including Soccertoos, Blue Flyers, Waratahs, Matildas and Lorikeets with a majority of the people choosing the name Matildas after the song Waltzing Matildas, a popular Australian folk song by AB ‘Banjo’ Paterson which is often regarded as the country’s “unofficial national anthem”. The song talks about a man who travels across the country looking for work with a “matilda” (swag) slung over his back. The name is still used to the day with fans now affectionately shortening it to the Tillies.
Source: FIFA