Over the weekend, Melbourne Victory star Beattie Goad announced her retirement from football at just 27, which came as players say the part-time nature of the competition is unsustainable long-term.

Goad, a three-cap Matilda who has won championships with both Victory and City, is the latest stalwart A-League Women’s player under 30 this year to call time to focus on a career outside of football.

Her teammate, seven-time Matilda Emma Checker announced in March, to the surprise of many fans, she would retire at the conclusion of the 2023/24 season at just 28, ending her 13-year career in professional football to accept a job opportunity away from the game.

Following her, former Matildas great and Victory star Elise Kellond-Knight made the decision to step away from football in October after 16 years in the game, citing financial reasons.

Kellond-Knight told the ABC the league being semi-professional put players in an awkward position, where they had to dedicate their time and body to the game but were not financially rewarded in a sustainable way in return.

“At amateur level, you can get away with still working,” Kellond-Knight said.

“You kind of split your time between being a footballer and being a human and developing a career and all of this.

“Whereas when it moves into that semi-pro environment, you suddenly have to give the time and the commitment, so you can’t keep down your normal job. It becomes really, really difficult for the players that [are in] a bit of a pinch.”

She said this was in part why the league needed to make the jump to full-time, to allow the players to become the best athletes they could be.

“Because the benefits are massive. If you suddenly give players resources and the time that they need to be athletes, you get benefits in terms of the product and how the players play, their skill level, their athleticism,” Kellond-Knight said.

An overwhelming majority (96 per cent) of ALW players want the competition to evolve to a fully professional league by 2026, according to the latest report by Professional Football Australia (PFA).

The report detailed how the part-time nature of the competition limited the quality of the competition, while Checker said the juggling of full-time jobs alongside a professional career was unsustainable, particularly for players in the back-end of their careers or with increased family commitments.

“Last year, I got married … I went from pre-season, being married to basically just going on to full-time work, back to season, and I feel still like I haven’t really fully enjoyed it,” Checker told the PFA in April.

In 2023, the minimum remuneration for ALW players increased to $25,000 by virtue of the extended season, which included a full home-and-away schedule.

In comparison, the minimum wage for AFL Women’s players in 2024 was $55,077, which will increase to $67,337 in 2025 as part of the new Collective Bargaining Agreement. That figure will then increase to $70,030 in 2026 and then $72,373 by 2027.

Current ALW players are contracted for 35 weeks for a 22-round regular season, with four extra weeks for finals. Kellond-Knight said one of the main growth areas for the league was a 12-month contract, along with a livable minimum wage.

According to the PFA most players “earned at or close to the minimum” last season, with three in five players having worked second jobs.

Emerging Matildas centre-back and Newcastle Jets defender Tash Prior is one of these, who after debuting and scoring for the national squad in December against Brazil and Chinese Taipei respectively, had to race back to her job as a full-time consultant for Deloitte.

Alongside Prior, Melbourne City’s Leah Davidson was part of the slew of new Matildas that got the call up, along with her A-League teammates Karly Roestbakken and Bryleeh Henry, who got their first selections since 2021.

Along with keeping talent around, increased professionalism of the league would help develop the emerging talent within it, she said, who received her call up after seven years in the A-Leagues.

Davidson, 23, said the league had taken massive strides in the past five years, going from 12 games and “next to nothing” pay to competing with top leagues worldwide in terms of season length.

“We know it needs to be better, but if we look at it over a timeline, it has increased. It has become more professional,” Davidson said.

“[But] obviously if it’s more professional, more people would come [to play in it] in terms of internationals, more Matildas would want to play in the league and it’s just a knock-on effect that would help our national team as well.”

In a player survey conducted at the end of the 2022/23 season, dozens of anonymous athletes said their work commitments affected their dedication to and improvements within football.

In the extended 36-player squad for the last Matildas camp, 16 players currently played in the ALW, including four maiden senior national team call ups: Davidson, Prior, Isabel Gomez (Central Coast Mariners FC) and Hana Lowry (Sydney FC).

“It’s a really good quality league. It’s so competitive, you never know who’s going to win. So I would definitely say Australian football is looking bright,” Davidson said.

“We just want to keep pushing that forward, so hopefully full time professionalism.”