It's been quite a week for Australian women's sport.
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Hannah Green, 22 years old from Perth, took out the LPGA Championship on one of the most difficult courses on the tour (Hazeltine - par 72, rated 78).
Green led from start to finish and fought off late challengers with a gritty up-and-down from the bunker on the 18th to win by a shot. The third Australian woman ever to win a golf major.
Ash Barty, fresh from triumph in France, beat her doubles partner, Julia Goerges, in the final at the Birmingham Classic, which makes her the current world number one and, hence, the number one seed for Wimbledon which starts on Monday.
Surfer, Sally Fitzgibbons, won the World Surf League's Rio Pro, which propels her into the women's surfing world number one ranking.
Lake Macquarie's Rhiannan Iffland dove to a record breaking fourth win in this season's Cliff Diving World Series.
Quite a week.
And the week before the Matildas beat Brazil!
In the wake of that victory, coming from two behind, star striker Sam Kerr told the naysayers to 'suck on that!'
Unfortunately, the naysayers were proven to have valid concerns with the subsequent Matildas' loss, and exit from the Cup, a couple of games later against Norway.
Australia lost in a penalty shoot-out, and Kerr's shot (Australia's first) has made its notorious way into fourth place in the list of all-time 'Worst World Cup Penalty Misses.'
Who to blame?
You really do have to look at the administration, and the sacking of what had been, to all appearances, the successful coach of a successful side - ranked number six in the world - in the lead-up to the Cup, with no real reason or explanation given.
Interestingly the sacked coach, Alen Stajcic, is the only one with any potential to come out of this debacle smelling of anything vaguely rosey. Stajcic, whose employment prospects were looking decidedly grim given the extent to which his character seemed to have been besmirched, has been hired by the Central Coast Mariners. If the poorly performing Mariners suddenly start winning ...
His replacement, Ante Milicic, had never coached a women's team, and had, actually, never really outright coached a senior team.
And then you have to wonder about Heather Reid's incredibly poorly timed pot-stirring, but still fundamentally unexplained apology to Stajcic, made a couple of days before the game against Italy.
It all made for a fairly diabolical preparation for the Matildas. And they played that way.
There have since been the inevitable calls for a review of the coaching appointment process and recommendations on the need for increased funding in the W-league to avoid Australia being left behind in what is clearly a rapidly growing sport internationally.
The sad truth is that such funding would have been far more easily acquired, would, in fact, have pretty much looked after itself, had the Matildas performed more in line with expectations at the World Cup.
Instead, our most competitive side yet posted by far our worst result in 16 years.
As former player and analyst Craig Foster said, 'We missed a great chance, right in front of goal.'
The other issue brought to the fore with the tournament is the disparity in gender pay-rates.
It is somewhat of a mute point at this stage, but it is still worth noting that had the Matildas managed to perform more in accordance with potential and actually won the World Cup they would still have been paid only half of what the Socceroos were awarded in Russia in 2018, despite the Socceroos failing to so much as get out of the group stage.
Clearly this is preposterous.
These issues are reflected, interestingly, in the Norwegian team that ejected us. Ada Hegerberg is generally considered to be the best female soccer player in the world. Hegerberg has controversially boycotted representing Norway in the World Cup due to both her dissatisfaction with the Norwegian Soccer Federation and as a protest against the gender pay-gap.
The gender pay-gap in sport will be the focus for next week's column.
In other news this week, David Warner scored 166 from only 147 deliveries against Bangladesh, and NSW won the second leg of the State of Origin ...