Moya Dodd, FIFA executive committee candidate Lunch With Moya Dodd. Dodd is the Australian candidate for the FIFA executive committee, and the current Vice President of the Asian Football Confederation . News Review. Photo: Marco Del Grande Photo: Marco Del Grande MDG In 1988 when Australia's women's football team went to their first world tournament in China, they paid their own airfares, took leave from their real jobs and had to sew their own Australian badges onto their tracksuits. "It was just the way it was," says one of those players, Moya Dodd. Dodd was pondering just how far the women's game had come before flying to London then to Mauritius for the FIFA Congress this week, where she and three others will vie for a specially created female position on the FIFA executive committee. If successful, she would be the first woman and the first Australian elected to the ex-co. The job? To represent the interests of 29 million girls and women worldwide who play football. I think it is more important that I do a good job. I don't want to be famous for being female. It's a long way from her early playing days as a 12-year-old at Port Adelaide when even women's football was riven by ethnic divisions. Do I play for the Croatians? The Serbian club? For the Italians, for the Greeks? I was this half-Chinese kid in Adelaide, thinking, 'Where do I stand on this Balkan issue?'. Dodd was first drafted into the Australian team in 1986. The director of women's football at the time, Heather Reid, remembers a diminutive player who "was technically very proficient and could jump to head a ball over more imposing opposition." Being able to overcome imposing opposition - the '88 team beat Brazil - has stood Dodd in good stead: with FIFA vice-president Prince Ali bin al Hussein, Dodd, as Asian Football Confederation (AFC) vice-president, was instrumental last year in having FIFA overturn its ban on Muslim women wearing a headscarf while playing. I think when the issue first came up, the reaction was, 'Bit tough to play football with a headscarf on'. It was an ignorant reaction," she says. As I began to meet players here and overseas who, out of genuine choice, wore their headscarf during a game, you really understood how important that was. There are 650 million Muslim women in the world and most of them are within AFC. The more you thought about it the less sense it made to exclude them from the football field. From the early hurdles that Australian players faced to the very modern issues around player inclusion, Dodd has found a way to get things done. By the end of the week, she could be, if not already, the most powerful Australian in football. "I don't think of it as power," she says. I would hope I can have some influence. The challenge is not so much within Australia but for Australia, beyond these shores. All you can do is bring a principled decision-making mindset to problems. But really, who would go from an actively equal opportunity law firm, Gilbert+Tobin, to the halls of the FIFA ex-co, the biggest, meanest boys' club in the world? Seriously? Am I mad? Maybe, I'll find out," she says. I've been in Asia [AFC ex-co] for six years now and that has been a real adventure. The first year or two in Asia, it took time to get any sort of engagement with the members there. They hadn't had women on the ex-co before so that was new. Australia was also new in Asia. Smoothing the path was the fact Dodd is a past player. It establishes you are authentic in your intentions to do the best by the game. It is hard to believe that the FIFA ex-co that gave Australia's 2022 World Cup bid just one vote is the same ex-co ready to elect a woman. "I think football has recognised that it would take a very, very long time for the gender imbalance to correct itself organically," she says. FIFA will have one woman elected and consider appointing another two. Dodd has the 46 Asian votes of 209 international total locked in, and has spent most of this past week wooing European delegates. UEFA did not nominate a candidate - the others are Lydia Nsekera (Burundi), Sonia Bien-Aime (Turks & Caicos Islands) and New Zealander Paula Kearns. The female position was chiefly created to advance the women's game but Dodd, a lawyer who is on the FIFA legal committee, expects to make a larger contribution. Dodd bounds into Bambini's in Elizabeth Street clutching her candidacy pamphlets, in half a dozen or so official FIFA languages. She has intentionally not overstated her desire to progress the women's game - that's a given - but more broadly talked about goals around inclusion and governance. It will take more than Dodd's election to remove the sour taste in many Australians' mouths after the failed 2022 bid. "Obviously the outcome was hugely disappointing," Dodd says. " I sat in the ex-co room during the presentation and I have to tell you they loved the kangaroo in Phillip Noyce's film. What we are remembered for globally in that bid is having put together a good bid with credible people who were technically capable. We made a lot of contacts and won a lot of friends in the football world. The legacy of that has been that there are a lot of people who will now take a meeting, take a call, return a call and give us a measure of respect for the work that was done. That has helped me in this process. But what of Australians' negative views? If I can work within the organisation to improve it I would like to eventually give people a reason to change their views. The organisation clearly has reformed and improved itself in a number of ways since then. Over an entree-sized cracked pepper spaghettini with Crystal Bay prawns, with garlic and "a little chilli," Dodd talks about restructuring her life should she succeed. On this day she has another interview then must race home to pack and spend time with her primary-school aged children before heading to London. As far as women's football might have come, it has a long way to go. The top Australian players barely earn a student wage; the very best handful can make a hand-to-mouth living playing abroad. No question there is a long way to go. There is a glass ceiling in women's sport, no doubt about that," Dodd says. Dodd wants to see the women's game placed on higher commercial ground. When you look at the Olympics and the World Cup and the top club matches, there is plenty to build a base of revenue that would start to pay people decent wages, players and coaches. Dodd talks of visiting Syrian refugees in north Jordan with Prince Ali recently following a round-table meeting with west Asian delegates; of listening to a Saudi woman who organises a behind-closed-doors competition and chatting with Kuwaiti royalty. She doesn't tell me she hosted a clinic with special needs children in Abu Dhabi. When she says inclusion, she means everyone. That is not to say her only focus would be women. "I think it has to be a role that contributes to football in general," she says. That's mandatory if you want to earn respect and credibility and be seen as making a contribution. You have to do that across the game broadly. My legal background gives me a way in which to do that and I have been able to do that in AFC. If you're the first woman elected to FIFA you have to have an interest in and responsibility not just women's football but women in football. It's about our participation in the whole of the game, whether as coaches, technical people, as administrators on boards or committees. Dodd is quick to concede today's Australian players are better than her generation - and they ought to be, given better sports science and training. She rates Lisa de Vanna as the best female player Australia has produced but would not discount any of youngsters Caitlin Foord, Sam Kerr, Kyah Simon or Elise Kellond-Knight becoming our greatest player. Their potential to win a World Cup is not lost on Dodd. You would have to to acknowledge that the Matildas are closer to winning a World Cup than the Socceroos at this point in time. Dodd would not be surprised to find a campaign building to have Australia host the Women's World Cup in 2019 - if Football Federation Australia is not gun-shy. Among the many good reasons Australia should bid is that the so-called golden generation of Matildas - the very young women she has named - will then be at their peak. They made the quarter-finals in 2011, are Asian champions and are firmly fixed in the world top 10. "If the Matildas do get a big run on in a World Cup, what that would do for football in Australia would be amazing," Dodd says. Not just women's football, football. Her remit must extend far beyond Australia's interests though. She admits it will be a juggle but she has a dream employer. Her bosses at Gilbert+Tobin encourage employees to pursue other goals - one climbed Everest, one won Tropfest and another, Michelle Rowland, is a federal MP. "I've never really had a career plan," Dodd says. I've just done things I thought were interesting and challenging, in sport or law or business or media. I will need to restructure my life a bit. But this has come at a time when I feel I am ready to do it. I can be an all-rounder. I have played so I have the perspective of a player. I've worked inside the football boardrooms in Australia, in Asia, and in FIFA on the legal committee. I have seen how those committee rooms work and seen how you can work within the governing structures of football on issues like the headscarf, which was a pretty immovable issue when we first saw it. 1965: Born in Adelaide 1979: Debuts for Port Adelaide open-age women's team 1986: Makes Australian debut 1988: Competes in the first FIFA women's tournament. 1989: Moves to Sydney after finishing law school 1995: Badly injured just months before Australia's first appearance at a Women's World Cup. Appointed Australia's Head of Delegation 1999: Joins fledgling F2 digital division of Fairfax 2007: Appointed to the Football Federation Australia board; co-opted to the Asian Football Confederation executive committee in a women's position. Joins Gilbert+Tobin lawyers. 2009: Elected AFC vice-president. 2012: Sees through the headscarf rule. 2013: re-elected AFC vice-president, nominated for FIFA executive committee.