CommBank Matildas receive 'The Don Award'; Tim Cahill AO inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame | Football Australia

The Sport Australia Hall of Fame is recognising trailblazing women with its two biggest honours in 2023: The Don Award for the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023™ CommBank Matildas and The Dawn Award for the 2000 Sydney Olympics Women’s Water Polo Team.

The Don Award, named in recognition of the Sport Australia Hall of Fame’s inaugural Inductee, Sir Donald Bradman AC, and introduced in 1998, is considered the highest of all honours in Australian sport, awarded to an athlete or a team for providing the most inspiration to the nation through performance and example in the past year.

 
THE DON AWARD 
  
The CommBank Matildas earned The Don Award for their remarkable performance in becoming the first Australian team to make a senior FIFA World Cup – men’s or women’s – semi-final. The CommBank Matildas caused a seismic sporting shift: transforming women’s football, uniting the country, inspiring the next generation of hopefuls, and further elevating women’s sport with a long-deserved national profile. What the CommBank Matildas achieved in the lead-up to the FIFA Women’s World Cup Australia & New Zealand 2023™, and the tournament proper, was ground-breaking. They smashed numerous records along the way, drawing extraordinary crowds to their games: nearly two million spectators at stadiums and hundreds of thousands at live sites across the country. On TV broadcast, their semi-final against England was the highest rating program in Australia since the current television ratings system began in 2001.

The “Tillies”, as we called them, rode a huge wave of support to become our most talked-about and loved national team. It was fitting that Australia & New Zealand’s joint bid for the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup had the slogan “As One”, for the