It is probably just a coincidence that Auckland’s Aotea Centre staged Macbeth shortly before it hosts the Women’s 2023 World Cup draw on October 22, but maybe someone thought William Shakespeare’s cautionary tale about a powerful, ambitious woman would be a suitable precursor.
More appropriate would have been one of his many plays in which women had to disguise themselves as male to be accepted, such as Rosalind in As You Like Itor Portia in The Merchant of Venice, as that is what many female footballers had to do when younger.
That still applies in some countries, but increasingly few as the qualifying campaign to reach
