Australia women's US tour cancelled over pay dispute

Australia reached the World Cup quarter-finals by beating Brazil

Australia women's tour of the United States has been scrapped because of a dispute over pay and conditions.

The Matildas want their annual 21,000 Australian dollars (£9,634) salary increased to A$40,000 (£18,339).

The move is part of a dispute over pay and conditions for the men's and women's game.

Football Federation Australia (FFA) said the union representing the players had made "extraordinary demands" which meant the tour could not take place.

More than 60,000 tickets had been sold for the two matches against world champions the USA, in Detroit and Birmingham, Alabama on 17 and 20 September.

The tour had been in doubt when the squad pulled out of a training camp. Australia goalkeeper Lydia Williams stated that the decision to withdraw had been "extremely difficult", but necessary to make FFA take their claims seriously.

The previous Collective Bargaining Agreement expired on 30 June and there has since been a bitter public relations war with no new deal reached so far, meaning that the women's squad have not been paid in two months.

Last week, the men's team boycotted commercial appearances in Perth in the run-up to their World Cup qualifier against Bangladesh.

Gallop said the wage increases that players union Professional Footballers Australia (PFA) was demanding for the Socceroos, men's A-League players and the Matildas could not be met. He claimed that the FFA had offered an interim deal to the players' union.

"This (A-League) is a competition in which the clubs lost a collective A$17m last season," Gallop said.

"What we have today is an extraordinary situation in which the two male playing groups in the Socceroos and A-League continue to be paid by FFA and A-League clubs, but the female players aren't being paid. This could have been fixed today if the PFA had accepted the interim deal."