Siren 06: Women's cricket history, designing pride, AFLW criticism & more
A Women in Sport Collective
Anyone else’s heart still racing after that epic come from behind victory by the Aussies over Sri Lanka? What a match! We always knew the World Cup was going to be exciting but it’s even better than we could have predicted. Are we pumped for the final on International Women’s Day at the MCG? You bet we are.
Despite our racing hearts and frayed nerves, we’re back with another issue and it’s full to the brim.
This week has been absolutely packed with women’s sport. From the T20 World Cup, to WNBL finals and everything in between, which is why we’re disappointed to see yet again that women’s sport made up less than 20% of mainstream sports coverage on Sunday February 23rd.
We’re challenging that with more original Siren content today, including a little trip down cricket’s memory lane, a chat with the designer of the Western Bulldogs’ Pride guernsey and an interview with AFLW premiership superstar Sarah Perkins. Plus there’s all the regulars you know and love.
In this issue
Kirby Fenwick pinpoints five key moments in women’s cricket history, Kasey Symons shares a conversation with Natalie Gills—designer of the Western Bulldogs Pride guernsey—and Gemma Bastiani speaks with Sarah Perkins about her role at the new RMIT Women’s Academy and her time at the Hawks.
This week’s hot button topic—criticism of the AFLW—gets a once-over from Gemma, as does each round three match in the weekly Roundup, and Bobby Macumber brings us a lighthearted q&a with each of the captains competing in the current T20 World Cup.
We hope you enjoy this issue and thanks again for subscribing to Siren!
Five moments in the history of women’s cricket you may not know about
By Kirby Fenwick
Like most sports, the role of women in cricket—both on the field and off—has largely been left untold. Kirby pulled together a handful of fascinating and phenomenal and inspiring moments and stories and people in the history of women’s cricket that you may not know about.
Criticism is important, but only the right kind
By Gemma Bastiani
The footy topic in fashion this week has been criticism of the AFLW and how those comments need to be accepted before the competition can be considered truly elite. While we agree, there is a difference between considered critiques and outright abuse.
Designing Pride: interview with Natalie Gills
By Kasey Symons
Ellie Blackburn gets a kick away in the 2020 Pride match. Image: Megan Brewer
A much loved tradition has been born in the few short years of the AFLW competition: the AFLW Pride Game. It means so much to so many and this year the sentiment has grown to include more teams spreading the message of love and acceptance through football.
Get to know the ICC T20 World Cup 2020 Captains
By Bobby Macumber
Bobby Macumber, our cricket expert, set out to learn more about some of the captains of the world’s best cricketing nations, discovering what they love about touring Australia, which Aussie cricketers they admire (and those that irritate them!) and we have found we might need to create an Aussie music Spotify playlist for some captains too!
Feature interview: Sarah Perkins
By Gemma Bastiani
Sarah Perkins runs out of the race for the VFLW Hawks. Image: Megan Brewer.
As footy clubs and universities look to get the edge in women’s footy, RMIT University has launched its Women’s Football Academy in an aim to nurture talent across Victoria. Adelaide Crows premiership forward Sarah Perkins has been appointed as a mentor and specialist coach at the academy, and Gemma spoke to her about the new role, young talent coming through the AFLW ranks and the camaraderie of Hawthorn’s VFLW team.
The Roundup: Round Three
By Gemma Bastiani
Round three has made the run for finals a whole lot tighter and also thrown up an expansion team’s first win and the first draw of 2020. We saw standout performances from Jaimee Lambert, Kalinda Howarth, Georgia Gee and Danielle Ponter, and a monster game winner from Caitlin Greiser.
Quickfire results from all recent T20 World Cup, WNBL, W League and Super W matches.
Gemma spoke to RendezView about deficiencies in footy broadcasting and shared her weekly Play On Review of the AFLW round that was, Alison Smirnoff released a new episode of This AFL Life and Kate O’Halloran kept the Kick Like A Girl ball rolling.
Congratulations to cricketer Corinne Hall on the launch of her beautiful new book ‘Victress: Women who paved the way in Australian Sport’. The artwork is just outstanding.
Melbourne City are the W-League premiers! Congrats City! And in other football news, Matilda Caitlin Ford scored on debut for Arsenal which was amazing to see.
Sarah Wilson became the second woman in the 95-year history of the Queensland Open to compete against the men after pre-qualifying at Pelican Waters Golf Club. The golfing community, and the sports world, also lost a trailblazer last week. Legendary golfer Mickey Wright passed away at age 85. Beth Ann Nichols writes on Wright’s legacy.
Lindsay Gibbs interviewed Anna Kessel, Women’s Sport Editor at The Telegraph in the UK about women’s sports coverage and the state of media. It’s a refreshing and inspiring take on women’s sports media and we hope many media moguls read it! Anna Kessel is also the author of the great book, Eat Sweat Play: How Sport can Change our Lives which we really recommend you check out!
Researcher Adele Pavlidis has just published work on the experiences of players being part of (earlier seasons) of the AFLW, focusing on their feelings of gratitude and positivity and how the limits of this gratitude can impact cultural transformation for women in sport. If accessibility to this article is an issue, email us :)
Miss the Women’s NRL All Stars game? Catch the highlights here. We also loved seeing the men’s team embrace Quaden Bayles and give him a beautiful experience. The WNBL Finals are coming to an exciting peak with The Boomers taking their series against defending champs the UC Capitals to Game 3. Winner takes on new entrants to the league, the Southside Flyers (The Flyers took over the Dandenong Rangers licence in the WNBL off-season) in the Grand Final.
Billie Jean King is a Barbie and we all have it on our women in sport gift wishlists!
The United States Women’s National Soccer Team’s equal pay lawsuit took another turn last week and it’s getting more complicated and infuriating.
UK based organisation Sports Media LGBT+ has launched ‘Rainbow Ready’ – a new resources pack for communicating LGBT+ inclusion in sport. You can download a copy here.
Cricket is happening! Brittany Carter writes about how to cover the Australian Women’s Cricket team with the scrutiny they deserve as world class athletes. Mary Konstantopoulos also looks forward to what a strong attendance to the ICC T20 World Cup Final will mean for women in sport history.
We were blown away by the awesomeness of this video released by The Australian Women’s Cricket Team in the lead up to the start of the ICC T20 World Cup. It embraces women’s cricket history, the trailblazers, the challenges, the success and the excitement of what is to come. It has set the bar for women in sport marketing. Well done to all involved in producing this.
Runner up
Emma, you rock! How many of us made our own athlete autograph books?? (How many of us still do?!)
Siren fan meet up: T20 Women’s World Cup
March 2nd, Melbourne
Some of the Siren team are heading along to the women’s T20 World Cup double header at Junction Oval in Melbourne on March 2 and we welcome anyone to join us! We know it’s a work day so it’s a hard one to get to. But is there anything more Australian than calling in sick for work to go to the cricket?
The first match starts at 11am with Sri Lanka facing Bangladesh and then from 3pm Australia takes on New Zealand.
All are welcome to come along to the match and sit with us. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know anything about cricket or don’t have anyone to go with, come chill with us on the hill! We’ll tweet our location on the day and tickets can be purchased here. If you plan to come along, feel free to shoot us a DM on twitter or email us to let us know to look out for you. Or you can also just rock up on the day!
Change Our Game
Applications are now open for the 2nd round of the 2019-20 Change Our Game Community Activation Grants.
These grants are designed to showcase & #celebrate women & girls with grants of up to $10k on offer for community sports and recreation clubs to help boost activities and events that can further drive positive change. More information is here.
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