Siren 09: W League finals, Meretiana Robinson, Fremantle Dockers AFLW & more
A Women in Sport Collective
It’s a really hard time, Siren family.
We don’t really know what’s going to happen, and for how long our lives are going to be impacted by the current challenges the coronavirus is putting on our world.
We share in everyone’s anxiety and hope that we can all lean on each other in the beautiful online #womeninsport communities we have built during this time to feel connected and supported. It is only through those online communities that Siren exists. It is only through those online communities that we’ve been able to claim a space for us fans to come together to celebrate and elevate each other. This community is strong and supportive and incredibly fun. So while this time is a bit scary, let’s come together like we always have and let women’s sports unite us.
In some news to take your mind off all this, we are coming to your inbox at the two-month mark of our Siren journey! We can’t thank all of you who have signed up for our weekly newsletter enough for your support.
Before we launched our first newsletter, we did a social media survey to ask what fans of women’s sports wanted to see more in media coverage.
In our first two months, we’ve tried our best with the resources we have to address these responses in our coverage.
We’ve published more than 10 interviews from some amazing women including West Coast Eagles assistant coach and AFLW stalwart Michelle Cowan, Melbourne Boomers players Maddie Garrick and Lindsay Allen, Aussie Diamond and West Coast Fever captain Courtney Bruce, Australian cricket legend Anne Gordon and Q&A’s with the ICC T20 Women’s World Cup captains.
Kirby Fenwick has dug deep into the archives and written some beautiful historical pieces on women’s sports as well as weaving in historical information into her writing on Australian women’s ice hockey and her coverage of the newly redeveloped Australian Sports Museum.
Gemma Bastiani is providing in-depth stats and analysis for every game across the AFLW season with her weekly column The Roundup. Plus, Gemma’s pieces through her Play On platform provide context for stats in a way that no one else is doing. She is also the brains behind the AFLW Stats database that our paid supporters have access to.
We’ve also shared the videos, photos, essays, book lists and podcasts that we all produce as individual entities under the Siren umbrella.
As a collective, in our first two months, we’ve provided stories on AFLW, AWIHL, WNBL, Cricket, Netball, W-League and Super W and used our platform to share stories by other wonderful women covering women’s sport here in Australia and across the globe.
As part of our goal to amplify more diverse voices, we’ve been able to commission pieces from other women in sport.
We’ve had the pleasure of commissioning the likes of Bobby Macumber, Mary Konstantopoulos, Emma Race, Rana Hussain, Alyssa Longmuir, and Angela Christian-Wilkes on Siren which would not have been possible without our financial supporters
We know there’s more sport and more voices to be amplified. We’ll keep working as hard as we can to do this. But for now, we’re so proud of what we’ve been able to do—we are absolutely loving doing this work—and we’re so thankful for our readers and supporters for joining us on this journey.
In this issue
We’ve got a chat from Kirby with Melbourne Rebels captain Meretiana Robinson about her rugby journey and the Rebels’ 2020 Super W season. Gemma brings us her weekly Roundup of all the AFLW action and an interview with Fremantle coach Trent Cooper and young ruck Mim Strom. We’re also lucky enough to have Angela Christian-Wilkes sharing her W-League knowledge, with a grand final preview and recap of the finals leading to the big game.
W-League Grand Final Preview
By Angela Christian-Wilkes
Next weekend, behind closed doors, the reigning champions and current premiers face off for the silverware. Sydney FC and Melbourne City are two incredibly successful powerhouses of the W-League.
Feature interview: Mim Strom & Trent Cooper
By Gemma Bastiani
Ahead of their match up against the Western Bulldogs, I jumped on a call with Fremantle coach Trent Cooper and young ruck Mim Strom to discuss how they’ve adapted to their off season loss of talent, their resilient attitude, how they’ve bounced back from some close shaves and Mim’s experience as a first year player thrown immediately into the fray.
A rebel like her: how a strong culture is driving the Melbourne Rebels
By Kirby Fenwick
Image: Melbourne Rebels
From rugby origin stories to the importance of culture, Robinson shares plenty in this interview with Siren, including the feeling of being a part of the Rebels’ history-making first win.
The Roundup: Round Six
By Gemma Bastiani
In what is an uncertain time not just in sport but in the world, we were lucky to witness some really great footy over the weekend—just from our TV screens and not the grounds. We’ve seen more and more bags of goals from young stars like Jasmine Garner, Kalinda Howarth and Caitlin Greiser, and Fremantle proved yet again just how hard they are to beat—even when you have them on the ropes.
As always, our co-founders aren’t just covering women’s sport for Siren. This week Kate O’Halloran wrote about endometriosis in AFLW: the health crisis no one is talking about for ABC, and hosted another episode of Kick Like A Girl.
Alison Smirnoff has a new episode of This AFL Life, and Gemma has her weekly Play On Review.
While it’s been a difficult week, it’s also been an historic week for women in sport as Samantha Lewis writes.
Congratulations to the Matildas who qualified for Tokyo 2020 on Thursday night, defeating Vietnam 2-1. The Matildas were able to get it done after multiple light failures and in front of no crowd.
In other football news, ICYMI - The USWNT have been fighting a valiant battle against US Soccer for equal pay in the face of some of the most blatant misogyny we’ve seen in the modern era.
The team made waves after court documents confirmed the sexist ‘reasons’ US Soccer believed they were not entitled equal pay by walking out to their game against Japan in the SheBelieves Cup with their shirts inside out hiding the US Soccer logo. Still visible were the four stars representing the team’s four World Cup titles.
The USWNT Players Association tweeted, “Unity. Four stars only. Who’s with us.” And if you want to show you’re with them you can buy this kick-ass shirt.
On the issue, Meg Lineham writes for The Athletic (paywall) about how US Soccer will bounce back from this and in this interesting piece, Doriane Lambelet Coleman, a professor at Duke Law School and a former elite track athlete, writes how her research work was used out of context by US Soccer to back up their position.
ESPN’s Sarah Spain nailed her response to this sexism in this clip and Megan Rapinoe was of course outstanding in addressing the issue.
US Soccer Federation President Carlos Cordeiro shortly after resigned over USWNT equal pay lawsuit backlash.
If you want to remind yourself how good the USWNT are and how ‘skilled’ they are, we recommend the FIFA Women’s World Cup doco.
Congratulations to Geelong’s Melissa Hickey for reaching her 25th AFLW game on the weekend. Hickey has been such a trailblazer for women’s footy in the modern era and we love watching her play. She’s one of many AFLW players to reach the impressive milestone this year.
We were thrilled to see Gold Coast Suns inaugural co-captain, Leah Kaslar, elected to the AFLPA Board to join Melbourne’s Meg Downie as the second AFLW representative. This is a great appointment and it’s so important that there is now more than one woman in this group. We are proud of the AFL and AFLW players who are fighting against the federal government's proposed religious freedom bill. And congratulations to our friend Emma Race who made it on to SEN’s Top 50 movers and shakers in the AFL.
This tweet was absolute women-in-sport-retribution-fire from Simone Biles who responded to a birthday tweet from USA Gymnastics and made her anger known at their continued exploitation of her and her talent while she had been kept in the dark about the accusations around that former US Gymnastics doctor. Biles is continuing to campaign for an independent investigation and we stand with her.
Runner up
We really have to shout out to our friends at the Outer Sanctum who drove so much fun and joyful interaction on social media while we were unable to attend AFLW matches on the weekend. Shelley Ware emulating the singing streets of self-isolated Italy after her Blues got a big win was a wonderful reminder that, yes, times are tough, but we’re all here in the outer together.
Our friend Lindsay Gibbs wrote in her newsletter, Power Plays, this week:
“We live in a rapidly-changing world right now. Here in the United States, we are very late arriving to the realization that in order to slow the spread of the coronavirus, we must drastically alter our daily lives. In sports, that means everything has come to a halt. It’s the right decision, but it’s still incredibly difficult.”
She then started a thread which if you’re a paid subscriber of hers, you can check out, calling for “The best women's sports moments to rewatch now that coronavirus has suspended everything”
As we mentioned at the top of this newsletter, our online #womeninsport community is where we draw our strength and joy from and will continue to do so during this time.
So let’s all share what women in sport content we’re watching, reading, listening to so we can keep the shared experience of being part of women’s sport alive and connect to each other while some of us might be feeling a bit alone and anxious.
It can be past matches and events, long reads, documentaries, books, podcasts, movies —anything about women in sport.
Tag us, DM us or email us so we can share on our Twitter!
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