Siren #141: Trailblazers, introducing Siren’s Fast Five and newsletters you’ll want to subscribe too
A Women in Sport Collective
We were thrilled earlier this month to see the newest Making The Call cohort hit the ground running on the hallowed turf of the MCG!
What a crew.
We love the work Emma Race and Lucy Race do with Making The Call, creating connections and community and networks that lead directly to opportunity. We love to see it.
At Siren HQ, we’re working away behind the scenes putting the finishing touches on some fantastic resources we’ve co-created with ABC Sport. We are very much looking forward to sharing those with you very soon but in the meantime, we have some fun stuff to share this month.
We bring you the first ever Siren Fast Five where we catch up with women and non-binary people in sports media and ask them about their work, their career highlights and their advice for emerging sports media content creators.
We’re kicking off with the very talented Georgia Rajic – if you’re an aspiring sports commentator, Georgia has some excellent advice.
We also have a list of sporty newsletters that we love that we’re pretty confident you'll love too. We’ll continue to add to this list so make sure you bookmark it so you can check back for updates so you’ve always got great sports writing hitting your inbox.
And if you know about, are subscribed to, or create a newsletter that you think we should have on our list, let us know!
Read on for all that and much more!
Trailblazers
We love sports documentaries at Siren. And we love the Matildas. So it should come as absolutely no surprise that we love Trailblazers, a documentary that tells the amazing story of the fight for equality by Australia’s female footballers.
For a long time, the stories of women’s sport—stories that are decades and centuries old, not weeks and months old—have gathered dust in the memories of players, in their scrapbooks and photo albums, in the recollections of their friends and families and in the newspaper archives where they were sometimes lucky to get a line or two. Documentaries like Trailblazers are important, and necessary, to ensure that the public historical record reflects the real story. Even if that story is sometimes uncomfortable. Here’s to more trailblazers and more documentaries!
Fast Five with Georgia Rajic
Fast Five is where we catch up with women and non-binary people in sports media and ask them about their work, their career highlights and their advice for emerging sports media content creators.
We are thrilled to be kicking off with football and netball commentator Georgia Rajic who has some fantastic advice for aspiring commentators.
What support do you want as you build your sports media career?
Creating resources. Creating opportunity. Creating community. That’s what we’re all about. But we're keen to hear from you!
What kinds of resources would be helpful and/or useful for you as you build your career in sports media?
Are you looking for tips and tricks, practical how-to guides, insights into interviewing or finding stories, tips on research or maybe something else?
The sports newsletters we love that we know you’ll love
Sports news, sports pop culture, and deep dives into women’s sporting history all delivered right to your inbox? Sign us up! We love a sports newsletter around these parts and we figure if you’re here, you might be the same.
So we rounded up a few of our faves.
Got a tip for a sporty newsletter we should add to our list? Let us know!
swim by Ellen van Neerven
Attention all NSW subscribers: Ellen van Neerven’s debut play “swim” premieres at Carriageworks on 10 July with performances continuing until 27 July.
Sizzling hot concrete. Rainbow towels on half-dead grass. On a hot summer’s day, bodies of all shapes, colours and sizes journey to the public pool longing to do one thing…
Swim.
Genderfluid protagonist E negotiates the space between the men’s and women’s change rooms. They flex in front of the cute pool attendant. As they step onto the diving blocks, the words of their Aunty come to them—and suddenly, the crystalline blue tiles give way to much deeper water.
swim is delicate and tough, honest and achingly beautiful—and it muses on everything from the sovereignty of water to gender identity and the binding strength of culture and family.
For more info and to book tickets, visit Griffin Theatre Company.
Why Tayla Williams believes netball is the perfect place to spark a conversation about endometriosis and periods by Brittany Carter for ABC Sport.
Jenny Sinclair talks to Aussie Diamonds coach Stacey Marinkovich for Netball Scoop.
Sam Lewis reported on how Cortnee Vine's departure from Sydney FC is yet another warning sign for the future of A-League Women's.
US athletes to be given air conditioners at Paris Games amid heat fears for Olympians reports Esther Linder for ABC News.
For The Age, Marnie Vinall looked at how the AFL is dealing with the impact of climate change on grassroots clubs.
The release of the AFLW fixture raised some questions. Siren co-found Gemma Bastiani looked at the draw for AFL Media, while Marnie Vinall reported on the player’s response.
The 'special and unique' part of footy that drives West Coast Eagles coach Daisy Pearce.
From the archives
We love the archives at Siren. Lucky for us, we have our own jam-packed archive full of gems that absolutely deserve to be re-read or read for the first time.
Back in 2021, our inaugural Emerging Sports Writer Program participant Courtney Hagen spoke with athlete Taylor Ling, on cricket, identity and sport’s role in bringing it all together.
Siren is now on Patreon!
Funds from our Patreon go towards:
commissioning and paying writers and content creators
running our Emerging Sports Writer Programs
creating opportunities for women and non-binary folk in sports media
The support of the Siren community has facilitated that work and helped support those commissions and opportunities and we can’t thank you enough.
You can become a Patron of Siren today and help us continue to challenge the status quo of sports media.
