The fight for women’s sports has only just begun
SUPPORT for women’s sports have soared in recent years, but what happened at the weekend shows how far we still have to go, Selina Steele writes.
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A LITTLE piece of magic happened at North Sydney Oval at the weekend.
And I’m not talking about Ellyse Perry’s 213 not out — the highest Test score by an Aussie woman — although that was pretty bloody good too.
It was the sweet moment — much sweeter than getting on the front foot with a well-timed four past long on — when two kids, decked out in their green and gold dropped their slices of pizza and demanded their dad take them back to North Sydney Oval.
At this stage of the game, Perry was marching towards 150... but we didn’t know then we’d all have time to smash three slices, have a ginger beer, play some handball — and then head back to the ground to see the third highest score in women’s Test history.
For us, it was quite literally a pizza-dropping moment.
But this brings me to a recent conversation with Channel 9 sports reporter and women’s sports advocate Sam Squiers and founder of Sportette — how do we keep the momentum for the current appetite of women’s sport?
Because while female sports have been given professional or semi-professional status and crowd and television figures have soared — the challenge is now to maintain the groundswell of support.
Squiers first rule of fight club is that female athletes can’t afford to be vanilla.
Her second rule is to keep fighting.
Because right now is when the real fight begins.
Case in point — and this comes courtesy of QUT Masters student Michael Ward — a women’s Ashes test match became the first Test cricket match to be broadcast on Australian TV.
“In an almost forgotten moment of Australian television history, the first Test cricket match was broadcast on ABC Television in February 1958, nine months before the first men’s test went to air in December that year,” said Mr Ward who is completing his Master’s Research Thesis on ABC TV Sport and World Series Cricket.
“The ABC televised the Second Test of England’s 1957/58 women’s Ashes tour which was played at Junction Oval.”
It was to be almost 30 years, 1985, before the next international women’s cricket match was broadcast on television; again on the ABC.
And what happened at the weekend? Channel 9 did not broadcast a single day of the Test.
Why? Nine would argue money.
A nine-camera television production of any four-day sporting event, coupled with commentary talent and high-definition broadcast technology doesn’t come cheap.
But women’s cricket, as a product, rates well.
Their broadcast on Sunday, October 29 of the Australia v England women’s game hit 195,000 during the second session.
Clearly the fight is not won — it’s only just begun.
And then conversations like the one between netball legend turned Super Netball commentator Liz Ellis and her daughter will become the norm.
At Super Netball’s launch earlier this year, Ellis shared this cracker.
With so much women’s sport headlining media and broadcast in recent times, Ellis’ daughter asked: “Mummy, why don’t boys play sport?”
Her reply: “They’re ironing, honey.”
Selina Steele is the deputy head of news for News Corp’s News360.
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Originally published as The fight for women’s sports has only just begun
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