When David Barham first listened to Kelli Underwood in the late 2000s, he liked what he heard. She was a talented broadcaster, then in her early 30s, who had come up through regional radio and TV sports news, and had been a regular presence at AFL games as a match-day reporter for 3AW.
Barham, who was an experienced television executive at Network Ten, which held the rights to AFL, felt Underwood had the voice, knowledge and work ethic to call the footy on TV and he hired her, handing her the headset for Ten’s call of Geelong’s round-16 match against Melbourne at Kardinia Park in 2009.
Kelli Underwood, Daisy Pearce and Jess Webster.Credit: The Age
“I just thought it would be good to have a different voice,” said Barham this week. “I listened to Kell, I went, ‘You’re good. This will work, someone new, great,’ and that’s what I did. And honestly, if I had anticipated the amount of feedback and the grief that she was going to get, I wouldn’t have done it.”
Underwood was the first woman to commentate a men’s AFL game but being the first came with a large price. Throughout her two seasons in the commentary box with Ten, she faced a barrage of gendered criticism not only from the audience but from within her own industry.
Barham’s instincts about Underwood’s talent were right, and he soon found out she was tough, too. Thirteen years later, she is one of the most forthright and respected voices on sport, as the host of ABC’s Offsiders, a panellist on Fox Sports’ The Back Page and a commentator of men’s and women’s football on ABC Grandstand and Fox Footy.
And yet women in commentary boxes are still a tiny minority and are still regularly on the receiving end of sexist tirades. Channel Seven’s Daisy Pearce, a champion AFLW player, found herself at the centre of such a storm after ex-commentator Rex Hunt questioned her authority, claiming networks were pandering to gender quotas.
Former Hawthorn champion and media pundit Dermott Brereton inflamed the situation with a social media post supporting Hunt, before Pearce reluctantly came to the microphone.
“They [Hunt and Brereton] might have similar values and past lived experiences and therefore ways on seeing the game, but that is one way with which to look at the game and there are many,” Pearce told Gerard Whateley on SEN. “... so, I’d say that whilst it might be ruining football for Rex, there might be people out there that can connect and engage with football better now that there is greater diversity in the broadcast team, whether it be gender, race, background, whatever it is.”
So, how far have we come since Underwood called her first game? While significant progress has been made, Barham said there’s still a long way to go.
In hindsight, he would have done things differently when first hiring Underwood, including rounding up more support, having “strong conversations” with media people who were harsh on her and letting the AFL know beforehand about the move.
‘If I had anticipated the amount of feedback and the grief that she was going to get, I wouldn’t have done it.’
David Barham
“Looking back now, I was ...pretty naive. I think I just really didn’t think there would be a massive reaction to female caller in an AFL game.
“What I couldn’t believe most was the lack of people understanding that she was a new caller. You know, anybody who calls their first few games, go back and listen to any of the great callers’ first few games and they won’t be as good as what they are [and] Kelli wasn’t as good back then as what she is now.
“But the judgment on it was so harsh. Early days, it was incredibly unfair, and I was absolutely shocked at the time ... She was just a young caller trying to do a job.
“It also made it so much harder for her because no other commentator that I’ve ever worked with, ever, has had to perform under such pressure as Kelli, ever. In my 40 years no one’s had to deal with the pressure. So, there are so many young women today that should be so thankful to her.
Underwood in the 3AW commentary box with Rex Hunt in the early days.Credit: Ray Kennedy
“Because if she had chucked it in and given it up, where would everyone be now? Where would we be on the scale of this thing? She’s a trailblazer, she’s an absolute trailblazer.”
Many women and non-binary people have since stepped into commentary roles in Australian sport, including Pearce, Lauren Arnell, Jessica Webster, Stephanie Brantz, Chyloe Kurdas and Georgie Parker, while Lisa Sthalekar and English women Alison Mitchell and Isa Guha are now regulars during the summer of cricket.
Pearce is a champion footballer and a sharp analystCredit: Getty Images
“It’s changed a lot, but there’s still a fair way to go. I still don’t think there’s enough opportunities for talented women, young women in the media ... I still think a lot of the jobs held high up in television are held by men in sport,” said Barham.
Notably, there are even fewer women of colour in commentary and sports broadcast roles.
As Barham notes, there’s a huge advantage to having diverse callers and experts in the coverage, as they bring a different view that attracts a different, and potentially bigger, audience.
“So if you’re commercially focused, I would have thought it’s a really good way to go, but we’ve still got a fair way to go, unfortunately.”
Fox Footy and ABC AFL and AFLW play-by-play commentator Jessica Webster is among those who have followed in Underwood’s footsteps, after idolising the likes of Bruce McAvaney and Dennis Cometti growing up.
“But as I got older, I was like, ‘Hang on a minute, there’s no women doing this, how am I going to do this?’ and then Kelli came onto the scene when I was at uni studying journalism, and that was obviously a huge moment because just seeing somebody on TV who was like you, I thought to myself, ‘if she can do it, I can do it’,” Webster said.
“She made a lot of women believe that it was possible, and I’m one of them.”
Webster says she expects to be critiqued as a commentator, but gendered comments can hurt.
“Sometimes I sit here I think we haven’t progressed at all like when I saw comments about Kelli or I saw what happened to Daisy the other day, and it’s just kind of a bit deflating,” says Webster.
“I think what you genuinely hear a lot from women in the industry is, ‘Yeah, we’ve come a long way, but we still have a long way to go.’
“The women that we do have in the industry are all really just dedicated to the sport, dedicated to the craft … We all want to do our jobs [and] we all want to do our jobs well, and probably the only other thing that I want the public to think about is this is only the beginning.
“The next wave of broadcasters that are coming through, they [the industry and public] all better get ready. ”
ABC AFLW special comments expert Gemma Bastiani says some improvement has come fromwomen’s sport gaining more prominence.
“There’s no way I would be in this position. I probably wouldn’t have even pursued it if AFLW didn’t become a thing,” Bastiani said.
She adds that women can be siloed into hosting or boundary riding, while more are needed in analysis roles.
“I think the big thing is we’re seeing a lot of women in roles that aren’t necessarily part of the in-game broadcast. So, we’re seeing a lot of women in hosting roles, or we’re seeing women in boundary-rider roles. Very few, and I think Kelli and Daisy are the only ones that I’m aware of, have regular gigs as either a play-by-play caller or a specials caller during men’s games.
“Daisy’s a superstar, but she’s not the only woman who can do that. Lauren Arnell has done it for a really long time on radio.
“My big thing is getting women into roles, the right women, not just any woman, because not anyone could do it, just like not any man could do it. But getting the right women into roles that allow them to actually speak about footy is really important.”
Fox Footy’s Sarah Jones says one of the biggest shifts in the past five or six years has been women in more central and powerful roles, such as hosting and moderating footy panels, which has led audiences to expect female faces on football broadcasts.
“People want to see themselves reflected when they watch their football and we know so many women are massive football fans,” she said.
“So if I’m hosting on the weekend, I’m there as me, but I’m also representing the millions of people that love their football and happen to be women.”
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