This week the ATP, the association for men’s tennis, decided not to support the WTA, their women’s counterparts, who have cancelled all tours in China in protest after the disappearance of Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai. The ATP said their remit also includes grassroots tennis and they did not want to “punish a billion people” by cancelling the men’s pro tour. I disagree. I think if the ATP chose to support women’s tennis they would, in fact, be supporting billions of people, and in particular a pro women’s tennis player, who, even if the IOC are to be believed (and it seems like many don’t), is embroiled in something that is clearly not right.
In the ongoing conversation about commercial sponsors of women’s sports teams, it was interesting to see this week 2degrees announced they are sponsoring the women’s super rugby competition in March, the Sydney Roosters have their full complement of shirt logos from commercial partners, and Suzanne McFadden and Merryn Anderson at LockerRoom have done a feature on the recent news of Porse coming onboard for the cricket world cup to provide free childcare at all the matches. Two netball teams also recently announced their main sponsors. Awesome work by these teams, sports and businesses for creating these partnerships, great to see that sponsoring women’s sport is not so elusive after all.
The mental wellbeing and welfare of sports women was another big topic this week, with Black Fern Te Kura Ngata-Aerengamate sharing her frustration and challenges on social media, and White Fern Amelia Kerr sharing details of her personal journey and challenges with LockerRoom’s Kristy Havill. In Australia, Olympic swimmer Maddie Groves shares more details behind the allegations she made earlier this year on social media, including being sexually molested for 5 years from the age of 13 by one man (still involved in swimming), roughly handled by another coach, and stared at and touched inappropriately by yet another male coach. And when she tried to talk to Swimming Australia about what happened about the third coach, nothing happened. When she removed herself from the toxic environment to train on her own and won two medals at the Commonwealth Games, the national body cut her funding. And that’s just the ‘highlights’.
I can’t help but think that a lot of this behaviour, and acceptance (is that the right word? Lack of action? cover up? apathy?) of this behaviour stems from our history. This week in 1921 the English Football Association banned women’s teams from being able to book pitches for their games, in an effort to ban women from playing football. It didn’t stop women though. Largely undocumented (because it’s history not herstory…) women’s football kept going for many years, under the radar. However, the number of women playing football faded until the late 1960s when there was a resurgence, and the ban was finally lifted in 1971, 50 years after being introduced. The English FA were not the only association to ban women from playing football. The English ban quickly made it’s way to Aotearoa and Australia, plus France banned women from playing from 1932 until 1975, Spain banned women from 1935 until 1975, Brazil’s ban was in place from 1941 until 1979, and Germany’s ban was from 1955 until 1970. Imagine what might have been if women had not been banned, and in fact had been encouraged to keep playing in front of the crowds of thousands that were watching women’s sport in 1921.
This week Wellington Phoenix women’s coach Gemma Lewis shared how the team have tackled coming together in a short space of time, bringing together historically sporting rivals into one team, and facing Christmas away from home. This is a beautiful story of coaches looking after their players and prioritising their wellbeing.
My play of the week has to be Australian footballer Sam Kerr dropping her shoulder into a pitch invader, flooring him (check out the clip on Twitter). She got a yellow card for her troubles, which is outrageous, but even more outrageous is the way this guy was just casually wandering around the pitch taking selfies with players who were doing their best to ignore him. This was a top flight game – Sam’s club Chelsea were playing Juventus in their European Women’s Champion League game. It wasn’t until after Sam had dropped him that two people could be seen running towards the guy to get rid of him. If this was a men’s game… do I even need to finish that sentence?!
Check out all the key media headlines in women’s sport for the week of 10 December right here.
Alida Shanks 