WEBVTT
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Posting isn't a strategy, followers aren't necessarily fans, and let's be honest, attention means nothing if you don't know what to do with it.
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Welcome to Field Position.
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I'm Dixie Crawford, a communication strategist, storyteller, and sports tragic.
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This is where we talk about what happens when sporting clubs start thinking like brands about content, culture, community, influence, and commercial value.
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Because your club already has a brand.
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The question is whether you're intentionally building it.
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If you want to build something people want to follow, belong to, and invest in, you're in the right field position.
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Let's get started.
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Hello everyone, welcome to the Field Position Podcast.
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My name is Dixie Crawford.
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For those of you who don't know me, and if you're brand new to this space, you've just discovered the podcast or you're starting to learn a little bit about what I do and how I do it, I think it's important for me to give you a bit of an introduction episode.
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So, one, you have an understanding of what I do, you get what I'm trying to achieve, but also you understand the backstory that sits behind how it is I that I came to deciding to launch the field position of the podcast.
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So contextually, a bit of personal background about me.
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I like I said, I'm my name is Dixie Crawford, I'm 39 years old, I'm about to be 40 in January.
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Oh my goodness.
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And I love sport.
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Outside of, I guess, let's talk about my personal life to start with.
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So I'm a daughter, I'm I'm a sister, I'm an auntie, I'm a cousin, and I yeah, love all of those different parts of my life and yeah, I really enjoy.
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I'm a black woman, I love to cook, I love to eat.
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Who doesn't love to eat?
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I'm really good at cooking curried sausages, but I outside of all of my personal life, I also own a couple of businesses and I have a studio in Dubot called Studio West, which is a content studio where I produce a lot of podcasts and there's photo shoots and all those different types of things that happen in your average content studio.
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But outside of that creative side of my life, I've been a business owner for the last nine years and I've done a lot of work around storytelling, around strategic planning, business development, and implementation of change management.
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And in the last two or three years, I've really been focused on the creative side of my brain and wanting to do those things that actually really excite me and I find interesting.
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I do love my work that I do in the corporate world, but it's also does it's not necessarily the thing that lights me up.
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What does light me up is creativity and what absolutely continues to drive me is community connection and culture.
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And for the last two years, I have really gone all in on being, I guess contributing my I love sport.
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I love sport in rugby league, I love rugby union, softball, cricket, but my main sport that I really do just froth over is rugby league.
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And for the last couple of years, I've been around a team called the Burke Warriors.
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And if you're listening to this outside of Australia, in Australia, we have during the off-seasons for our our sports, we have a lot of carnivals that take place.
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And one of the carnivals that's incredibly important to us as Aboriginal people is the Curry Knockout if you're on the East Coast.
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I'm sure other parts of the nation have big events that bring a lot of mob together and they have those events and they're really fantastic.
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But ours in New South Wales is called the the Curry Knockout.
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Anyway, my two brothers and a lot of my cousins and my kinship, my family, and and you know, the community that I've been connected to all my life.
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We compete at this knockout tournament for a team called the Burke Warriors.
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And for the last three or four years, I've really driven a lot of the content on the weekend for that.
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And last year we got to the final in this big tournament, which is massive.
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There's lots of different grades and lots of different teams that sit there in this tournament over a four-day period.
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Anyway, we got to the grand final and we unfortunately went down to the Newcastle Yowies.
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Congratulations to them, still traumatising us, but you know, that was a great game.
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It was a great game, but over that weekend I produced a lot of content that later, you know, that after the tournament had ended, just continued to live on.
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And if I'm to be honest, I probably had a bit of a you know depression kind of episode because I really miss being around the sport.
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I miss being around community, I missed the conversations, and I just missed that connection.
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So after that, I started this other project called Sideline Sister, which was basically I went and bought this A7 for Sony camera and a 70 70 to 200mm lens and just wanted to learn sports videography.
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I was really captivated by plays, and I was really interested in, you know, the emotion that you could see on a player's face when they're scoring a trial, they're making a tackle, and just you know, all those things that you kind of you think to yourself, oh my goodness, I wonder what that person was thinking at that moment when that tackle happened or they made that break or whatever it might have been.
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I'm one of those people that's really interested in the story that sits behind a play.
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And so the sequence of events is that I went from being at the Curry Knockout to then being at different carnivals, and then I just decided that I'm gonna have a crack at it.
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And so one day, coincidentally, you know, a couple of days after I'd made this decision that I was going to buy another camera and learn a little bit more, I was gonna buy an FX3, which is the Mac Daddy of cameras, right?
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I decided that I was gonna buy that.
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And then coincidentally, I saw a friend of mine who hadn't seen for a really long time at the tip one day here in Dubot, and I just said to him, Hey, I got a new camera, can I come take some photos?
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And fast forward, you know, nine months, I have spent, you know, the better half of the year being around a local club in Dubbo called the Macquarie Raiders, and I spent time filming their games as well as getting a lot of behind the scenes kind of content and building their brand position within the PMP, which is the Peter MacDonald uh premiership out here in Western New South Wales, and you know, the teams that are kind of connected with that.
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I think there's about 11 of them.
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But I spent better half of a year really getting into this and developing my skills and my confidence and my capability to be able to produce podcasts and tell stories and understand the tech, but also really think about how I can leverage principles and my knowledge around branding and marketing for a sporting club and how it is that because I know the power of branding, right?
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I've built some pretty successful businesses over the years using my insight and my, I guess, my willingness to to push through the discomfort of building a brand and the change that comes with that.
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To then, you know, I had a crack of that with Macquarie this year, and and I've received a lot of feedback that from people in community, but also people outside of our double community that that are now aware of who the Macquarie Raiders are because of the work that I had been doing.
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And so I decided that I was going to create field position because I think one of the biggest challenges for a lot of organizations, particularly sporting organizations, is that in some degrees we we have a lot more potential than what we probably realize, right?
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We have a lot more potential in brand positioning, there's a lot more capability that does sit there, and there can also be some really good commercial outcomes for an organization, for a sporting organization, if you know what you're doing and you are prepared to make some changes and you're also prepared to ride that change regardless of how uncomfortable it can be, because change management is really tricky, right?
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So I've been on this journey for a little bit of time supporting a local club, but I also think that my skills and my knowledge and my insight around brand building can really help a lot of other small clubs who are volunteer organizations, run on the smell of an oily rag, that have a limited capability, certainly very limited resources, but just need some basic information to kind of help you get started.
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And I guess for you to also make some really clear decisions about who you are right now, where it is that you want to go.
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And if your organization does want to grow, what's the one or two tangible practical steps that you can take that actually start to get the ball rolling and get you moving into a position of where it is that you want to be?
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So look, I don't come from a sports media background or even a traditional media pathway at all.
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Everything that I know and everything that I've learned over the years has been from experience testing, failing, retrying, taking things out, trying new things, getting advice, building relationships, all of those different types of things, right?
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Like I think that we live in a world where there's so much information that is available to you that you just don't necessarily need a formal education around media.
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I'm sure people that work in media will say, yeah, you do sis.
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And that's fair.
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But I think for the purpose of the work that I do, I think I've learned enough in the world and I've tested and trialed enough things in the in in my time to understand what kind of works.
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And I guess I just want to be able to support through this podcast, give people that opportunity to build a brand within the resources that they've got available, the skills and the knowledge that they have, and to make it work for them rather than using content as a just another thing that you have to do.
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It is just another thing that you have to do, but if you do it well, it can be an increasingly valuable asset to your organization and your team, your club, your commercial position within your local community if you do it the right way.
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Sometimes you don't have to do 10 things, sometimes you just have to do the one thing really well, and that is what helps you grow and develop as an organization.
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So that's kind of where I'm at now.
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I've got a health science degree, run a couple of businesses, but yeah, I just wanted to flag that I don't have any professional formal education and training at this point.
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I'm sure that will change in the future.
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I'm one of those people, by the way, that just decides that if I want to do something, I'm gonna do it, right?
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So I might go down that rabbit hole of of of getting some education in the future.
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But look, the other thing that probably really motivated me to want to do this is that in clubs and community organizations, there's so many interesting characters, right?
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And I think I wanted to make sure that people can have the confidence but also find and know how they can communicate the personalities and the stories that sit behind their club.
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Often what happens is that I think a lot of clubs will focus their social media and the storytelling of their club on their players.
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Now, don't get me wrong, I vibe with the players.
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I love the players, but the players are one part of the story of a club.
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And all of those, and also I will just say this players come and players go, right?
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But the people that support the club being the volunteers, the the families that have been there for generations and generations, they are the true, they are the fabric of an organization.
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They are the fabric of a club, right?
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They're the stories, they're the personality, they're the loyalty, they're the community, they're the history, they're the emotion, they're the belonging, right?
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Like they're that's the story.
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The plays are really cool, 100%.
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The players and the plays they produce on the field are great, but I want to tell you the stories and the people.
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The plays are good, the people are better.
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And that's one of the things that I want to make sure that I share in this series of of podcast episodes as we grow and develop, is that the plays are not the be all and end all.
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It's usually everything else that happens behind the scenes that matters the most.
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I want to share that with you because last year when when we had the career knockout here and it was in Tamworth, there's a video that I recorded on my phone, and it was of my cousin Peter Boy.
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I walked into just the middle of the circle, like I normally do, right?
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Because I'm a big believer that people want to see more than what they do on the TV screen, right?
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They want to see the behind the scene, they want to understand the story, the emotion.
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They would just, they just want to know more, right?
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Everyone is curious and they have this deep desire and hunger to see what else is out there.
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And so this video that I recorded of Peter Boy was me walking into the circle, was a point of view, right?
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Where I walk up into the middle, I move plays out of the way, you can see my hand moving them.
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And Peter Boy is just like going for it, right?
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Like he's ripping in, he's giving the boys a rever.
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He's like, you know, the person, when you see the person, you hit them, you run at them, like he puts he puts his fist in his hand, makes this big noise, and it's there's so much emotion and intensity in that moment.
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That video went viral, right?
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It had something like 2.4 million views, and it only went for about 20 seconds max, I reckon.
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And so those are the videos, those points of views, those behind the scene elements, that's what people want.
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That's what they crave because that's the story and the culture that they want to buy into.
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Sometimes a play in a game is pure luck.
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Sometimes it's it's a rex call, sometimes it's it's the the wind blowing.
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Someone scoring a try isn't always a given, and any footballer will tell you that, right?
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Like anyone can beat you on on it on their good day and on your bad day, right?
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But the people never really change, and that's the story that is really important for you to communicate.
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So I picked up the camera after the knockout, A7 IV, then went to a FX3.
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When I started filming with those cameras and mics, I started to realize that I needed to not show the sport because the sport is being broadcast on TV, right?
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Whether it's NITV, SBS, Bar TV, whatever it might be, right?
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The sport is being broadcast.
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I don't need to broadcast that.
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I need to show the things that people can't see on their camera because that's the exclusive bit, right?
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And when you're looking at that exclusive element, what I want to share with you as we talk about building a brand is that that is how you build and you communicate the core identity of who you are, where you come from, what you're made of, right?
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Like what your organization's values and belief systems are, what your processes are, the type of people that you have around it, the standards that you set, the behaviors you expect, that stuff can't be communicated on TV.
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And so getting your camera and your mic into these places that can't be seen, that becomes your unique value proposition.
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Now, a unique value proposition is really, really important to understand because when you are in a competitive market of multiple sporting clubs, and I'm not just talking about rugby league, sometimes it can be seasonal, right?
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Like, so for example, in Dubbo, where we live, we have two rugby league teams, two rugby union teams, and multiple soccer teams that all play during the same time that we play, right?
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So there's there is competition for attention, there's competition for sponsorship.
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Now, there's ride or die people that will always sponsor the sport that they love because they always have and they always will.
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But there is competition for that, right?
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And sometimes when you can increase your brand visibility, that also increases your brand proposition to a commercial partnership.
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And I'm talking about sponsorship there, right?
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And so finding ways to communicate who you are, your identity, your beliefs, the strategic direction of your organization, what people can expect from you.
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That's the brand, that's what you want to be communicating because that's the bit that sets you apart.
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Now, really, some people will be like, well, what's the difference between you and the other rugby league team in Double?
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Or sometimes people can be like, Well, what's the difference between the Rus and the Rhinos, which are our rugby union teams?
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Because the game is still the same, but it's the people that make the difference.
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And so that's what is important when you are thinking about your brand positioning and the story that you want to communicate.
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It's not about who everyone else is, it's about who you are and how you attract the people that think and believe something similar to what you do.
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Because no one comes to you for the game, they come to you because of the people that you are and the way that you turn up in the world.
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And that's important for us to remember.
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So let me explain to you why I named this podcast Field Position and where it comes from.
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So, field position in the context of sport, right?
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It creates it's about what you can control or what influences the opportunities that are available to you.
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Now, if you are to connect that to a brand strategy, every club, every athlete, every sporting organization has field position.
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What are you known for?
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Who knows you?
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What do they think about you?
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What audiences have you built?
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What assets do you control?
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What opportunities can you create from that position?
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Field position doesn't necessarily guarantee you any result.
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That's one important thing to remember.
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But it does change what becomes possible for you from where you are standing.
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So if you were to really capitalize on the field position of your branding and your marketing and your content strategy and your business position as an organization, what is possible for you?
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So if there's anything that I want to get out of this name, it's for you to take stock of where you currently are in the field and is that the position that you want to be in?
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If it is not the position that you want to be in, what changes do you need to make in order to achieve the goals that you set for yourself and as an organization?
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What I do want this podcast to do is for clubs to stop thinking that they need to post more.
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Now, I'm a big social media person and I'm sure a lot of people that are posting on your your Instagrams, your Facebooks, or your social media accounts, whatever it might be, I'm sure they are consumers of social media as well.
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One of the things that constantly gets our attention is viral content, right?
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So whether it be a trend, whether it be some music, whether it be a similar post that just seems to be going viral and everyone seems to be doing that.
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Now listen, I vibe with that.
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I'm really interested in that, but I'm not tied to that.
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And there's only been one, if I'm to be honest, there's been one trend that I personally, myself, Dixie, have done in 2026 for the Macquarie Raiders.
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The reason I don't use viral content is because when you start doing what everyone else is doing, you start to lose who you are.
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And so when you're chasing these viral content opportunities, you're not necessarily presenting your club, who you are, where you come from, your personality, your values, all of those things.
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Now, I completely understand.
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And look, some people refer to me as a bit boring, and they're like, Well, do something fun, do something interesting.
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No, I'm not like that.
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And anyone will honestly say I'm boring as it comes.
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However, I'm very solid on telling the story of who the people are that surround this club and what makes up the fabric or the DNA of this business, of this organization.
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And so what I want to say to you is that when you are looking at viral content, I want you to really use the future goal as a filter to make decisions in the present moment when it comes to doing viral content.
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Because viral content might get you followers, but viral content doesn't get you followers that then become customers.
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And brands, well, clubs in particular, need to start thinking about how it is that you operate as a business because clubs' growth strategies are never implemented within an organization on the smell of an oily rag.
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You need to be generating revenue, and it's not just generating revenue through gate entry fees and sponsorship.
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There's got to be different ways that you generate revenue, and sometimes viral content might get eyes on you, but that means nothing if no one is buying from you.
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And so I just want to give you some frameworks throughout these episodes about making informed decisions about where you want to go and not necessarily take the easy route because sometimes doing the hard thing is the right thing, sometimes doing the easy thing is the wrong thing for your brand.
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And I want us to be able to talk through that.
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I guess the other thing that I want to talk about is emerging athletes.
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And this is really, really important because there are so many talented kids and young people, or just talented players, right?
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They don't even need to be kids or young people, but there are so many talented players that are in your organizations right now that are not necessarily getting the visibility that they need.
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And now there's an element of self-responsibility where the individual player and their family probably need to be a bit smarter and a bit more tactical and strategic about how they're building a brand for a player if they do want to be an emerging professional athlete, for example.
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But one of the things that's really, really important, and I guess from for a club is to make sure you are consistently showcasing not just the talent of the player, but the person that that player is, right?
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I want you to be able to communicate their values, their belief systems, their contribution to society.
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Because what I do know for all the years that I've been around sport is that you can be the most talented player on earth.
00:19:15.680 --> 00:19:20.799
But if you are a diabolical human, you're gonna get kicked out of the system.
00:19:21.039 --> 00:19:26.480
No one's going to work with you because they can't necessarily trust that you'll be a good person outside of training.
00:19:26.559 --> 00:19:33.599
They can't necessarily trust that on the weekend, when you know, when we're not training, we're not playing, that you're gonna go off the rails and muck up.
00:19:33.680 --> 00:19:43.039
We see this all the time in the media where players have an incredible, an astronomical amount of talent, but they throw it away because it's not because they aren't good people.
00:19:43.200 --> 00:19:44.720
I want to be really clear about that.
00:19:44.960 --> 00:19:52.640
It's not because they aren't good people, it's because they're not necessarily aware of how their decisions have an impact on their brand.
00:19:52.720 --> 00:20:05.680
And so, as a club and as someone who is responsible for brand reputation and brand positioning, it's important that you intentionally create messages and you communicate who someone is, not as a human, not just as a player.
00:20:05.759 --> 00:20:10.319
And so I want to be able to support people to communicate their value proposition.
00:20:10.400 --> 00:20:14.880
And also the other really important point is that your career has an expiry date.
00:20:15.039 --> 00:20:16.559
Everyone has an expiry date.
00:20:16.640 --> 00:20:23.599
And some of the opportunities that you can create for people by showcasing who they are will far out seed their playing career.
00:20:23.759 --> 00:20:33.920
So I just want us to be really mindful about how we're supporting emerging athletes in our organizations and in our teams and how we're showcasing who they are, not necessarily what they do.
00:20:34.079 --> 00:20:39.759
So look, let's wrap this episode up because I just want to talk about what it is that you can expect from this podcast.
00:20:39.920 --> 00:20:50.960
So I want to talk about what it takes to build a sporting brand and to increase your commercial value as an organization with limited resources being time, money, and maybe even equipment.
00:20:51.119 --> 00:20:53.519
How you can do more with less that you have available.
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And again, it's not necessarily doing 10 things at once.
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Sometimes it's about doing the one thing and doing it really, really well.
00:21:00.559 --> 00:21:01.119
That's important.
00:21:01.359 --> 00:21:08.880
So, do you want to be a club that is known for creating networking events for your sponsors and for your players and connecting players with community?
00:21:09.119 --> 00:21:11.519
Do you want to be known for really outstanding photography?
00:21:11.680 --> 00:21:16.160
Do you want to be known for producing high-quality, exciting plays on the field?
00:21:16.400 --> 00:21:31.359
You have to decide what you want to be known for because that is really critical to when it comes to campaigns, when it comes to sponsorship strategies, when it comes to athlete branding, storytelling, content systems, audience engagement, and everything that kind of happens behind the scene.
00:21:31.519 --> 00:21:32.880
All of that stuff is really important.
00:21:33.039 --> 00:21:52.400
So I guess I want to bring my experience, my insights of being in sport and of doing this, and some examples that I can share with you where we might critique some brands of organizations and what was done really well, what could have been done differently, and then also what becomes practical and easy and tangible for you to use in what you're creating at your club.
00:21:52.480 --> 00:21:57.279
So I guess, you know, for me, I want better stories told about grassroots sports.
00:21:57.359 --> 00:22:02.000
I want clubs to recognize the assets that they already have sitting right in front of them.
00:22:02.160 --> 00:22:08.799
I want emerging athletes to understand the value of reputation and brand building because that's going to be crucial to their career.
00:22:08.960 --> 00:22:20.400
I also want sporting organizations to stop seeing media as something that they have to feed every week and start seeing it as something that they can build that has significant value to their organization.
00:22:20.799 --> 00:22:24.480
So look, content is not the end game of this at all.
00:22:24.640 --> 00:22:26.400
Followers are not the end game.
00:22:26.559 --> 00:22:28.559
Even attention, that's not the end game.
00:22:28.640 --> 00:22:44.480
The real question is, how do you put yourself in the best, well, how do you put yourself in the best feel position to take full advantage of what's in front of you, but also to create a future for you, the players, and the club that is sustainable and that is significantly growing.
00:22:44.640 --> 00:22:48.240
Because if you are not growing, I'm sorry, you are going backwards.
00:22:48.400 --> 00:22:50.160
So that's what feel position will be about.
00:22:50.240 --> 00:22:58.720
The first couple of episodes are going to be a mini-series specifically looking into tournaments, because we're in tournament season here in Australia at the moment.
00:22:58.799 --> 00:23:07.200
And I want to talk to you a lot more about how do you capitalize on tournaments that you're attending because your social media presence shouldn't just be about the tournament.
00:23:07.279 --> 00:23:13.119
You should be capturing content and communicating the story of the people that sit behind your teams for that to live on.
00:23:13.200 --> 00:23:15.279
So that's the mini-series that I'm going to go into first.
00:23:15.440 --> 00:23:19.440
So, anyway, you can stay connected with me on two Instagram pages actually.
00:23:19.680 --> 00:23:23.279
Sideline Sisters is probably the main one where you'll find a lot of the work that I do.
00:23:23.359 --> 00:23:45.519
But Black Business Woman is my Instagram page, and I'll be linking in the show notes some emails because the intention is to really build this out and to share as many resources as I possibly can about the work that I do, and I guess some give you some helpful tips and tools that will be relevant for your organization and that will help you grow and develop as a content creator or a brand strategist within your sporting organization.
00:23:45.599 --> 00:23:49.200
So thank you very much for joining me and let's get this started.
00:00:01.120 --> 00:00:08.400
Posting isn't a strategy, followers aren't necessarily fans, and let's be honest, attention means nothing if you don't know what to do with it.
00:00:08.480 --> 00:00:09.599
Welcome to Field Position.
00:00:09.679 --> 00:00:14.000
I'm Dixie Crawford, a communication strategist, storyteller, and sports tragic.
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This is where we talk about what happens when sporting clubs start thinking like brands about content, culture, community, influence, and commercial value.
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Because your club already has a brand.
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The question is whether you're intentionally building it.
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If you want to build something people want to follow, belong to, and invest in, you're in the right field position.
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Let's get started.
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Hello everyone, welcome to the Field Position Podcast.
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My name is Dixie Crawford.
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For those of you who don't know me, and if you're brand new to this space, you've just discovered the podcast or you're starting to learn a little bit about what I do and how I do it, I think it's important for me to give you a bit of an introduction episode.
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So, one, you have an understanding of what I do, you get what I'm trying to achieve, but also you understand the backstory that sits behind how it is I that I came to deciding to launch the field position of the podcast.
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So contextually, a bit of personal background about me.
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I like I said, I'm my name is Dixie Crawford, I'm 39 years old, I'm about to be 40 in January.
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Oh my goodness.
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And I love sport.
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Outside of, I guess, let's talk about my personal life to start with.
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So I'm a daughter, I'm I'm a sister, I'm an auntie, I'm a cousin, and I yeah, love all of those different parts of my life and yeah, I really enjoy.
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I'm a black woman, I love to cook, I love to eat.
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Who doesn't love to eat?
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I'm really good at cooking curried sausages, but I outside of all of my personal life, I also own a couple of businesses and I have a studio in Dubot called Studio West, which is a content studio where I produce a lot of podcasts and there's photo shoots and all those different types of things that happen in your average content studio.
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But outside of that creative side of my life, I've been a business owner for the last nine years and I've done a lot of work around storytelling, around strategic planning, business development, and implementation of change management.
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And in the last two or three years, I've really been focused on the creative side of my brain and wanting to do those things that actually really excite me and I find interesting.
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I do love my work that I do in the corporate world, but it's also does it's not necessarily the thing that lights me up.
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What does light me up is creativity and what absolutely continues to drive me is community connection and culture.
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And for the last two years, I have really gone all in on being, I guess contributing my I love sport.
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I love sport in rugby league, I love rugby union, softball, cricket, but my main sport that I really do just froth over is rugby league.
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And for the last couple of years, I've been around a team called the Burke Warriors.
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And if you're listening to this outside of Australia, in Australia, we have during the off-seasons for our our sports, we have a lot of carnivals that take place.
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And one of the carnivals that's incredibly important to us as Aboriginal people is the Curry Knockout if you're on the East Coast.
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I'm sure other parts of the nation have big events that bring a lot of mob together and they have those events and they're really fantastic.
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But ours in New South Wales is called the the Curry Knockout.
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Anyway, my two brothers and a lot of my cousins and my kinship, my family, and and you know, the community that I've been connected to all my life.
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We compete at this knockout tournament for a team called the Burke Warriors.
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And for the last three or four years, I've really driven a lot of the content on the weekend for that.
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And last year we got to the final in this big tournament, which is massive.
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There's lots of different grades and lots of different teams that sit there in this tournament over a four-day period.
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Anyway, we got to the grand final and we unfortunately went down to the Newcastle Yowies.
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Congratulations to them, still traumatising us, but you know, that was a great game.
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It was a great game, but over that weekend I produced a lot of content that later, you know, that after the tournament had ended, just continued to live on.
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And if I'm to be honest, I probably had a bit of a you know depression kind of episode because I really miss being around the sport.
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I miss being around community, I missed the conversations, and I just missed that connection.
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So after that, I started this other project called Sideline Sister, which was basically I went and bought this A7 for Sony camera and a 70 70 to 200mm lens and just wanted to learn sports videography.
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I was really captivated by plays, and I was really interested in, you know, the emotion that you could see on a player's face when they're scoring a trial, they're making a tackle, and just you know, all those things that you kind of you think to yourself, oh my goodness, I wonder what that person was thinking at that moment when that tackle happened or they made that break or whatever it might have been.
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I'm one of those people that's really interested in the story that sits behind a play.
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And so the sequence of events is that I went from being at the Curry Knockout to then being at different carnivals, and then I just decided that I'm gonna have a crack at it.
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And so one day, coincidentally, you know, a couple of days after I'd made this decision that I was going to buy another camera and learn a little bit more, I was gonna buy an FX3, which is the Mac Daddy of cameras, right?
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I decided that I was gonna buy that.
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And then coincidentally, I saw a friend of mine who hadn't seen for a really long time at the tip one day here in Dubot, and I just said to him, Hey, I got a new camera, can I come take some photos?
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And fast forward, you know, nine months, I have spent, you know, the better half of the year being around a local club in Dubbo called the Macquarie Raiders, and I spent time filming their games as well as getting a lot of behind the scenes kind of content and building their brand position within the PMP, which is the Peter MacDonald uh premiership out here in Western New South Wales, and you know, the teams that are kind of connected with that.
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I think there's about 11 of them.
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But I spent better half of a year really getting into this and developing my skills and my confidence and my capability to be able to produce podcasts and tell stories and understand the tech, but also really think about how I can leverage principles and my knowledge around branding and marketing for a sporting club and how it is that because I know the power of branding, right?
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I've built some pretty successful businesses over the years using my insight and my, I guess, my willingness to to push through the discomfort of building a brand and the change that comes with that.
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To then, you know, I had a crack of that with Macquarie this year, and and I've received a lot of feedback that from people in community, but also people outside of our double community that that are now aware of who the Macquarie Raiders are because of the work that I had been doing.
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And so I decided that I was going to create field position because I think one of the biggest challenges for a lot of organizations, particularly sporting organizations, is that in some degrees we we have a lot more potential than what we probably realize, right?
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We have a lot more potential in brand positioning, there's a lot more capability that does sit there, and there can also be some really good commercial outcomes for an organization, for a sporting organization, if you know what you're doing and you are prepared to make some changes and you're also prepared to ride that change regardless of how uncomfortable it can be, because change management is really tricky, right?
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So I've been on this journey for a little bit of time supporting a local club, but I also think that my skills and my knowledge and my insight around brand building can really help a lot of other small clubs who are volunteer organizations, run on the smell of an oily rag, that have a limited capability, certainly very limited resources, but just need some basic information to kind of help you get started.
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And I guess for you to also make some really clear decisions about who you are right now, where it is that you want to go.
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And if your organization does want to grow, what's the one or two tangible practical steps that you can take that actually start to get the ball rolling and get you moving into a position of where it is that you want to be?
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So look, I don't come from a sports media background or even a traditional media pathway at all.
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Everything that I know and everything that I've learned over the years has been from experience testing, failing, retrying, taking things out, trying new things, getting advice, building relationships, all of those different types of things, right?
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Like I think that we live in a world where there's so much information that is available to you that you just don't necessarily need a formal education around media.
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I'm sure people that work in media will say, yeah, you do sis.
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And that's fair.
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But I think for the purpose of the work that I do, I think I've learned enough in the world and I've tested and trialed enough things in the in in my time to understand what kind of works.
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And I guess I just want to be able to support through this podcast, give people that opportunity to build a brand within the resources that they've got available, the skills and the knowledge that they have, and to make it work for them rather than using content as a just another thing that you have to do.
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It is just another thing that you have to do, but if you do it well, it can be an increasingly valuable asset to your organization and your team, your club, your commercial position within your local community if you do it the right way.
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Sometimes you don't have to do 10 things, sometimes you just have to do the one thing really well, and that is what helps you grow and develop as an organization.
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So that's kind of where I'm at now.
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I've got a health science degree, run a couple of businesses, but yeah, I just wanted to flag that I don't have any professional formal education and training at this point.
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I'm sure that will change in the future.
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I'm one of those people, by the way, that just decides that if I want to do something, I'm gonna do it, right?
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So I might go down that rabbit hole of of of getting some education in the future.
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But look, the other thing that probably really motivated me to want to do this is that in clubs and community organizations, there's so many interesting characters, right?
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And I think I wanted to make sure that people can have the confidence but also find and know how they can communicate the personalities and the stories that sit behind their club.
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Often what happens is that I think a lot of clubs will focus their social media and the storytelling of their club on their players.
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Now, don't get me wrong, I vibe with the players.
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I love the players, but the players are one part of the story of a club.
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And all of those, and also I will just say this players come and players go, right?
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But the people that support the club being the volunteers, the the families that have been there for generations and generations, they are the true, they are the fabric of an organization.
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They are the fabric of a club, right?
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They're the stories, they're the personality, they're the loyalty, they're the community, they're the history, they're the emotion, they're the belonging, right?
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Like they're that's the story.
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The plays are really cool, 100%.
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The players and the plays they produce on the field are great, but I want to tell you the stories and the people.
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The plays are good, the people are better.
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And that's one of the things that I want to make sure that I share in this series of of podcast episodes as we grow and develop, is that the plays are not the be all and end all.
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It's usually everything else that happens behind the scenes that matters the most.
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I want to share that with you because last year when when we had the career knockout here and it was in Tamworth, there's a video that I recorded on my phone, and it was of my cousin Peter Boy.
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I walked into just the middle of the circle, like I normally do, right?
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Because I'm a big believer that people want to see more than what they do on the TV screen, right?
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They want to see the behind the scene, they want to understand the story, the emotion.
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They would just, they just want to know more, right?
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Everyone is curious and they have this deep desire and hunger to see what else is out there.
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And so this video that I recorded of Peter Boy was me walking into the circle, was a point of view, right?
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Where I walk up into the middle, I move plays out of the way, you can see my hand moving them.
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And Peter Boy is just like going for it, right?
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Like he's ripping in, he's giving the boys a rever.
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He's like, you know, the person, when you see the person, you hit them, you run at them, like he puts he puts his fist in his hand, makes this big noise, and it's there's so much emotion and intensity in that moment.
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That video went viral, right?
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It had something like 2.4 million views, and it only went for about 20 seconds max, I reckon.
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And so those are the videos, those points of views, those behind the scene elements, that's what people want.
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That's what they crave because that's the story and the culture that they want to buy into.
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Sometimes a play in a game is pure luck.
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Sometimes it's it's a rex call, sometimes it's it's the the wind blowing.
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Someone scoring a try isn't always a given, and any footballer will tell you that, right?
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Like anyone can beat you on on it on their good day and on your bad day, right?
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But the people never really change, and that's the story that is really important for you to communicate.
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So I picked up the camera after the knockout, A7 IV, then went to a FX3.
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When I started filming with those cameras and mics, I started to realize that I needed to not show the sport because the sport is being broadcast on TV, right?
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Whether it's NITV, SBS, Bar TV, whatever it might be, right?
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The sport is being broadcast.
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I don't need to broadcast that.
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I need to show the things that people can't see on their camera because that's the exclusive bit, right?
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And when you're looking at that exclusive element, what I want to share with you as we talk about building a brand is that that is how you build and you communicate the core identity of who you are, where you come from, what you're made of, right?
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Like what your organization's values and belief systems are, what your processes are, the type of people that you have around it, the standards that you set, the behaviors you expect, that stuff can't be communicated on TV.
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And so getting your camera and your mic into these places that can't be seen, that becomes your unique value proposition.
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Now, a unique value proposition is really, really important to understand because when you are in a competitive market of multiple sporting clubs, and I'm not just talking about rugby league, sometimes it can be seasonal, right?
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Like, so for example, in Dubbo, where we live, we have two rugby league teams, two rugby union teams, and multiple soccer teams that all play during the same time that we play, right?
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So there's there is competition for attention, there's competition for sponsorship.
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Now, there's ride or die people that will always sponsor the sport that they love because they always have and they always will.
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But there is competition for that, right?
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And sometimes when you can increase your brand visibility, that also increases your brand proposition to a commercial partnership.
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And I'm talking about sponsorship there, right?
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And so finding ways to communicate who you are, your identity, your beliefs, the strategic direction of your organization, what people can expect from you.
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That's the brand, that's what you want to be communicating because that's the bit that sets you apart.
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Now, really, some people will be like, well, what's the difference between you and the other rugby league team in Double?
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Or sometimes people can be like, Well, what's the difference between the Rus and the Rhinos, which are our rugby union teams?
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Because the game is still the same, but it's the people that make the difference.
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And so that's what is important when you are thinking about your brand positioning and the story that you want to communicate.
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It's not about who everyone else is, it's about who you are and how you attract the people that think and believe something similar to what you do.
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Because no one comes to you for the game, they come to you because of the people that you are and the way that you turn up in the world.
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And that's important for us to remember.
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So let me explain to you why I named this podcast Field Position and where it comes from.
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So, field position in the context of sport, right?
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It creates it's about what you can control or what influences the opportunities that are available to you.
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Now, if you are to connect that to a brand strategy, every club, every athlete, every sporting organization has field position.
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What are you known for?
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Who knows you?
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What do they think about you?
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What audiences have you built?
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What assets do you control?
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What opportunities can you create from that position?
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Field position doesn't necessarily guarantee you any result.
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That's one important thing to remember.
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But it does change what becomes possible for you from where you are standing.
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So if you were to really capitalize on the field position of your branding and your marketing and your content strategy and your business position as an organization, what is possible for you?
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So if there's anything that I want to get out of this name, it's for you to take stock of where you currently are in the field and is that the position that you want to be in?
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If it is not the position that you want to be in, what changes do you need to make in order to achieve the goals that you set for yourself and as an organization?
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What I do want this podcast to do is for clubs to stop thinking that they need to post more.
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Now, I'm a big social media person and I'm sure a lot of people that are posting on your your Instagrams, your Facebooks, or your social media accounts, whatever it might be, I'm sure they are consumers of social media as well.
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One of the things that constantly gets our attention is viral content, right?
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So whether it be a trend, whether it be some music, whether it be a similar post that just seems to be going viral and everyone seems to be doing that.
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Now listen, I vibe with that.
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I'm really interested in that, but I'm not tied to that.
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And there's only been one, if I'm to be honest, there's been one trend that I personally, myself, Dixie, have done in 2026 for the Macquarie Raiders.
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The reason I don't use viral content is because when you start doing what everyone else is doing, you start to lose who you are.
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And so when you're chasing these viral content opportunities, you're not necessarily presenting your club, who you are, where you come from, your personality, your values, all of those things.
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Now, I completely understand.
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And look, some people refer to me as a bit boring, and they're like, Well, do something fun, do something interesting.
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No, I'm not like that.
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And anyone will honestly say I'm boring as it comes.
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However, I'm very solid on telling the story of who the people are that surround this club and what makes up the fabric or the DNA of this business, of this organization.
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And so what I want to say to you is that when you are looking at viral content, I want you to really use the future goal as a filter to make decisions in the present moment when it comes to doing viral content.
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Because viral content might get you followers, but viral content doesn't get you followers that then become customers.
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And brands, well, clubs in particular, need to start thinking about how it is that you operate as a business because clubs' growth strategies are never implemented within an organization on the smell of an oily rag.
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You need to be generating revenue, and it's not just generating revenue through gate entry fees and sponsorship.
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There's got to be different ways that you generate revenue, and sometimes viral content might get eyes on you, but that means nothing if no one is buying from you.
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And so I just want to give you some frameworks throughout these episodes about making informed decisions about where you want to go and not necessarily take the easy route because sometimes doing the hard thing is the right thing, sometimes doing the easy thing is the wrong thing for your brand.
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And I want us to be able to talk through that.
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I guess the other thing that I want to talk about is emerging athletes.
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And this is really, really important because there are so many talented kids and young people, or just talented players, right?
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They don't even need to be kids or young people, but there are so many talented players that are in your organizations right now that are not necessarily getting the visibility that they need.
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And now there's an element of self-responsibility where the individual player and their family probably need to be a bit smarter and a bit more tactical and strategic about how they're building a brand for a player if they do want to be an emerging professional athlete, for example.
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But one of the things that's really, really important, and I guess from for a club is to make sure you are consistently showcasing not just the talent of the player, but the person that that player is, right?
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I want you to be able to communicate their values, their belief systems, their contribution to society.
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Because what I do know for all the years that I've been around sport is that you can be the most talented player on earth.
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But if you are a diabolical human, you're gonna get kicked out of the system.
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No one's going to work with you because they can't necessarily trust that you'll be a good person outside of training.
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They can't necessarily trust that on the weekend, when you know, when we're not training, we're not playing, that you're gonna go off the rails and muck up.
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We see this all the time in the media where players have an incredible, an astronomical amount of talent, but they throw it away because it's not because they aren't good people.
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I want to be really clear about that.
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It's not because they aren't good people, it's because they're not necessarily aware of how their decisions have an impact on their brand.
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And so, as a club and as someone who is responsible for brand reputation and brand positioning, it's important that you intentionally create messages and you communicate who someone is, not as a human, not just as a player.
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And so I want to be able to support people to communicate their value proposition.
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And also the other really important point is that your career has an expiry date.
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Everyone has an expiry date.
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And some of the opportunities that you can create for people by showcasing who they are will far out seed their playing career.
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So I just want us to be really mindful about how we're supporting emerging athletes in our organizations and in our teams and how we're showcasing who they are, not necessarily what they do.
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So look, let's wrap this episode up because I just want to talk about what it is that you can expect from this podcast.
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So I want to talk about what it takes to build a sporting brand and to increase your commercial value as an organization with limited resources being time, money, and maybe even equipment.
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How you can do more with less that you have available.
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And again, it's not necessarily doing 10 things at once.
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Sometimes it's about doing the one thing and doing it really, really well.
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That's important.
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So, do you want to be a club that is known for creating networking events for your sponsors and for your players and connecting players with community?
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Do you want to be known for really outstanding photography?
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Do you want to be known for producing high-quality, exciting plays on the field?
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You have to decide what you want to be known for because that is really critical to when it comes to campaigns, when it comes to sponsorship strategies, when it comes to athlete branding, storytelling, content systems, audience engagement, and everything that kind of happens behind the scene.
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All of that stuff is really important.
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So I guess I want to bring my experience, my insights of being in sport and of doing this, and some examples that I can share with you where we might critique some brands of organizations and what was done really well, what could have been done differently, and then also what becomes practical and easy and tangible for you to use in what you're creating at your club.
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So I guess, you know, for me, I want better stories told about grassroots sports.
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I want clubs to recognize the assets that they already have sitting right in front of them.
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I want emerging athletes to understand the value of reputation and brand building because that's going to be crucial to their career.
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I also want sporting organizations to stop seeing media as something that they have to feed every week and start seeing it as something that they can build that has significant value to their organization.
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So look, content is not the end game of this at all.
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Followers are not the end game.
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Even attention, that's not the end game.
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The real question is, how do you put yourself in the best, well, how do you put yourself in the best feel position to take full advantage of what's in front of you, but also to create a future for you, the players, and the club that is sustainable and that is significantly growing.
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Because if you are not growing, I'm sorry, you are going backwards.
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So that's what feel position will be about.
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The first couple of episodes are going to be a mini-series specifically looking into tournaments, because we're in tournament season here in Australia at the moment.
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And I want to talk to you a lot more about how do you capitalize on tournaments that you're attending because your social media presence shouldn't just be about the tournament.
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You should be capturing content and communicating the story of the people that sit behind your teams for that to live on.
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So that's the mini-series that I'm going to go into first.
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So, anyway, you can stay connected with me on two Instagram pages actually.
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Sideline Sisters is probably the main one where you'll find a lot of the work that I do.
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But Black Business Woman is my Instagram page, and I'll be linking in the show notes some emails because the intention is to really build this out and to share as many resources as I possibly can about the work that I do, and I guess some give you some helpful tips and tools that will be relevant for your organization and that will help you grow and develop as a content creator or a brand strategist within your sporting organization.
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So thank you very much for joining me and let's get this started.
