25 // Corey Cutrupi // Leveraging Major Female Sport Events to Create Sustainable Fan Engagement

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It would be nice if sports worked together, particularly
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in the women's space, to really try and help
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sort of elevate each other. And it's that classic
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saying, it's like a rising tide helps all boats.
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That was the voice of Corey Cotruppi, the guest
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on this episode of The Knowledge Mill. I'm your
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host, Greg Yocum. Corey Cotruppi is a part -time
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educator, part -time exercise scientist, researcher,
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and full -time sport enthusiast. Currently, his
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research has taken him on a quest to better understand
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how organizations can effectively leverage major
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events in women's football to create sustainable
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growth in Australian women's football. The centerpiece
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of this study was the FIFA Women's World Cup
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2023, hosted in Australia and New Zealand. While
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it was no secret how the bandwagon of women's
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football was full as a result of this event,
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Corey is on the pursuit to identify what strategies
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are most effective in making sure that the bandwagon
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remains at capacity. Previously, Corey has worked
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at Tennis Australia, Football New South Wales,
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and has had various roles in health and sport
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following a sport and exercise science degree.
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Today, he teaches in the undergraduate and postgraduate
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sport management streams in the UTS Business
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School as he looks to conclude his PhD. Still
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finding time to work in the corporate health
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space, Corey enjoys the balance of combining
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his passions into a dynamic working week. Ultimately,
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sport is Corey's biggest passion, and when he
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isn't playing sport, likely due to his knack
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for an injury, he is living and breathing it
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as an educator, spectator, and behind the scenes.
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Corey and I first met each other in 2019 when
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I was coordinating one of the subjects he took
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as part of his master's course at UTS. At the
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time, I was at the same stage of my PhD that
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he is now at in his own PhD. Life goes around
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in funny circles this way. Corey and I have no
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difficulties talking about sport and the lives
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we both lead around it, but this time we decided
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to turn on the microphones. While we did manage
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to keep the focus on Corey's PhD, we also unpacked
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a number of critical issues in the sport world,
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i .e. the things that keep us both engaged in
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this field of research and teaching. This episode
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of The Knowledge Mill was recorded in my office
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at UTS on November 21st, 2025. Show notes, including
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links to more information on some of the topics
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that Corey and I discuss, can be found at thenowledgemill
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.com slash episode 25. That's episode in the
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numerals 2 and 5. Hello, Corey. Welcome to the
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program. Thanks for having me, Greg. Yeah, it's
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been a long time coming. It has. It's been a
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while. It's your people talking to my people
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and vice versa. That's right. We've got there.
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Negotiating between our agents and, yeah. Finally,
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we worked out all the details. The contracts
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are signed. It's good, man. No, I'm glad to be
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here. The lounge is comfy. Yeah, that's right.
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And you are the first guest to what listeners
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will not appreciate is just how comfortable you
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are right now. It is. It is. You're the first
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guest on the couch. I feel relaxed. Yeah, it
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is a very good couch. It's not bad, eh? Yes,
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I'm jealous, actually, because I'm just in my
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desk chair. We can swap halfway through. There
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we go. And if I sound more relaxed later, they'll
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know that's when that happened. You and I have
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known each other for a while, actually. So going
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back to, I believe it was 2019 that I taught.
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a post -grad sports subject for nico that i can't
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remember the name of now i believe that would
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be probably because the name has changed that
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many times yeah uh but yeah what what you and
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i have reflected on in the past about that opportunity
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i was doing my phd at the time i was in the final
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year uh and i was covering that as part of nico
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uh nico shulinkov's uh pep sabbatical for uh
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non -uts people uh and that was a good opportunity
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for me at the time to to take on post -grad teaching
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but what made it an even better opportunity was
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just the value of that that cohort which has
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never been recreated in i've had very good cohorts
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but that's the the gold medal cohort yeah it
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was uh it was a cool time it was um maybe a wednesday
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night from six till nine sort of seminar style
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and yeah i think mean we'll dive into it later
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but i think part of that sort of seeing where
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you were at in your point in your academic career
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and was very inspirational probably not just
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to myself but quite a few in the cohort but i
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think the the the very i wouldn't say hated debates
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but very passionate debates that we had around
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different concepts within the subject it was
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a really cool dynamic where we had a range of
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perspectives from students not just domestically
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but internationally from their backgrounds particularly
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in sport and i think it just made for I would
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still say, and obviously not just because I'm
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on your podcast, but it was easily my favorite
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class that I did. Oh, nice one. Well, it's definitely
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my favorite that I've taught. And like I said,
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that's not to put down any of the other ones
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I've taught. It's just that one was just that
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much fun for want of a better, more academic
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and professional word. It was. As you said, the
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international students, there was a nice blend
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of international students who were passionate
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about sport in their idiosyncratic ways. They
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brought the stories from their home countries.
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They had worked in sport, a lot of them, the
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domestic and the international students. It was
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just a really nice cross -section. And as well,
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everyone always turned up. It was maybe 40 students,
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and we always had 36, 37 in the room who were
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willing to participate. It was lightning in a
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bottle. I've never been able to, I mean, I didn't
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create it that time. I just lucked into being
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along for the ride. But yeah, that was pretty
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magical. It's interesting because now you're
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at sort of the point in your PhD that I was at
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in my PhD at that time. But yeah, let's get into
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that side of things. So how did you... I know
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your story, but for the benefit of the listener,
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the reason that we're here, how did you get from
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that point A to this point B? It's a weird one.
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It's a longish one. I guess benefits of a podcast.
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I can elaborate on it. Basically at the time
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of doing my post -grad course in sports management
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at UTS, I spent a little bit of time in and around
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Tennis NSW and Tennis Australia. So I was working
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on the operations side there and was really enjoying
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that and sort of saw myself completing my Masters,
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which was due to finish mid -2020, so a year
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and a half program, and then move into a full
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-time role in that space. So at that point in
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time, there was honestly no intention. to look
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at a PhD at that point and never even considered
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it. And then we moved into that summer and then
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went overseas for a few months ahead of my final
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semester, did some networking. And everything
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was lining up pretty nicely. And then the whole
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world decided to turn upside down in 2020. We
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don't need to dive into the reasons being, but
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I'm sure we're all very familiar. Most of us
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were there. Most of us were there. And so that
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kind of threw a spanner in the works in terms
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of career prospects in the space I was in at
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that time. No fault of the organization, but
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unfortunately, sport took a big impact, as did
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other areas. But there was no job opportunities.
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in the near future and i think it made me really
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question what what was going to be a viable career
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with the uncertainty that was around so had a
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bit of a i guess a full 180 and dived back into
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what i maybe was inspired to do as a kid and
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that was maybe looking in the police side of
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things and the federal police really caught my
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eye so i actually applied for to be a federal
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cop all right and that was an eight -month process
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and so whilst i was finishing up My master's,
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I was going through that. Physicals, psychological
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assessments, very intensive. And if you ever
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consider doing that, just be prepared for that.
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But we got through it. So early 2021 -ish, we
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got to that space and got the email that I got
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accepted. And I was like, that's really cool.
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And at the time, whilst I was waiting for all
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that, I was actually tutoring at the sports science
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school at UTS and doing exercise. prescription
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and delivery in a really good subject, coordinated
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up there and using my exercise sports science
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background as an undergrad. And so I was enjoying
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that. And basically three days after I got the
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email accepted by the federal police, I tore
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my ACL playing football. So yeah, so that was
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one of those things, a bit of a shock to the
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system and it really rattles you. So obviously
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with the physical demands involved in... what
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it would take for a 12 -month sort of development
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program. There's a lot of physical stuff involved.
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So I notified them and they said, look, until
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you sort your knee out, you're of no use to us,
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which is fair enough, to be completely honest.
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I was no use to a lot of people at that time.
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And so once that happened, it was kind of a conversation
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that lined up with one of the subject coordinators
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or two of them, both Sharon Coutts and Kelly
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Ellis that run the show or ran the show back
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then up there. and they asked me had i ever thought
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about doing a phd and so that was the initial
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sort of seed that was planted in my head and
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that's when the ball started to drop around what
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i would do it in and i sort of went away from
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it not thinking much but over the coming days
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started to think oh if i ever did it what space
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would i like to be in and that's when i started
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to reflect on my time here and seeing how you
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were going about things in your tenure and then
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also had a good relationship with nico schoenkopf
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as well who was looking after you at the time
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and then sort of reached out to him and we had
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a zoom conversation as obviously you couldn't
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be in person around that time and he just gave
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me a little bit of insight around what would
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be involved and if i could think of a good topic
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write a research proposal and then come back
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to him and if he likes it put it to the uni and
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roll from there. So cut a long story short, that's
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what I did. Sat and thought for a while around
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what I'd do and took it back to him. He liked
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it. The uni liked it. And then here I am nearly,
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I think we're there, four years later, nearly
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five years. I don't know where we're at now.
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It's four, yeah, four years later. Yeah, right.
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So that's a very similar story actually to mine.
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I also just kind of reached out blindly to Nico.
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I was maybe a little further back on the curve
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than you were because I... I was sort of reaching
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out to see what doing a PhD would look like.
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So I didn't really have like a, what you might
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call a specific ambition to do one. But then
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he, maybe it happened with you too. He talked
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me into it really quickly. He's a very convincing
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man. Yeah. He instills a lot of confidence within.
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Yeah. So, yeah. The nice thing about Nico too,
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and I can only get away with making. saying something
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that sounds like i'm pumping myself up because
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i'm actually saying it to pump you up it's just
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by extension it's also me uh is that you know
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nico if if he uh if he sees the value then you
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know the value is there like he's he's got a
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good nose for a project that can that's feasible
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and achievable and for a person who can get it
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done yeah for sure he uh He's not wasting his
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time, so it is nice when he's on board with something.
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Yeah, it does instill that confidence because
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he knows what he's looking for. Yeah, that's
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right. That kept me going when you get the harder
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pieces of feedback. This is a love language.
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Yep, it is. It's tough love. He wouldn't tell
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me this if he didn't think I could do better.
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Yeah, exactly. He sees it in me. That's right,
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that's right. Well, can you tell us a little
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bit about... the nuts and bolts the nature of
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your your doctoral project yeah so uh so when
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it sort of came time to put it together there
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was a few things and obviously would be in the
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sporting space that i'd had i guess a dabble
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in within my early career spending some time
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in women's football uh in the junior levels working
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more performance analysis and as i moved to more
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the business management side started to think
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about where it was heading and Obviously, as
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many of us know, whether you are in the sporting
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space or even just casual to sport, the women's
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sphere in sport is an emerging space and continues
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to have a lot of momentum. So my passion is football.
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And I sort of looked on the sporting calendar
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of what was coming up. And so at this point,
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it was 2021 and seeing the 2023 World Cup, which
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was going to be hosted in Australia and New Zealand.
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And I really saw that as an opportunity to...
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to really do something and maybe have some sort
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of impact that's a droplet in an ocean really
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that impact but i thought it was a really cool
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space and an area that i was passionate about
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and having grown up around a lot of older female
00:13:15.799 --> 00:13:17.639
cousins i used to go and watch them play football
00:13:17.639 --> 00:13:20.899
when i wasn't playing football obviously i was
00:13:20.899 --> 00:13:22.559
but on the sundays i'd go watch them play and
00:13:22.559 --> 00:13:26.120
just sort of loved watching them and so that
00:13:26.120 --> 00:13:31.419
was an inspiration in itself and so At the same
00:13:31.419 --> 00:13:34.379
time, I saw a concept of a boom cycle, which
00:13:34.379 --> 00:13:36.460
is presented by an author called McLaughlin.
00:13:37.080 --> 00:13:39.759
And this particular sort of article talked about
00:13:39.759 --> 00:13:43.100
women's sport for years or decades and decades
00:13:43.100 --> 00:13:45.220
has gone through a similar cycle where we hit
00:13:45.220 --> 00:13:47.720
this peak of excitement and it gets a little
00:13:47.720 --> 00:13:50.000
bit of a following. But we sort of just take
00:13:50.000 --> 00:13:51.960
the foot off the pedal and we sort of sit there
00:13:51.960 --> 00:13:53.919
and go, all right, well, we've done enough. We've
00:13:53.919 --> 00:13:57.399
done our bit. And all that momentum that we pretend
00:13:57.399 --> 00:14:00.720
sort of built. just falls away yeah and so it
00:14:00.720 --> 00:14:02.340
was like how do we break that cycle how do we
00:14:02.340 --> 00:14:06.700
actually use one of these major events to really
00:14:06.700 --> 00:14:09.379
change the narrative and change that pattern
00:14:09.379 --> 00:14:12.120
and break the pattern and so that sort of putting
00:14:12.120 --> 00:14:13.980
those two ideas together right we've got a big
00:14:13.980 --> 00:14:17.019
event coming up how do we leverage it to make
00:14:17.019 --> 00:14:19.460
sure that football continues on an upward trend
00:14:19.460 --> 00:14:21.500
in this country particularly in the women's space
00:14:21.500 --> 00:14:25.029
and so sort of fusing that together The overarching
00:14:25.029 --> 00:14:27.750
title of the thesis was around leveraging major
00:14:27.750 --> 00:14:30.370
events in women's football to create sustainable
00:14:30.370 --> 00:14:34.210
fan engagement in Australia. And so that's sort
00:14:34.210 --> 00:14:37.190
of how my thesis was born and we built from there.
00:14:37.330 --> 00:14:40.210
Yeah, nice one. And how have you gone with everything?
00:14:40.610 --> 00:14:44.230
You're a fair ways through the PhD now, but can
00:14:44.230 --> 00:14:46.690
you speak about some of your findings to some
00:14:46.690 --> 00:14:50.470
extent? Yeah, so... It's been, yes, it's felt
00:14:50.470 --> 00:14:54.129
like an eternity. But we're plodding along. We
00:14:54.129 --> 00:14:56.909
call it the home stretch. For those that have
00:14:56.909 --> 00:14:59.450
been in it probably know it's not your typical
00:14:59.450 --> 00:15:02.429
home stretch. It's more of a marathon on top
00:15:02.429 --> 00:15:05.269
of more marathons. But we've recently submitted
00:15:05.269 --> 00:15:08.429
paper one to a journal. So we're waiting to hear
00:15:08.429 --> 00:15:11.830
back from that. We'll level expectations there.
00:15:11.850 --> 00:15:14.710
We'll see how we go. And so that paper was around
00:15:14.710 --> 00:15:21.000
the use of social media. in in leveraging these
00:15:21.000 --> 00:15:23.539
events and so we looked at a few different organizations
00:15:23.539 --> 00:15:25.879
whether it was media or football in australia
00:15:25.879 --> 00:15:29.179
and how they executed their social media media
00:15:29.179 --> 00:15:33.440
strategies during not just during rather before
00:15:33.440 --> 00:15:37.340
during and after the world cup and so was there
00:15:37.340 --> 00:15:41.639
is there an ideal strategy whether it's utilizing
00:15:41.639 --> 00:15:47.220
creative interactive informative types of content.
00:15:47.940 --> 00:15:50.679
And then in addition to that, the types of, I
00:15:50.679 --> 00:15:52.860
guess, the tones they were using as well, which
00:15:52.860 --> 00:15:55.539
was an interesting space. But just the timing
00:15:55.539 --> 00:15:58.759
of the actual posts and the actual activity,
00:15:58.960 --> 00:16:01.899
the amount of activity, what we noticed was there
00:16:01.899 --> 00:16:03.559
was a few that were a bit late to the party.
00:16:03.620 --> 00:16:06.379
So they were very quiet before the tournament.
00:16:06.720 --> 00:16:08.860
And it was a very reactive sort of, oh, hang
00:16:08.860 --> 00:16:11.779
on. There's a World Cup. Yeah, there's a World
00:16:11.779 --> 00:16:14.220
Cup. What's going on? People are actually getting
00:16:14.220 --> 00:16:16.679
excited. We better jump on this bandwagon. And
00:16:16.679 --> 00:16:19.899
that kind of proves the point around the boom
00:16:19.899 --> 00:16:22.080
cycle. It's like everyone jumps on the wagon
00:16:22.080 --> 00:16:24.940
and then it's also after. It's like, okay, are
00:16:24.940 --> 00:16:29.080
you going to keep trying to ride this and try
00:16:29.080 --> 00:16:31.480
and steer it into the next direction, which obviously
00:16:31.480 --> 00:16:34.360
we have the Women's Asian Cup coming up. early
00:16:34.360 --> 00:16:36.960
next year and so are we building a bridge to
00:16:36.960 --> 00:16:39.559
that and trying to see the link between that
00:16:39.559 --> 00:16:41.139
and the next and give people something to go
00:16:41.139 --> 00:16:43.120
back to obviously we have the domestic game here
00:16:43.120 --> 00:16:47.340
was football at all levels steering people back
00:16:47.340 --> 00:16:50.399
into other areas of the game to keep them engaged
00:16:50.399 --> 00:16:52.779
and make sure the sport's still benefiting or
00:16:52.779 --> 00:16:54.620
is it just like right hands in their pockets
00:16:54.620 --> 00:16:56.259
everyone goes back to where they were before
00:16:56.259 --> 00:16:58.919
until something interesting pops up again in
00:16:58.919 --> 00:17:01.909
their mind so You've got to give people a reason
00:17:01.909 --> 00:17:04.329
to stick around. And so social media is such
00:17:04.329 --> 00:17:08.170
a big part of everyone's, or most people's world,
00:17:08.210 --> 00:17:10.730
I'm going to say everyone. And so how it's utilized,
00:17:10.809 --> 00:17:13.609
obviously there's some negatives to it, but how
00:17:13.609 --> 00:17:18.250
it's utilized for the positives and to the advantage
00:17:18.250 --> 00:17:20.950
as a strategy by these organizations was a really
00:17:20.950 --> 00:17:23.269
interesting space that I thought was worth diving
00:17:23.269 --> 00:17:25.769
into. So that's the essence of the first paper.
00:17:25.970 --> 00:17:29.910
Yeah, excellent. As you were talking me through
00:17:29.910 --> 00:17:32.349
that, I'm wondering, were you just looking at
00:17:32.349 --> 00:17:35.150
official channels like Football Australia, maybe
00:17:35.150 --> 00:17:37.589
the governing bodies of the other competing countries,
00:17:37.650 --> 00:17:40.890
or were you looking at brands, fans, players?
00:17:41.250 --> 00:17:44.289
What was the scope? So we kept it close to home.
00:17:44.349 --> 00:17:47.150
So it was three football organizations based
00:17:47.150 --> 00:17:49.109
here, one of them being Football Australia. Then
00:17:49.109 --> 00:17:52.990
we had the Matildas. Then we had... The other
00:17:52.990 --> 00:17:55.069
one, gosh, I feel like I've almost erased it
00:17:55.069 --> 00:17:57.230
from my memory just to move on to the next thing.
00:17:57.329 --> 00:18:00.390
But we had the A -Leagues. And that was sort
00:18:00.390 --> 00:18:02.450
of that next level down. So there was no direct
00:18:02.450 --> 00:18:04.589
association or affiliation with the World Cup
00:18:04.589 --> 00:18:07.089
or the national team. when you've got players
00:18:07.089 --> 00:18:09.569
feeding into that space, it makes sense. And
00:18:09.569 --> 00:18:12.349
so how do they leverage that? And then the media
00:18:12.349 --> 00:18:15.589
space, we looked at Optus Sport, we looked at
00:18:15.589 --> 00:18:18.670
ABC and now just backtracking Optus Sport being
00:18:18.670 --> 00:18:22.890
the streaming, paid streaming broadcaster. ABC
00:18:22.890 --> 00:18:26.170
Sport was there as, I guess, a neutral broadcaster
00:18:26.170 --> 00:18:27.809
where they didn't really have skin in the game
00:18:27.809 --> 00:18:31.910
for financial reasons. But okay, what was a neutral
00:18:31.910 --> 00:18:35.430
broadcaster doing? to promote women's sport if
00:18:35.430 --> 00:18:38.630
they're a sports sort of entity. And then likewise,
00:18:38.670 --> 00:18:41.150
we had Channel 7 who was the free -to -air broadcaster.
00:18:41.329 --> 00:18:45.269
So just understanding how they all viewed the
00:18:45.269 --> 00:18:48.289
event and how they used it was really interesting,
00:18:48.490 --> 00:18:50.789
some of the dynamics and I guess who went hard
00:18:50.789 --> 00:18:55.309
at it and at what point. And then, well, I guess
00:18:55.309 --> 00:18:58.250
sort of a quick overview or one of the findings
00:18:58.250 --> 00:19:01.769
was just post -event, the media obviously...
00:19:02.299 --> 00:19:04.319
are looking to the next thing rather than just
00:19:04.319 --> 00:19:05.859
what's in football. Particularly someone like
00:19:05.859 --> 00:19:07.880
a Channel 7 goes, right, well, we've done our
00:19:07.880 --> 00:19:12.140
bit and the drop -off's quite quick. So that
00:19:12.140 --> 00:19:14.500
was interesting. So yeah, kept it close to home.
00:19:14.839 --> 00:19:17.240
I think the resourcing -wise to try and look
00:19:17.240 --> 00:19:19.619
at every country, I think that'd be a really
00:19:19.619 --> 00:19:22.759
interesting case and potentially something for
00:19:22.759 --> 00:19:25.380
the Asian Cup where it's a smaller pot of countries
00:19:25.380 --> 00:19:27.759
to look at. But there's definitely something
00:19:27.759 --> 00:19:29.710
there and I think... There was a little bit of
00:19:29.710 --> 00:19:33.809
reference back to the women's Euros when it was
00:19:33.809 --> 00:19:35.329
hosted in England and the success they had off
00:19:35.329 --> 00:19:37.569
the back of that. And I think that drew a little
00:19:37.569 --> 00:19:42.450
bit of inspiration from that around how that
00:19:42.450 --> 00:19:45.329
country has really elevated women's football
00:19:45.329 --> 00:19:48.329
and really got behind it. It's not perfect. It's
00:19:48.329 --> 00:19:50.710
still got a long way to go. But I think they
00:19:50.710 --> 00:19:54.230
would be the front runners in really trying to
00:19:54.230 --> 00:19:57.109
elevate women's football and keep it. to a higher
00:19:57.109 --> 00:19:59.589
standard that the rest of the world could potentially
00:19:59.589 --> 00:20:02.430
aspire to. Yeah. Well, they keep breaking attendance
00:20:02.430 --> 00:20:04.250
records over there with some of their matches.
00:20:05.069 --> 00:20:08.769
Because Australia leads the way in some ways.
00:20:08.829 --> 00:20:13.190
You would know, of course, that the 2020 T20
00:20:13.190 --> 00:20:18.529
World Cup was in Australia and the second biggest
00:20:18.529 --> 00:20:21.210
crowd ever for a women's sporting match. was
00:20:21.210 --> 00:20:23.650
at the mcg for that final australia india was
00:20:23.650 --> 00:20:27.230
almost 90 000 uh the only number one was the
00:20:27.230 --> 00:20:29.930
final of the 99 women's world cup in the u .s
00:20:29.930 --> 00:20:33.789
uh but now that's been broken by these these
00:20:33.789 --> 00:20:36.250
football matches in in europe it's been really
00:20:36.250 --> 00:20:39.190
fascinating i think just same time frame as going
00:20:39.190 --> 00:20:43.109
back to when you and i met in 2019 uh just in
00:20:43.109 --> 00:20:45.970
that five or six years uh attendance records
00:20:45.970 --> 00:20:48.150
being broken left right and center in different
00:20:48.150 --> 00:20:52.519
sports and codes and uh I think there was a little
00:20:52.519 --> 00:20:55.019
bit of, the Matildas are, for anyone listening
00:20:55.019 --> 00:20:57.279
who's not a sports fan, they're the women's national
00:20:57.279 --> 00:21:01.319
team. And they enjoyed some, well, I mean, unprecedented
00:21:01.319 --> 00:21:03.400
success in the tournament because they got to
00:21:03.400 --> 00:21:08.660
the semifinal, which was unexpected. But welcome
00:21:08.660 --> 00:21:11.460
for the home team to get that far and give the
00:21:11.460 --> 00:21:15.279
punters something to follow and get excited about.
00:21:16.359 --> 00:21:19.240
And they've... continue to attract big crowds
00:21:19.240 --> 00:21:21.740
haven't they for some of their their friendly
00:21:21.740 --> 00:21:25.420
matches domestically and yeah they they had uh
00:21:25.420 --> 00:21:28.259
they went on a bit of a run of sellouts uh or
00:21:28.259 --> 00:21:31.440
completely selling out the stadium uh which was
00:21:31.440 --> 00:21:33.140
really exciting i think that was a really cool
00:21:33.140 --> 00:21:36.640
thing to to see and it just was a testament to
00:21:36.640 --> 00:21:39.660
the growth of the game uh but that semi -final
00:21:39.660 --> 00:21:42.059
against england uh we won't talk about the result
00:21:42.059 --> 00:21:44.900
but it's uh it was yeah it was a really cool
00:21:44.900 --> 00:21:48.299
point where i think I think it helps when the
00:21:48.299 --> 00:21:51.700
host nation achieves success and potentially,
00:21:51.779 --> 00:21:55.019
I think, outside looking in, overachieves. I
00:21:55.019 --> 00:21:57.480
think internally the squad believed they could
00:21:57.480 --> 00:21:59.359
go a long way and would have endeavoured to win
00:21:59.359 --> 00:22:01.059
the whole thing, so they would have been disappointed.
00:22:01.619 --> 00:22:03.539
But from the outside looking in to get to the
00:22:03.539 --> 00:22:05.640
semifinals of a World Cup I think is a fantastic
00:22:05.640 --> 00:22:09.980
achievement. And I think, speaking broadly, just
00:22:09.980 --> 00:22:13.259
any World Cup really, when you have your host
00:22:13.259 --> 00:22:16.099
nation going... a decent distance in the tournament,
00:22:16.220 --> 00:22:17.859
it does help with engagement and excitement.
00:22:18.200 --> 00:22:23.380
So that was really cool. I think that also, that
00:22:23.380 --> 00:22:26.859
whole space around the build -up to that World
00:22:26.859 --> 00:22:29.819
Cup, everyone in football kind of knew it was
00:22:29.819 --> 00:22:33.440
coming, but I think everyone outside of it just
00:22:33.440 --> 00:22:35.140
was like, whatever until, again, like we've mentioned
00:22:35.140 --> 00:22:37.559
before, it landed on our doorstep and to your
00:22:37.559 --> 00:22:40.819
point before around the T20 World Cup. Again,
00:22:40.900 --> 00:22:43.099
that big major event that happened in 2020, I
00:22:43.099 --> 00:22:45.480
think was obviously there's a lot of other unfortunate
00:22:45.480 --> 00:22:48.960
things that it impacted. But when we're talking
00:22:48.960 --> 00:22:50.680
about the sporting context and women's sport,
00:22:50.819 --> 00:22:54.619
it really put a halt to the momentum that I think
00:22:54.619 --> 00:22:58.279
cricket was building in women's. And you're well
00:22:58.279 --> 00:23:00.980
informed around that space, obviously, and from
00:23:00.980 --> 00:23:03.299
what you noticed. But it was an incredible event
00:23:03.299 --> 00:23:05.480
that was such a shame that... Everything just
00:23:05.480 --> 00:23:07.660
basically stopped within a week or two after
00:23:07.660 --> 00:23:10.559
it. Yeah, one week. One week after lockdowns.
00:23:11.359 --> 00:23:13.539
So that was all because I went down for that
00:23:13.539 --> 00:23:15.940
final. And so it was just the strangest thing
00:23:15.940 --> 00:23:18.079
that you're in. The second biggest crowd for
00:23:18.079 --> 00:23:20.140
any women's sporting event ever. Almost 90 ,000
00:23:20.140 --> 00:23:22.200
people. And then the next week it's illegal to
00:23:22.200 --> 00:23:26.259
be. Out of your house. Yeah. Which is really
00:23:26.259 --> 00:23:28.900
hard to wrap your head around. I mean, for those,
00:23:28.940 --> 00:23:30.500
if we keep this in the archive, those listening
00:23:30.500 --> 00:23:32.599
in 15, 20 years will start to think this is a
00:23:32.599 --> 00:23:34.920
fictitious podcast. Yeah, that's right. If we're
00:23:34.920 --> 00:23:36.759
talking about things like that. What movie are
00:23:36.759 --> 00:23:40.339
they recapping here? Exactly. So yeah, it's a
00:23:40.339 --> 00:23:43.119
fascinating space and things like that, unfortunately,
00:23:43.259 --> 00:23:46.019
help momentum. Yeah, that's right. And we see
00:23:46.019 --> 00:23:48.200
that because, well, there's two things there
00:23:48.200 --> 00:23:50.619
because to your point about the success of the
00:23:50.619 --> 00:23:54.519
home team. Australia were actually, in some ways,
00:23:54.559 --> 00:23:57.140
lucky to get into that final because they didn't
00:23:57.140 --> 00:24:00.900
win their division. And then the semifinal that
00:24:00.900 --> 00:24:03.339
they had to win to get to the final almost got
00:24:03.339 --> 00:24:06.319
rained out. And then South Africa, the higher
00:24:06.319 --> 00:24:09.119
seed, would have gone through by default. And
00:24:09.119 --> 00:24:11.279
so Australia may not have even played in that
00:24:11.279 --> 00:24:13.259
final. And I know that the ticket sales, I don't
00:24:13.259 --> 00:24:14.839
have exact numbers here, but they were somewhere
00:24:14.839 --> 00:24:18.559
around 55 ,000 to 60 ,000. And then when Australia
00:24:18.559 --> 00:24:22.079
made it, they got the last 25 ,000. So it would
00:24:22.079 --> 00:24:23.559
have been a very different story had the home
00:24:23.559 --> 00:24:26.400
team not been there. And then, of course, they
00:24:26.400 --> 00:24:28.759
went on to win, which ended up being a huge,
00:24:28.940 --> 00:24:32.099
iconic moment. And then one week later, go into
00:24:32.099 --> 00:24:37.519
pandemic lockdowns. And then you have the ODI
00:24:37.519 --> 00:24:41.579
World Cup, Women's World Cup in Bangladesh. And
00:24:41.579 --> 00:24:44.259
it seems like, you know, one step forward, two
00:24:44.259 --> 00:24:49.180
steps back in terms of... The venues may or may
00:24:49.180 --> 00:24:50.619
not have been available for certain matches.
00:24:50.859 --> 00:24:54.059
There were a lot of stories about fans, speaking
00:24:54.059 --> 00:24:55.940
about leveraging these kind of events, right?
00:24:56.000 --> 00:24:58.400
Fans that were coming from Australia or even
00:24:58.400 --> 00:25:01.000
further away in England that just couldn't even
00:25:01.000 --> 00:25:04.380
make reservations for accommodation or even flights
00:25:04.380 --> 00:25:06.720
because they didn't know what city their team
00:25:06.720 --> 00:25:08.559
was going to be playing in. And this was weeks
00:25:08.559 --> 00:25:10.299
out from the tournament. That should have been
00:25:10.299 --> 00:25:14.720
booked in months before. You have all this momentum,
00:25:14.779 --> 00:25:16.880
as you said, and sure, a pandemic, that's one
00:25:16.880 --> 00:25:20.740
thing. But then if you can't harness that and
00:25:20.740 --> 00:25:23.440
carry the momentum forward, some of it's luck.
00:25:23.599 --> 00:25:25.339
You've got to get the home team into the final
00:25:25.339 --> 00:25:28.380
to get that extra $25 ,000 to come along. But
00:25:28.380 --> 00:25:30.740
the other is you've got to have a stadium like
00:25:30.740 --> 00:25:34.170
the MCG that can hold that. crowd of 86 000 uh
00:25:34.170 --> 00:25:36.430
that when they had the women's ashes tested the
00:25:36.430 --> 00:25:38.569
mcg earlier in the year i mentioned to you before
00:25:38.569 --> 00:25:40.130
we started recording that i was down there for
00:25:40.130 --> 00:25:43.089
that and that set a record for women's test matches
00:25:43.089 --> 00:25:46.670
but the the sub headline to all of that is there
00:25:46.670 --> 00:25:48.529
aren't that many women's test matches so there's
00:25:48.529 --> 00:25:51.789
not a lot of of uh supply and then also when
00:25:51.789 --> 00:25:53.710
they're played they tend to be played in in smaller
00:25:53.710 --> 00:25:58.099
stadiums and during the middle of the week So
00:25:58.099 --> 00:26:00.740
the schedule doesn't favor crowds coming out.
00:26:00.779 --> 00:26:04.160
Whereas that one was played after the Australian
00:26:04.160 --> 00:26:08.259
Open had finished in Melbourne. And then it was
00:26:08.259 --> 00:26:11.019
a day -night test. So even if you missed the
00:26:11.019 --> 00:26:13.140
first part of the day, you could come after work
00:26:13.140 --> 00:26:15.839
or after the kids got off school, come in, tickets
00:26:15.839 --> 00:26:18.319
are 20 bucks. And I think they got some, the
00:26:18.319 --> 00:26:20.599
total attendance across the, it didn't get to
00:26:20.599 --> 00:26:23.000
the fourth day because Australia annihilated
00:26:23.000 --> 00:26:26.119
them. It only took three days, but it was, I
00:26:26.119 --> 00:26:28.579
think. from remembering 36 000 or something across
00:26:28.579 --> 00:26:32.660
three days yeah it's it's uh it kind of leans
00:26:32.660 --> 00:26:35.500
into a point around something which is interesting
00:26:35.500 --> 00:26:38.140
is and it's a bit of a problem in this country
00:26:38.140 --> 00:26:40.880
is how sports compete against each other and
00:26:40.880 --> 00:26:43.599
for the i guess for the biggest share of the
00:26:43.599 --> 00:26:47.160
pie and it's a good and bad thing we're spoiled
00:26:47.160 --> 00:26:49.079
for choice when it comes to sport in this country
00:26:49.079 --> 00:26:53.980
but it would be It seems a bit obscure, but it
00:26:53.980 --> 00:26:56.240
would be nice if sports worked together, particularly
00:26:56.240 --> 00:26:59.259
in the women's space, to really try and help
00:26:59.259 --> 00:27:02.059
sort of elevate each other. And it's that classic
00:27:02.059 --> 00:27:04.619
saying, it's like a rising tide helps all boats.
00:27:04.880 --> 00:27:07.400
It is a little bit of that, I think. And to your
00:27:07.400 --> 00:27:09.960
point around putting test matches on closer to
00:27:09.960 --> 00:27:12.220
other sporting events, giving people opportunities
00:27:12.220 --> 00:27:14.500
when they schedule it, I think that's really
00:27:14.500 --> 00:27:17.119
important as well. And even just being able to
00:27:17.119 --> 00:27:21.250
be adaptable and flexible. I know a lot of codes
00:27:21.250 --> 00:27:23.630
weren't happy with the Women's World Cup being
00:27:23.630 --> 00:27:27.809
here during the middle of the footy season. But
00:27:27.809 --> 00:27:30.529
ultimately, it just elevates the sporting status
00:27:30.529 --> 00:27:32.190
of the country when you can do something like
00:27:32.190 --> 00:27:35.529
that. And the demand for the first match, obviously
00:27:35.529 --> 00:27:38.410
it was initially at Allianz, credit to the organizers
00:27:38.410 --> 00:27:41.769
to go, you know what, we can put this at a core
00:27:41.769 --> 00:27:45.750
and fill it out. And they did. And it was a sellout.
00:27:46.430 --> 00:27:48.930
All three matches that Australia played at a
00:27:48.930 --> 00:27:51.789
core, I got to. And ironically, I actually did
00:27:51.789 --> 00:27:55.009
my ACL for the second time just before the Matildas
00:27:55.009 --> 00:27:59.349
semifinal. Still got there. But maybe I need
00:27:59.349 --> 00:28:00.950
to move away from women's football for a little
00:28:00.950 --> 00:28:03.269
bit because as soon as I'm associated with it,
00:28:03.289 --> 00:28:06.490
all these injuries. So it is interesting. And
00:28:06.490 --> 00:28:08.130
I think just coming back to the point around
00:28:08.130 --> 00:28:12.869
just being adaptable and... I think it would
00:28:12.869 --> 00:28:15.309
be the word as well. Not just within the sport,
00:28:15.450 --> 00:28:19.690
but across all sports is the way of the future,
00:28:19.750 --> 00:28:21.490
potentially. It doesn't have to be a zero -sum
00:28:21.490 --> 00:28:25.369
game. There might be competition, I suppose,
00:28:25.410 --> 00:28:29.309
between, say, the AFL men's and the NRL men's
00:28:29.309 --> 00:28:33.470
who run their seasons concurrently. But I think
00:28:33.470 --> 00:28:36.710
even at that, if you were a Sydney Roosters supporter
00:28:36.710 --> 00:28:39.309
and a Sydney Swans supporter, most times you'd
00:28:39.309 --> 00:28:40.930
be able to go to both games if you wanted to.
00:28:41.289 --> 00:28:44.170
They're not scheduled on at the same time, which
00:28:44.170 --> 00:28:46.549
would be a nightmare if they were right next
00:28:46.549 --> 00:28:50.029
door. But yeah, it's very rare that that happens.
00:28:50.369 --> 00:28:53.450
And so it doesn't have to, as you said, it's
00:28:53.450 --> 00:28:56.150
a sporting nation and it seems to be an insatiable
00:28:56.150 --> 00:28:59.309
sporting nation. The only thing preventing us
00:28:59.309 --> 00:29:01.609
from watching more sport is that there's not
00:29:01.609 --> 00:29:03.410
more days of the week and more weeks in the year
00:29:03.410 --> 00:29:07.150
in which to watch it. We're probably reaching,
00:29:07.369 --> 00:29:11.029
our mutual friend Hunter Foojack at Deacon could
00:29:11.029 --> 00:29:13.849
speak in more detail about this. We're probably
00:29:13.849 --> 00:29:15.910
reaching something like a saturation point with
00:29:15.910 --> 00:29:20.730
all the domestic competitions. But the thing
00:29:20.730 --> 00:29:23.069
that I've always said about women's cricket is
00:29:23.069 --> 00:29:26.509
that it's a fundamentally different product to
00:29:26.509 --> 00:29:29.950
men's cricket. If you like cricket, you can like
00:29:29.950 --> 00:29:32.250
men's cricket and women's cricket, or you can
00:29:32.250 --> 00:29:34.589
like one or the other. They don't have to...
00:29:35.139 --> 00:29:37.319
compete they're different things if they were
00:29:37.319 --> 00:29:40.279
up on a shelf they're it's not different flavors
00:29:40.279 --> 00:29:42.279
of the same thing it's two different things it's
00:29:42.279 --> 00:29:45.539
apples and oranges not uh yeah uh different flavored
00:29:45.539 --> 00:29:48.779
potato chips i sort of stretched that analogy
00:29:48.779 --> 00:29:52.079
pretty far but uh but you take my point uh and
00:29:52.079 --> 00:29:54.680
it's just it's not that one is better or worse
00:29:54.680 --> 00:29:57.920
it's just which one do you like yep and that
00:29:57.920 --> 00:29:59.700
and then it is and then you're watching if you
00:29:59.700 --> 00:30:01.819
only focus for example on women's cricket as
00:30:01.819 --> 00:30:04.319
i as I tend to do. I followed the men's cricket,
00:30:04.420 --> 00:30:08.980
but I watch women's cricket much more. I don't
00:30:08.980 --> 00:30:12.400
pay attention to how fast anyone is bowling or
00:30:12.400 --> 00:30:15.039
how far away the boundaries are. I'm watching
00:30:15.039 --> 00:30:20.640
world -class athletes compete. And that is the
00:30:20.640 --> 00:30:25.160
thing compelling me to tune in. It's not about
00:30:25.160 --> 00:30:28.880
comparing. And I think once you go down that
00:30:28.880 --> 00:30:31.299
road of comparing, you're kind of acting in bad
00:30:31.299 --> 00:30:33.970
faith. In some ways, I'm starting to speak to
00:30:33.970 --> 00:30:35.630
a different point. This is about to become a
00:30:35.630 --> 00:30:39.829
different podcast. I think you raise a good point
00:30:39.829 --> 00:30:44.309
around being able to follow any sport, really,
00:30:44.390 --> 00:30:47.609
if you find the right reasons to as well. And
00:30:47.609 --> 00:30:50.170
that's the biggest thing for me. It's not just
00:30:50.170 --> 00:30:52.490
about if it's males, females playing. There's
00:30:52.490 --> 00:30:54.730
certain sports that I generally wouldn't watch,
00:30:54.829 --> 00:30:58.460
but I think it's the patriotism in me. If Australia
00:30:58.460 --> 00:31:00.920
is playing, I don't care what it is, especially
00:31:00.920 --> 00:31:02.380
if we're playing England, which we are at the
00:31:02.380 --> 00:31:04.000
moment in the ashes, which has just kicked off.
00:31:04.099 --> 00:31:06.920
And that's going to consume a lot of my sports
00:31:06.920 --> 00:31:11.519
watching time. But I think ultimately, if you
00:31:11.519 --> 00:31:13.180
can find a reason to get behind it, it doesn't
00:31:13.180 --> 00:31:15.500
really matter who is playing and what they're
00:31:15.500 --> 00:31:19.460
playing. It's the excitement you can get from
00:31:19.460 --> 00:31:21.180
it. And I think people need to understand that,
00:31:21.220 --> 00:31:24.170
like you said, they are different things. We're
00:31:24.170 --> 00:31:26.410
doing ourselves a disservice by trying to compare
00:31:26.410 --> 00:31:28.990
the two. Just appreciate them for what they are.
00:31:29.190 --> 00:31:31.970
And if you go in with that sort of removal of
00:31:31.970 --> 00:31:34.269
expectations, I think you'll actually have a
00:31:34.269 --> 00:31:37.109
much better time. And suddenly you've got more
00:31:37.109 --> 00:31:39.450
opportunity to enjoy sport. People complain,
00:31:39.650 --> 00:31:41.230
oh, there's nothing on. It's like, well, actually.
00:31:41.750 --> 00:31:46.130
Yeah, there's heaps. That's almost all you can
00:31:46.130 --> 00:31:49.220
watch on live television these days. sport yeah
00:31:49.220 --> 00:31:52.619
it's one of the only uh the only television television
00:31:52.619 --> 00:31:54.980
products that you have to watch in the moment
00:31:54.980 --> 00:31:57.880
like as soon as it's over it's almost useless
00:31:57.880 --> 00:32:00.279
unless you can somehow avoid spoilers and watch
00:32:00.279 --> 00:32:03.859
a replay yeah look i i'm a big stickler for live
00:32:03.859 --> 00:32:06.220
sport if i if i need to watch it and it's big
00:32:06.220 --> 00:32:09.220
enough i'll get up at any sort of hour because
00:32:09.220 --> 00:32:11.819
i just it just feels different even if you don't
00:32:11.819 --> 00:32:13.380
know the result and you're watching a replay
00:32:13.380 --> 00:32:15.819
i feel like i already know what's going to happen
00:32:15.819 --> 00:32:18.230
or it just doesn't It doesn't feel the same.
00:32:18.349 --> 00:32:21.109
Yeah, that's right. Or you start thinking to
00:32:21.109 --> 00:32:22.670
yourself, like, I'm getting upset about something
00:32:22.670 --> 00:32:25.509
that's done. Yeah, exactly. I can just Google
00:32:25.509 --> 00:32:27.569
right now what happened. Exactly. I can save
00:32:27.569 --> 00:32:31.190
myself the hour, hour and a half, and get on
00:32:31.190 --> 00:32:34.269
with my day. But I refuse and I sit here. So,
00:32:34.309 --> 00:32:37.269
yeah, it's a bit of a spiral sometimes. Yeah,
00:32:37.269 --> 00:32:40.119
yeah, that's right. That was always me with my
00:32:40.119 --> 00:32:42.140
American sports. And really the only one that
00:32:42.140 --> 00:32:44.160
I can time shift is baseball because their, their
00:32:44.160 --> 00:32:46.059
streaming service does quite a good job of, you
00:32:46.059 --> 00:32:49.539
can turn off all spoilers. And I don't, if I
00:32:49.539 --> 00:32:51.119
don't look at social media, I can just get up
00:32:51.119 --> 00:32:52.839
and watch the replay and I can pretend that it's
00:32:52.839 --> 00:32:56.180
live, but there is something lost there. And
00:32:56.180 --> 00:33:00.019
you don't, if you happen to have a bunch of friends
00:33:00.019 --> 00:33:01.960
who are fans of the same team, you can't talk
00:33:01.960 --> 00:33:03.539
to any of them while you're watching, you lose
00:33:03.539 --> 00:33:06.160
the social element and yeah, it's, it's a different
00:33:06.160 --> 00:33:08.900
experience. But again, we're starting to get
00:33:08.900 --> 00:33:13.579
into a different podcast. That's why it's dangerous
00:33:13.579 --> 00:33:16.819
talking to someone who I know so well and that
00:33:16.819 --> 00:33:19.079
we have so much in common in terms of our research
00:33:19.079 --> 00:33:23.710
interests. we can cut this into chapters we might
00:33:23.710 --> 00:33:26.650
have to i mean i think the the computer is going
00:33:26.650 --> 00:33:28.109
to run out of power before we finish running
00:33:28.109 --> 00:33:31.049
out of things to say that's right uh but yeah
00:33:31.049 --> 00:33:33.269
so it's uh i've thought about you at different
00:33:33.269 --> 00:33:34.809
points whenever i've seen some of these things
00:33:34.809 --> 00:33:37.130
happening because uh well you and i were teaching
00:33:37.130 --> 00:33:38.970
in the same subject this semester international
00:33:38.970 --> 00:33:44.900
uh sport management with nico uh so just uh Everything
00:33:44.900 --> 00:33:47.859
just goes around in the same circles in many
00:33:47.859 --> 00:33:50.880
ways. It almost sounds like we just serve Nico.
00:33:51.119 --> 00:33:52.440
Yeah, that's right. We've got to have him on.
00:33:52.500 --> 00:33:54.579
I don't know if I want him to be listening to
00:33:54.579 --> 00:33:58.740
this episode at this point. Maybe he'll... Well,
00:33:58.839 --> 00:34:01.400
we've only said good things. We love you, Nico,
00:34:01.519 --> 00:34:06.000
if you're listening. We do. But yeah, talking
00:34:06.000 --> 00:34:08.800
about the Cricket World Cup example in Bangladesh
00:34:08.800 --> 00:34:13.300
and... It's just such a shame because you can't
00:34:13.300 --> 00:34:16.780
recapture it. And something like that World Cup
00:34:16.780 --> 00:34:19.659
final, you can't put it in a bottle. And there
00:34:19.659 --> 00:34:22.760
was so much of that same momentum around coming
00:34:22.760 --> 00:34:27.440
back to the women's FIFA World Cup, around the
00:34:27.440 --> 00:34:29.840
excitement with the Matildas and everything else.
00:34:29.960 --> 00:34:32.719
And I'm not a big football fan, so this is where
00:34:32.719 --> 00:34:37.130
I can ask you. Did they pull it off? Because
00:34:37.130 --> 00:34:39.030
we're a couple of years clear of the World Cup
00:34:39.030 --> 00:34:41.409
now. Have they been able to keep the momentum
00:34:41.409 --> 00:34:44.190
going with football off the back of that event
00:34:44.190 --> 00:34:49.369
and the Matilda success? I think the first answer
00:34:49.369 --> 00:34:52.230
for a lot of people would just be yes. And I
00:34:52.230 --> 00:34:55.110
think there was a lot of success out of it. I
00:34:55.110 --> 00:34:57.769
think the biggest thing that I continue to drive
00:34:57.769 --> 00:35:00.570
home in a lot of, not just what I'm finding,
00:35:00.630 --> 00:35:02.949
but also what I'm writing up seems to be, did
00:35:02.949 --> 00:35:06.099
they maximize the potential? And for me, that
00:35:06.099 --> 00:35:08.619
answer is no, because I think, and that's not
00:35:08.619 --> 00:35:12.420
necessarily a bad thing. It's just opportunities
00:35:12.420 --> 00:35:15.500
that are missed that need to be learned from.
00:35:16.039 --> 00:35:18.219
So then we don't make the same mistake next time.
00:35:18.260 --> 00:35:21.099
And so that way everyone gets a slice of the
00:35:21.099 --> 00:35:24.579
pie or, you know, every dollar that can be invested
00:35:24.579 --> 00:35:27.579
into the sport is invested into the sport. And
00:35:27.579 --> 00:35:30.199
so then that dollar gets turned over. whether
00:35:30.199 --> 00:35:31.980
it's invested into player development, whether
00:35:31.980 --> 00:35:34.039
it's invested into the broadcasting side to create
00:35:34.039 --> 00:35:36.539
a better experience, whatever it goes into, it's
00:35:36.539 --> 00:35:39.739
only for the benefit of the game. And so I think,
00:35:39.760 --> 00:35:42.380
yeah, the short answer would be yes. And I think
00:35:42.380 --> 00:35:44.760
there was a lot of excitement and I think it
00:35:44.760 --> 00:35:49.639
changed a lot around, you know, the TVs at the
00:35:49.639 --> 00:35:53.199
pub on the main screen was women's football.
00:35:54.219 --> 00:35:57.420
And there's people going out in the middle of
00:35:57.420 --> 00:36:00.599
winter. collectively down at Tomalong Park for
00:36:00.599 --> 00:36:03.380
watch parties and down at local football grounds
00:36:03.380 --> 00:36:06.099
and within the community. And look, that did
00:36:06.099 --> 00:36:08.599
vary from probably association to association
00:36:08.599 --> 00:36:10.760
and club to club on how well they leveraged it,
00:36:10.780 --> 00:36:14.099
how much they gave opportunities for all members
00:36:14.099 --> 00:36:16.079
and players and coaches to come down and have
00:36:16.079 --> 00:36:18.219
a watch night down at the park on a screen to
00:36:18.219 --> 00:36:20.059
watch the game. Some clubs did that amazingly,
00:36:20.159 --> 00:36:24.320
and other clubs, that was really lost on them.
00:36:24.619 --> 00:36:28.079
And so I think it's... That education piece around
00:36:28.079 --> 00:36:33.300
probably the stubborn individuals in the sport
00:36:33.300 --> 00:36:36.000
that are very much like, no, this is how the
00:36:36.000 --> 00:36:39.739
sport is and supposedly only men play the sport.
00:36:39.840 --> 00:36:42.539
It's like, well, no, get with the times or get
00:36:42.539 --> 00:36:46.260
out of the lane because it's a shared space and
00:36:46.260 --> 00:36:48.539
I think it was really exciting and it really
00:36:48.539 --> 00:36:51.179
transcended not just football in this country
00:36:51.179 --> 00:36:53.699
but just sport in this country. We started talking
00:36:53.699 --> 00:36:57.530
about it. up there with Kathy Freeman and that
00:36:57.530 --> 00:37:01.949
John Aloisi penalty in 05. But the way it captured,
00:37:02.090 --> 00:37:05.010
again, not just women's football, but just sport,
00:37:05.170 --> 00:37:09.829
I think it started to tilt the needle towards
00:37:09.829 --> 00:37:13.809
women's and men's football, or not just women's
00:37:13.809 --> 00:37:15.329
and men's football, but women's and men's sport
00:37:15.329 --> 00:37:17.929
can be talked about in the same space and have
00:37:17.929 --> 00:37:22.130
the same level of excitement. And so, yes, we'll
00:37:22.130 --> 00:37:24.909
say different things. they both deserve the same
00:37:24.909 --> 00:37:28.429
amount of respect and i think we saw how epic
00:37:28.429 --> 00:37:33.989
it can be yeah it just needs to be it needs to
00:37:33.989 --> 00:37:36.869
be there and served in front of people as men's
00:37:36.869 --> 00:37:38.590
sport has always been and that's the difference
00:37:38.590 --> 00:37:40.670
right is people go well no one wants to watch
00:37:40.670 --> 00:37:42.570
it it's like well no one's putting it out there
00:37:42.570 --> 00:37:45.030
yet yeah there's not enough of it yeah and there's
00:37:45.030 --> 00:37:47.750
been there's been studies and surveys done where
00:37:47.750 --> 00:37:51.750
an overwhelming majority of people said yes if
00:37:52.119 --> 00:37:54.639
it was broadcasted. I'd watch it. Yeah. But it
00:37:54.639 --> 00:37:57.400
hasn't been in recent years. Now in the most
00:37:57.400 --> 00:37:59.219
recent years, yes, we've seen a bit more, but
00:37:59.219 --> 00:38:02.440
you know, it only took seven, eight years ago.
00:38:02.460 --> 00:38:05.179
And there was, I think maybe even five years
00:38:05.179 --> 00:38:07.699
ago, 5 % of sports broadcasts were women's sport.
00:38:07.800 --> 00:38:11.019
Yeah. Like 5%. That's, that's nothing. Yeah.
00:38:11.079 --> 00:38:15.380
And so if your TV is on 50 % of the time, you're
00:38:15.380 --> 00:38:17.579
very likely to miss that 5 % as well. That's
00:38:17.579 --> 00:38:19.380
the other problem too, right? Scheduling. Yeah.
00:38:19.420 --> 00:38:23.440
Yeah. So. And the society we live in now, unfortunately,
00:38:23.800 --> 00:38:26.179
or fortunately, I don't know, we move on very
00:38:26.179 --> 00:38:28.860
quickly. And so our attention span is short.
00:38:28.940 --> 00:38:31.280
So if you're not putting it in front of the consumer,
00:38:31.500 --> 00:38:34.760
how likely are they to go out and look for it?
00:38:35.000 --> 00:38:37.380
Yeah. I guess people may have different opinions
00:38:37.380 --> 00:38:40.219
around that, but I think it's important and there's
00:38:40.219 --> 00:38:42.900
a responsibility from broadcasters to really
00:38:42.900 --> 00:38:46.699
invest in women's football as well because I
00:38:46.699 --> 00:38:50.480
think that validates to the casual. Oh, right,
00:38:50.559 --> 00:38:52.019
actually, they're putting money behind this.
00:38:52.239 --> 00:38:54.860
I'll watch it. And you and I know that this is
00:38:54.860 --> 00:38:57.139
absolutely worth investing in. But unfortunately,
00:38:57.239 --> 00:39:00.159
the casual sports fan may not be as aware and
00:39:00.159 --> 00:39:01.739
they need it in front of them to then see it
00:39:01.739 --> 00:39:05.340
and go, wow, that was really entertaining. And
00:39:05.340 --> 00:39:08.380
it just becomes normal to watch it then. Yeah,
00:39:08.380 --> 00:39:12.960
that's right. The case study that I love about
00:39:12.960 --> 00:39:16.219
all of this in Australia is that of the WBBL,
00:39:16.380 --> 00:39:20.769
which is the Women's Big Bash League. And it
00:39:20.769 --> 00:39:22.449
connects to what we've been talking about in
00:39:22.449 --> 00:39:24.750
a couple of different ways because there's been
00:39:24.750 --> 00:39:26.969
interesting aspects of, I believe it's now in
00:39:26.969 --> 00:39:31.530
its 10th or 11th season. It might be 11th. Time
00:39:31.530 --> 00:39:34.989
is weird, so I lose track. Yeah. I know I keep
00:39:34.989 --> 00:39:39.510
getting older. And so other things do too. But
00:39:39.510 --> 00:39:44.599
the interesting thing about the WBBL is... They
00:39:44.599 --> 00:39:46.340
started the Men's Big Bash League. This is the
00:39:46.340 --> 00:39:48.719
domestic T20 cricket competition here in Australia.
00:39:49.519 --> 00:39:52.920
They started the Men's League, and the plan was
00:39:52.920 --> 00:39:55.460
always to bring the Women's League in after the
00:39:55.460 --> 00:39:58.260
Men's League got off the ground. And so it was
00:39:58.260 --> 00:40:00.000
always part of the plan. It wasn't reactionary.
00:40:00.079 --> 00:40:03.519
It was set up in a very structured, tiered way.
00:40:03.760 --> 00:40:05.920
And then the women did come along in, I believe,
00:40:05.980 --> 00:40:09.159
the fourth season of... The fourth season of
00:40:09.159 --> 00:40:10.619
the men's competition was the first season of
00:40:10.619 --> 00:40:12.119
the women's competition. That's the other reason
00:40:12.119 --> 00:40:13.880
I get the numbers confused. It's because each
00:40:13.880 --> 00:40:17.639
season is WBBL 10 or whatever, but then the men's
00:40:17.639 --> 00:40:20.199
has a different number. As I get older, I can't
00:40:20.199 --> 00:40:24.610
keep track of these things. When the women did
00:40:24.610 --> 00:40:28.650
come in, at that time, they had a lot of doubleheader
00:40:28.650 --> 00:40:30.750
matches with the men's matches. The seasons ran
00:40:30.750 --> 00:40:33.570
concurrently, and it allowed for that then. But
00:40:33.570 --> 00:40:35.869
again, this was an intentional move on the part
00:40:35.869 --> 00:40:38.230
of the governing body, which was Cricket Australia
00:40:38.230 --> 00:40:42.130
acting as Big Bash League. Separate CEO, but
00:40:42.130 --> 00:40:47.389
still same organization. And that was very good
00:40:47.389 --> 00:40:50.340
in a lot of ways. But there were interesting
00:40:50.340 --> 00:40:53.039
situations where I'm a Sixers fan, at least Perry,
00:40:53.239 --> 00:40:55.380
probably my favorite athlete of all time. Love
00:40:55.380 --> 00:40:57.280
watching her play, love watching her do work.
00:40:57.559 --> 00:40:59.860
And I would want to go along to all of those
00:40:59.860 --> 00:41:03.000
matches. These were in the glory pre -child days
00:41:03.000 --> 00:41:04.800
when I could just do whatever I wanted at any
00:41:04.800 --> 00:41:07.179
time. And I would try to go to all the matches.
00:41:07.239 --> 00:41:10.679
But if it was a men's doubleheader, it was free
00:41:10.679 --> 00:41:13.079
to go and watch them at Dromoyne Oval or Hurstville
00:41:13.079 --> 00:41:15.400
Oval. If I wanted to go watch it as part of a
00:41:15.400 --> 00:41:16.960
men's doubleheader, now I had to buy a ticket
00:41:16.960 --> 00:41:18.900
to a men's match that I didn't want to watch
00:41:18.900 --> 00:41:24.159
to watch the women. But I wasn't the target then.
00:41:24.199 --> 00:41:26.059
I was already a fan of the women's, and what
00:41:26.059 --> 00:41:27.880
they were trying to get is the people who were
00:41:27.880 --> 00:41:30.400
coming for the men's match. But I didn't like
00:41:30.400 --> 00:41:32.539
the wording of the advertising at the time, which
00:41:32.539 --> 00:41:36.239
was, come early and support the women, which
00:41:36.239 --> 00:41:39.539
suggests that this is not part of what you're
00:41:39.539 --> 00:41:41.829
buying a ticket for. This is this extra bonus.
00:41:41.909 --> 00:41:43.869
Come early. You're here for this other thing.
00:41:44.030 --> 00:41:45.989
So if you come for this thing, you've come early.
00:41:46.170 --> 00:41:48.789
Yeah. Like an opening act. Yeah. A music gig
00:41:48.789 --> 00:41:50.690
or something. Yeah, exactly. Thanks for supporting.
00:41:51.030 --> 00:41:53.510
Which is, yeah, and that's the language around
00:41:53.510 --> 00:41:56.469
it, right? Yeah. And it starts from the organizations
00:41:56.469 --> 00:42:01.010
and it starts from, again, broadcasting and setting
00:42:01.010 --> 00:42:02.889
that up. I think for this particular season,
00:42:03.070 --> 00:42:06.030
the one thing I like, it's in and out, but I
00:42:06.030 --> 00:42:08.190
think more sports need to do it. Even just for
00:42:08.190 --> 00:42:11.110
the men's side of sport, to be honest, is, using
00:42:11.110 --> 00:42:15.010
and utilizing smaller facilities, whether it's
00:42:15.010 --> 00:42:16.750
more community grounds and things like that.
00:42:16.889 --> 00:42:20.550
So having standalone matches at Des Moines Oval,
00:42:20.590 --> 00:42:23.190
standalone matches at North Sydney Oval, it's
00:42:23.190 --> 00:42:26.730
closer to people. And I think full stop, there's
00:42:26.730 --> 00:42:28.889
probably, again, a few sports, whether it is
00:42:28.889 --> 00:42:30.250
rugby league, that should be doing more of that
00:42:30.250 --> 00:42:32.130
too, rather than using an 80 ,000 seat stadium
00:42:32.130 --> 00:42:35.909
to sit 9 ,000 people. Again, another conversation,
00:42:36.030 --> 00:42:40.820
but I really liked that. And for me. even to
00:42:40.820 --> 00:42:45.579
go and watch the men's big bash at the SCG, that's
00:42:45.579 --> 00:42:47.559
a bit of a commute if I'm at home, which I'm
00:42:47.559 --> 00:42:50.280
kind of in the NOS. So any match at Des Moines
00:42:50.280 --> 00:42:53.440
Oval, men or women, I'm going to go watch. So
00:42:53.440 --> 00:42:55.960
that's been really exciting for me. I'm trying
00:42:55.960 --> 00:42:58.480
to get down to as many as I can this season that
00:42:58.480 --> 00:43:00.579
are going to be played at Des Moines Oval, particularly
00:43:00.579 --> 00:43:03.179
for the Sydney Thunder. Not to clash heads with
00:43:03.179 --> 00:43:05.639
you, but that is my team. I think that's happening.
00:43:06.409 --> 00:43:08.409
If it wasn't this week, it's next week. The Sixers
00:43:08.409 --> 00:43:09.869
and the Thunder Edge are going. Yeah, because
00:43:09.869 --> 00:43:12.769
they had the first Sydney Smash last Saturday.
00:43:12.989 --> 00:43:15.369
Oh, okay. Then I missed it. Yeah, but I think
00:43:15.369 --> 00:43:18.369
the next one will be, they'll obviously play
00:43:18.369 --> 00:43:20.010
two. You'd be crazy not to have a Sydney Derby
00:43:20.010 --> 00:43:22.250
twice. Yeah. So, yeah, and I think that's been
00:43:22.250 --> 00:43:25.849
a really good move and they're filling it out,
00:43:25.969 --> 00:43:28.630
which is really cool and making it accessible.
00:43:28.769 --> 00:43:30.150
And again, it comes back to that point around
00:43:30.150 --> 00:43:33.650
make it available and accessible for people.
00:43:33.809 --> 00:43:36.559
Yeah. And people will probably come. Yeah, that's
00:43:36.559 --> 00:43:40.980
right. I said this at the time when I was doing
00:43:40.980 --> 00:43:44.039
my PhD and I was working with the Sixers, which
00:43:44.039 --> 00:43:47.079
was a happy coincidence. Then going to the matches
00:43:47.079 --> 00:43:49.000
was suddenly work. Now I had even more reason
00:43:49.000 --> 00:43:53.139
to go along. The game day experience wasn't strictly
00:43:53.139 --> 00:43:55.639
part of what I was doing in my PhD, but I call
00:43:55.639 --> 00:43:59.480
it work. At that time, they were playing a lot
00:43:59.480 --> 00:44:03.059
of matches at Hurstville Oval, and it was still
00:44:03.059 --> 00:44:05.880
free to get in. They weren't even charging admission
00:44:05.880 --> 00:44:08.440
for these standalone matches. And I just said,
00:44:08.500 --> 00:44:10.639
what an unbelievable opportunity that if you
00:44:10.639 --> 00:44:13.239
live in Hurstville, you walk two blocks down
00:44:13.239 --> 00:44:15.619
the road, you just walk through the open door.
00:44:15.719 --> 00:44:18.079
You don't even line up to get a ticket. Through
00:44:18.079 --> 00:44:20.800
the open door, park on the hill, Elyse Perry,
00:44:21.079 --> 00:44:23.659
Ash Gardner, Alyssa Healy, and whoever they're
00:44:23.659 --> 00:44:26.219
playing. That's just the Sixers. All the big
00:44:26.219 --> 00:44:29.099
guns playing. Incredible. Superstars. Incredible.
00:44:29.800 --> 00:44:32.679
And now even, you know, you pay $15 or something
00:44:32.679 --> 00:44:36.619
to get in. So it's still tremendous value. In
00:44:36.619 --> 00:44:38.980
fact, their fan experience surveys said that
00:44:38.980 --> 00:44:41.179
people thought $15 was too little. I would agree
00:44:41.179 --> 00:44:43.739
with that for the caliber of cricketers you're
00:44:43.739 --> 00:44:49.239
watching. But yeah, there's an economics angle
00:44:49.239 --> 00:44:51.340
to it, right? But it goes back to that thing
00:44:51.340 --> 00:44:52.900
you were saying before, and this is my favorite
00:44:52.900 --> 00:44:55.539
thing to debate with students in these subjects
00:44:55.539 --> 00:45:00.199
that we teach. Women's cricket is not new. appear
00:45:00.199 --> 00:45:03.039
out of thin air. And we had Elise Perry and others,
00:45:03.179 --> 00:45:06.880
Meg Lanning at that time, and other players.
00:45:07.019 --> 00:45:09.800
It goes back to Belinda Clark and the other greats
00:45:09.800 --> 00:45:12.780
back in the day. And the history is over 100
00:45:12.780 --> 00:45:16.519
years of representative national women's teams
00:45:16.519 --> 00:45:19.500
in cricket. And so the question becomes, if the
00:45:19.500 --> 00:45:21.139
women's team has been around as long as the men's
00:45:21.139 --> 00:45:23.780
team, but the women's team doesn't get as much
00:45:23.780 --> 00:45:26.460
attention as the men's team, why is that? And
00:45:26.460 --> 00:45:29.530
it comes down to what... How have you resourced
00:45:29.530 --> 00:45:31.469
it? How have you supported it as a governing
00:45:31.469 --> 00:45:33.730
body? I think for a long time, women's cricket
00:45:33.730 --> 00:45:36.070
was governed separately to men's cricket. It
00:45:36.070 --> 00:45:38.510
wasn't under one umbrella. And so that's where
00:45:38.510 --> 00:45:40.829
maybe bringing it all under one governing body
00:45:40.829 --> 00:45:44.230
has finally started moving things in a more positive
00:45:44.230 --> 00:45:47.289
direction. But, you know, something I like to
00:45:47.289 --> 00:45:50.489
do with my students is to invite them to engage
00:45:50.489 --> 00:45:53.849
in time travel. Think to yourself, if you could
00:45:53.849 --> 00:45:56.960
go back to day one. And you resourced both of
00:45:56.960 --> 00:45:59.559
these sports equally in terms of the money that
00:45:59.559 --> 00:46:01.820
you put into paying the players so they don't
00:46:01.820 --> 00:46:04.400
have to have jobs. And then there are also professional
00:46:04.400 --> 00:46:08.780
athletes on the side of their day job. The facilities
00:46:08.780 --> 00:46:10.539
that they get to use for strength and conditioning,
00:46:10.780 --> 00:46:15.000
the support staff with the coaches and the trainers,
00:46:15.139 --> 00:46:19.000
etc. Even just the conditions in which they travel,
00:46:19.119 --> 00:46:21.940
the airfare, business class, first class, coach,
00:46:22.139 --> 00:46:25.130
these kind of things. the accommodation on the
00:46:25.130 --> 00:46:27.329
other side, everything is equal. What would the,
00:46:27.329 --> 00:46:29.010
what would the landscape look like today? And
00:46:29.010 --> 00:46:30.670
I think it would be hard to say that it would
00:46:30.670 --> 00:46:34.030
look the same. Oh yeah, absolutely. It'd be such
00:46:34.030 --> 00:46:36.690
a stark difference because again, to your point,
00:46:36.710 --> 00:46:39.250
the resources, the investment in it, things need
00:46:39.250 --> 00:46:42.929
time and it hasn't had that time yet. And you
00:46:42.929 --> 00:46:45.550
would argue the other side of the sport for males,
00:46:45.670 --> 00:46:49.090
you go back 50 years, was the sport where it
00:46:49.090 --> 00:46:53.550
was now? No, people have advanced in. the size
00:46:53.550 --> 00:46:56.590
of the game the the way it's played because it
00:46:56.590 --> 00:46:59.909
had time and it had the investment and so people
00:46:59.909 --> 00:47:01.530
need to understand it needs the same thing on
00:47:01.530 --> 00:47:05.429
this side of it um and and it kind of again sort
00:47:05.429 --> 00:47:07.750
of promote my own research but leaning into the
00:47:07.750 --> 00:47:11.269
second page paper i sort of look more at the
00:47:11.269 --> 00:47:14.929
alignment between organizations and so i interviewed
00:47:14.929 --> 00:47:16.769
people from a lot of different levels within
00:47:16.769 --> 00:47:19.420
football in australia And there's some research
00:47:19.420 --> 00:47:22.039
in the past, again, kind of inspired me to look
00:47:22.039 --> 00:47:23.739
at, and some of it was based around the Women's
00:47:23.739 --> 00:47:26.400
World Cup, and to leverage an event, you need
00:47:26.400 --> 00:47:29.500
everyone to be sort of rowing in the same direction.
00:47:30.440 --> 00:47:33.039
And that doesn't happen a lot with, I guess,
00:47:33.079 --> 00:47:35.019
not just football, but this was a prominent example
00:47:35.019 --> 00:47:38.019
where everyone has different agendas. And if
00:47:38.019 --> 00:47:39.579
you're all trying to work towards your own agenda,
00:47:39.940 --> 00:47:43.000
there's not a lot of pie left for everyone. I
00:47:43.000 --> 00:47:44.440
keep using pie. I don't know. Maybe I should
00:47:44.440 --> 00:47:46.119
get that for dinner tonight. I keep using that
00:47:46.119 --> 00:47:49.530
as an analogy. I'm getting weirdly hungry. Yeah,
00:47:49.530 --> 00:47:52.590
it's getting to that time. But it is a really
00:47:52.590 --> 00:47:54.949
important thing to consider is everyone needs
00:47:54.949 --> 00:47:57.730
to be aligned in terms of their strategies to
00:47:57.730 --> 00:47:59.250
work towards the same thing. And I think that
00:47:59.250 --> 00:48:01.690
comes back to that point around maximizing the
00:48:01.690 --> 00:48:04.250
potential of something. If you all work towards
00:48:04.250 --> 00:48:06.949
the same goal, you're more likely to achieve
00:48:06.949 --> 00:48:08.349
it. And I think that's in any setting, whether
00:48:08.349 --> 00:48:11.070
it is in a workplace, whether it's in a performance
00:48:11.070 --> 00:48:13.710
environment in a team, it's something that really
00:48:13.710 --> 00:48:16.590
needs to be looked at. And so that was an area.
00:48:17.990 --> 00:48:21.250
Early indications from that were there was definitely
00:48:21.250 --> 00:48:23.889
some different viewpoints around who was doing
00:48:23.889 --> 00:48:27.630
what at different levels in football in this
00:48:27.630 --> 00:48:29.909
country. And so that immediately is a problem.
00:48:30.090 --> 00:48:33.170
Big problem. You could call that, I guess, like
00:48:33.170 --> 00:48:37.789
a vertical alignment. You're at different levels
00:48:37.789 --> 00:48:40.050
and even within that vertical, because you said
00:48:40.050 --> 00:48:43.170
before, why can't these sports cooperate? Well,
00:48:43.250 --> 00:48:45.489
now you've got different verticals. cooperating
00:48:45.489 --> 00:48:48.369
but if you have a disconnect in that same vertical
00:48:48.369 --> 00:48:51.789
yeah you're never gonna yeah which is it's unfortunate
00:48:51.789 --> 00:48:53.650
and i think there's a lot and i spoke to a lot
00:48:53.650 --> 00:48:56.409
of really good people that have women's football
00:48:56.409 --> 00:48:59.190
at the top of their list in terms of really trying
00:48:59.190 --> 00:49:01.670
to promote and push it and make sure it goes
00:49:01.670 --> 00:49:04.329
where they want it to and i don't think it could
00:49:04.329 --> 00:49:05.949
be in better hands with a lot of those people
00:49:05.949 --> 00:49:09.349
but unfortunately it's just the the disconnect
00:49:09.349 --> 00:49:12.670
and you know again i'm not trying to point fingers
00:49:12.670 --> 00:49:15.539
or anything but it's just more an educational
00:49:15.539 --> 00:49:17.579
piece I think what my research is trying to do
00:49:17.579 --> 00:49:20.940
around hey if we all just sort of have a moment
00:49:20.940 --> 00:49:23.739
to think about where we're trying to go and what
00:49:23.739 --> 00:49:25.360
we're actually trying to get out of it not just
00:49:25.360 --> 00:49:28.079
at the top level and I think that's kind of been
00:49:28.079 --> 00:49:30.860
the downfall of football to an extent in a broader
00:49:30.860 --> 00:49:35.280
picture is it sort of that funding model has
00:49:35.280 --> 00:49:38.019
always tried to promote the top level whereas
00:49:38.019 --> 00:49:42.440
AFL goes the other way about it and I think sort
00:49:42.440 --> 00:49:45.739
of So that has really been a beneficial side
00:49:45.739 --> 00:49:48.679
to it. But to bring it back to football, I think
00:49:48.679 --> 00:49:51.039
it's just a really important thing to have. And
00:49:51.039 --> 00:49:53.539
like you said, that vertical alignment, everyone
00:49:53.539 --> 00:49:55.059
needs to be heading in the same direction. And
00:49:55.059 --> 00:49:57.539
I think we probably started to see a little bit
00:49:57.539 --> 00:49:59.360
of that in and around the World Cup. But again,
00:49:59.420 --> 00:50:02.239
back to that point, to maximize the opportunities,
00:50:02.639 --> 00:50:05.440
that's just the educational piece where it's
00:50:05.440 --> 00:50:07.340
like, right, well, with this Women's Asian Cup
00:50:07.340 --> 00:50:09.800
coming up, what did we learn from the last major
00:50:09.800 --> 00:50:11.800
event? And how can we do it a little bit differently
00:50:11.800 --> 00:50:15.500
to make sure? Once the A -League season for women,
00:50:15.619 --> 00:50:18.440
even for men, but for women, once that comes
00:50:18.440 --> 00:50:21.619
around again, how do we make sure we get more
00:50:21.619 --> 00:50:24.760
bums on seats consistently? So you have a little
00:50:24.760 --> 00:50:29.300
bit of an increase in attendance, but even the
00:50:29.300 --> 00:50:32.460
last World Cup, there was a study around Major
00:50:32.460 --> 00:50:35.260
League Soccer in the US for women, and there
00:50:35.260 --> 00:50:37.360
was an initial spike after the World Cup for
00:50:37.360 --> 00:50:39.400
a couple of weeks, but then attendance numbers
00:50:39.400 --> 00:50:41.320
for domestic matches dropped to the lowest in
00:50:41.320 --> 00:50:44.650
years. Right. which was really interesting. And
00:50:44.650 --> 00:50:47.010
I don't know if that's just fatigue of the product,
00:50:47.090 --> 00:50:51.409
but I think probably more a lack of linking that
00:50:51.409 --> 00:50:54.510
bridge between this major event, these are the
00:50:54.510 --> 00:50:57.110
players, and here's who you can continue to see
00:50:57.110 --> 00:50:58.969
from those players that you enjoyed watching
00:50:58.969 --> 00:51:02.710
during the tournament. And so that sort of model
00:51:02.710 --> 00:51:05.349
of leveraging has been something I've looked
00:51:05.349 --> 00:51:09.710
at too. There's been really interesting... This
00:51:09.710 --> 00:51:11.500
is going to be... It's going to seem like it's
00:51:11.500 --> 00:51:12.820
coming out of left field. But I'd be interested
00:51:12.820 --> 00:51:14.880
in your take on this based on what you just said.
00:51:15.139 --> 00:51:16.860
When they had the very first women's state of
00:51:16.860 --> 00:51:21.440
origin, which was maybe now four or five years
00:51:21.440 --> 00:51:24.659
ago, I went along and it was at North Sydney
00:51:24.659 --> 00:51:27.099
Oval. And it was a very romantic night that way
00:51:27.099 --> 00:51:30.119
because here you've got like an iconic ground
00:51:30.119 --> 00:51:31.739
for rugby league, but which almost never gets
00:51:31.739 --> 00:51:35.519
rugby league these days. So North Sydney Oval
00:51:35.519 --> 00:51:37.739
for the first state of origin for anyone who
00:51:37.739 --> 00:51:39.670
doesn't know is... New South Wales representative
00:51:39.670 --> 00:51:41.849
team versus Queensland representative team, the
00:51:41.849 --> 00:51:45.210
two big rugby league states in Australia. And
00:51:45.210 --> 00:51:46.750
it was the first one they had for the women.
00:51:47.030 --> 00:51:50.269
And I think it even predated the NRLW, or it
00:51:50.269 --> 00:51:52.769
might have been season one. Yeah. I'm not sure.
00:51:52.909 --> 00:51:56.489
I think it may have been season one. Yeah. But
00:51:56.489 --> 00:51:58.630
I think they only had the four clubs in season
00:51:58.630 --> 00:52:01.210
one. Yeah, which is hardly a competition to be
00:52:01.210 --> 00:52:02.730
fair, because everyone made the semis. Yeah,
00:52:02.769 --> 00:52:07.360
that's right. But when... In the lead up to that,
00:52:07.539 --> 00:52:09.219
I was still on Twitter because Twitter was still
00:52:09.219 --> 00:52:11.599
fun at that time. It's not fun anymore, so I'm
00:52:11.599 --> 00:52:14.880
not on it. They had a graphic, and the graphic
00:52:14.880 --> 00:52:18.280
was all of the players on both teams, New South
00:52:18.280 --> 00:52:22.000
Wales and Queensland, and then a comparable male
00:52:22.000 --> 00:52:25.920
superstar to help, I guess, the average person,
00:52:25.940 --> 00:52:29.139
this person you're saying who doesn't know it's
00:52:29.139 --> 00:52:31.360
there until it's in front of them, connect the
00:52:31.360 --> 00:52:35.510
dots of like, oh, okay, Sammy Bremner. is similar
00:52:35.510 --> 00:52:40.789
to, I don't know, let's say Cam Smith. But that
00:52:40.789 --> 00:52:43.889
struck me as weird at the time that you were
00:52:43.889 --> 00:52:46.969
converting women's... It was the comparison,
00:52:47.170 --> 00:52:48.789
right? And they weren't saying that one of these
00:52:48.789 --> 00:52:50.170
athletes was better than the other. They were
00:52:50.170 --> 00:52:52.730
trying to link playing types. If you like Cam
00:52:52.730 --> 00:52:57.389
Smith, you'll like Sammy Bremner, etc. But I
00:52:57.389 --> 00:52:59.030
don't know. It's a little off topic, but what
00:52:59.030 --> 00:53:02.250
do you make of that? Is that the kind of linkage
00:53:02.250 --> 00:53:04.710
that needs to happen? I think you can go either
00:53:04.710 --> 00:53:08.769
way. I think for people like yourself and I,
00:53:08.949 --> 00:53:12.469
where you wouldn't see it as like a, oh, why
00:53:12.469 --> 00:53:14.269
would you compare the two? Obviously, they're
00:53:14.269 --> 00:53:15.550
going to have different physical attributes,
00:53:15.650 --> 00:53:18.670
but the style of game that they play and likely
00:53:18.670 --> 00:53:20.829
the position they play, like men's and women's,
00:53:20.849 --> 00:53:23.570
regardless of the sport, there's the same positions
00:53:23.570 --> 00:53:26.019
that are involved. It's the same sport. The way
00:53:26.019 --> 00:53:27.920
the product is played is different. It's the
00:53:27.920 --> 00:53:29.539
same thing in men's and women's tennis. It's
00:53:29.539 --> 00:53:32.199
different styles. And I would argue women's tennis
00:53:32.199 --> 00:53:34.760
is more enjoyable to watch because it's longer
00:53:34.760 --> 00:53:39.440
rallies rather than just two, three shot rallies.
00:53:39.619 --> 00:53:41.940
Yeah, that's right. I agree. I find women's tennis
00:53:41.940 --> 00:53:45.000
so much more interesting. So around that, I think
00:53:45.000 --> 00:53:49.679
if you're trying to inform and get people to
00:53:49.679 --> 00:53:52.679
understand more about the product, I don't think
00:53:52.679 --> 00:53:54.219
it really matters the way you go about it. And
00:53:54.219 --> 00:53:56.929
I think... In hindsight, at the time, it would
00:53:56.929 --> 00:53:59.769
have been a little bit like, oh, that's a weird
00:53:59.769 --> 00:54:03.510
way to try and introduce a player. But how else
00:54:03.510 --> 00:54:05.489
would you do it if you're coming from nothing
00:54:05.489 --> 00:54:09.429
in understanding the women's side? And most people
00:54:09.429 --> 00:54:11.809
wouldn't because it was a relatively new competition.
00:54:12.070 --> 00:54:15.429
So it wasn't to no one's fault, but no one would
00:54:15.429 --> 00:54:17.110
understand a lot about it unless you're going
00:54:17.110 --> 00:54:20.309
to the junior levels and watching. But even that
00:54:20.309 --> 00:54:22.670
was scarce at the time. So, okay, how's the quickest
00:54:22.670 --> 00:54:26.219
way we can inform? we still do it from male to
00:54:26.219 --> 00:54:28.679
male comparisons. It's like this new superstar
00:54:28.679 --> 00:54:33.739
coming up is the next so -and -so. So why not
00:54:33.739 --> 00:54:36.239
do that with the female game anyway? And over
00:54:36.239 --> 00:54:40.019
time, you might start to find that we do it the
00:54:40.019 --> 00:54:43.300
other way as well. You look at Caitlin Clarke.
00:54:44.860 --> 00:54:49.179
Is she a one in a million? Is she one and only?
00:54:49.260 --> 00:54:52.579
Who knows? But I think in time, you're going
00:54:52.579 --> 00:54:56.110
to see... someone come into the league and just
00:54:56.110 --> 00:54:58.630
throw like it's i would argue it's just a steph
00:54:58.630 --> 00:55:00.809
curry comparison but you could also say that
00:55:00.809 --> 00:55:03.769
the next person to come into the nba yeah you
00:55:03.769 --> 00:55:06.369
could say is a caitlin clark style player where
00:55:06.369 --> 00:55:10.570
yeah just has an incredible range and or you
00:55:10.570 --> 00:55:13.449
can compare and say they're similar to a caitlin
00:55:13.449 --> 00:55:15.949
clark and steph curry like you start to categorize
00:55:15.949 --> 00:55:18.190
them the same so yeah gender doesn't really need
00:55:18.190 --> 00:55:21.500
to be Yeah, just a playing type. Yeah. No, I
00:55:21.500 --> 00:55:22.800
think it's an interesting thing you brought up.
00:55:22.860 --> 00:55:24.739
I don't know if I gave you the clearest answer.
00:55:25.039 --> 00:55:26.699
No, I think you did because it came back to that
00:55:26.699 --> 00:55:28.480
point you were making before. I think that even
00:55:28.480 --> 00:55:30.539
ties into the vertical alignment, right? Yeah.
00:55:30.679 --> 00:55:33.719
I think it's who are you trying to get? If you're
00:55:33.719 --> 00:55:35.780
preaching to the choir, the people who are coming
00:55:35.780 --> 00:55:37.820
anyway, well, that's not for them because they
00:55:37.820 --> 00:55:39.340
already know who Sammy Brimner is. Maybe they
00:55:39.340 --> 00:55:43.940
don't know who Cam Smith is. I could name probably
00:55:43.940 --> 00:55:46.079
everyone on the women's national cricket team.
00:55:46.489 --> 00:55:48.550
I could name five or six maybe on the men's team.
00:55:49.550 --> 00:55:54.369
But yeah, anyway. You have to, I think, understand
00:55:54.369 --> 00:55:56.510
the target then. Who are you trying to capture?
00:55:57.590 --> 00:56:00.150
And then how to speak to them, I guess. Yeah.
00:56:00.190 --> 00:56:02.230
Oh, absolutely. And that's the biggest thing.
00:56:02.550 --> 00:56:06.809
And it needs to happen before anything starts
00:56:06.809 --> 00:56:09.369
to get sort of rolled out. And it's that strategy
00:56:09.369 --> 00:56:13.389
and planning. And this is where it becomes really
00:56:13.389 --> 00:56:16.820
important pre -event in the lead up. to have
00:56:16.820 --> 00:56:18.639
that time to understand right let's sit down
00:56:18.639 --> 00:56:20.239
what do we want out of this who are we going
00:56:20.239 --> 00:56:24.940
after rather than that reactive sort of strategy
00:56:24.940 --> 00:56:27.699
if it's a strategy i guess where it's like oh
00:56:27.699 --> 00:56:29.480
this is going really well we should throw more
00:56:29.480 --> 00:56:32.199
of this out there because by doing that yeah
00:56:32.199 --> 00:56:34.719
it's great you've acknowledged it but by the
00:56:34.719 --> 00:56:36.179
time you get it out there if you're reacting
00:56:36.179 --> 00:56:39.599
you've already missed yeah a certain amount and
00:56:39.599 --> 00:56:42.059
i can't quantify it but I know for a fact you
00:56:42.059 --> 00:56:44.860
haven't captured the full potential because there's
00:56:44.860 --> 00:56:46.460
a period of time where you weren't doing it.
00:56:46.599 --> 00:56:49.639
And I think that's one of the biggest pieces
00:56:49.639 --> 00:56:51.599
to come out of what I'm doing is, yeah, you might
00:56:51.599 --> 00:56:55.599
be doing it really well, but you could be doing
00:56:55.599 --> 00:56:58.840
it better. And it's not a shame on you. It's
00:56:58.840 --> 00:57:01.360
just a, hey, I want you to do as well as possible
00:57:01.360 --> 00:57:03.539
with getting what you want out of this. So just
00:57:03.539 --> 00:57:05.980
understand that these are the strategies and
00:57:05.980 --> 00:57:08.989
the approaches that you should consider. Yeah,
00:57:09.090 --> 00:57:11.670
absolutely. And that's, I think that's where
00:57:11.670 --> 00:57:14.150
a lot of sport organizations get stuck is they,
00:57:14.230 --> 00:57:16.550
if they find something that works or they enjoy
00:57:16.550 --> 00:57:21.789
a virtual monopoly and they're not forced to
00:57:21.789 --> 00:57:25.429
reflect on why they're doing things the way they're
00:57:25.429 --> 00:57:28.030
doing them and what results it's getting, they
00:57:28.030 --> 00:57:30.889
are doing things and there are results and the
00:57:30.889 --> 00:57:35.789
results are good. And so what to use a colloquial
00:57:35.789 --> 00:57:38.599
phrase from, from where I'm from. You don't want
00:57:38.599 --> 00:57:42.139
to fix what ain't broke. 100%. Absolutely. Yeah.
00:57:42.199 --> 00:57:43.920
So it's really hard to shake an organization
00:57:43.920 --> 00:57:48.400
like that up. Yeah. Yeah, it's a fair point.
00:57:48.480 --> 00:57:50.619
It's a frustration in sports sometimes, trying
00:57:50.619 --> 00:57:53.619
to reinvent the wheel when it's like, well, did
00:57:53.619 --> 00:57:55.980
you need to do that? Yeah, because it could go
00:57:55.980 --> 00:57:58.320
the other way. Again, if you don't know why you're
00:57:58.320 --> 00:58:01.420
reinventing the wheel. Are you even trying to
00:58:01.420 --> 00:58:03.460
invent a wheel? Are you trying to invent something
00:58:03.460 --> 00:58:09.559
else? Now I'm just trading in cliches and colloquialisms,
00:58:09.599 --> 00:58:13.920
but there's another idea that I really like,
00:58:13.940 --> 00:58:17.119
which is climb however high on the ladder you
00:58:17.119 --> 00:58:19.340
like. It won't matter if you put the ladder up
00:58:19.340 --> 00:58:22.619
against the wrong wall. 100%. I don't mind that
00:58:22.619 --> 00:58:24.840
one. I don't mind that one. I might keep that.
00:58:25.119 --> 00:58:28.280
Yeah, it's a good one. Put the ladder up against
00:58:28.280 --> 00:58:30.280
the right wall first, then climb. Leave that
00:58:30.280 --> 00:58:32.920
as a parting gift for students in week 12. It's
00:58:32.920 --> 00:58:36.900
just like, by the way, some career advice. I
00:58:36.900 --> 00:58:39.420
think the PhD space itself has been really interesting
00:58:39.420 --> 00:58:46.260
in terms of just learning about the things that
00:58:46.260 --> 00:58:50.139
I enjoy from a different lens. And it's been
00:58:50.139 --> 00:58:54.539
interesting watching sport. in the last i guess
00:58:54.539 --> 00:58:59.059
three and a half years when i've got a phd on
00:58:59.059 --> 00:59:02.360
my desk looking at how do you leverage events
00:59:02.360 --> 00:59:07.539
to create engagement and so you just sit there
00:59:07.539 --> 00:59:09.320
watching sport whether it's in person whether
00:59:09.320 --> 00:59:13.840
it's at home whether it's at the pub and there's
00:59:13.840 --> 00:59:15.719
just this voice in the back of my head going
00:59:15.719 --> 00:59:18.519
hmm how could this be done differently and it's
00:59:19.019 --> 00:59:21.039
I wouldn't say it's ruined my life, but it may
00:59:21.039 --> 00:59:24.000
have hampered the way I watch sport now because
00:59:24.000 --> 00:59:26.360
I'm considering other things, which is really
00:59:26.360 --> 00:59:30.159
cool. But it's been an interesting thing. I think
00:59:30.159 --> 00:59:31.900
I'm just looking at it more from a macro view
00:59:31.900 --> 00:59:34.099
of what a PhD can do for someone or an individual,
00:59:34.280 --> 00:59:37.739
which has been interesting. But it's been a funny
00:59:37.739 --> 00:59:41.659
way of watching sport and, I guess, consuming
00:59:41.659 --> 00:59:46.460
sport. with this lens of, oh, what would I do
00:59:46.460 --> 00:59:49.000
if my PhD was on this? Yeah, that's an interesting
00:59:49.000 --> 00:59:50.619
way of thinking about it too because there's
00:59:50.619 --> 00:59:54.280
one thing about learning too much about how the
00:59:54.280 --> 00:59:57.119
sausage is made. Now I've just colloquialism
00:59:57.119 --> 01:00:01.059
after colloquialism. But I've had that experience
01:00:01.059 --> 01:00:03.199
as well, specifically with American football,
01:00:03.400 --> 01:00:07.800
and I've had my attention raised to issues of
01:00:07.800 --> 01:00:12.360
CTE, i .e. Brain damage occurring in not just
01:00:12.360 --> 01:00:14.159
professional athletes, professional football
01:00:14.159 --> 01:00:17.019
players, but college players as well. So you're
01:00:17.019 --> 01:00:20.639
actually just watching kids get brain damage.
01:00:22.179 --> 01:00:25.760
Matters of exploitation in terms of African -American
01:00:25.760 --> 01:00:28.179
athletes going on what Harry Edwards would call
01:00:28.179 --> 01:00:30.860
a conveyor belt from socioeconomically deprived
01:00:30.860 --> 01:00:34.820
neighborhoods into universities making millions
01:00:34.820 --> 01:00:38.179
of dollars off their likeness and abilities and
01:00:38.179 --> 01:00:43.079
results on the field. I don't really love name
01:00:43.079 --> 01:00:46.119
image likeness stuff with now that's created
01:00:46.119 --> 01:00:48.599
this weird new marketplace where it used to be.
01:00:48.679 --> 01:00:51.500
Well, there were bag men and things like this
01:00:51.500 --> 01:00:54.099
where it was meant to be amateur, but things
01:00:54.099 --> 01:00:56.920
were happening to persuade players to go to certain
01:00:56.920 --> 01:00:59.019
unis over others. And I'd be naive if I said
01:00:59.019 --> 01:01:02.179
that if I tried to pretend that my my alma mater
01:01:02.179 --> 01:01:06.039
didn't participate in that. But, you know, it's
01:01:06.039 --> 01:01:08.940
gotten very far. The whole idea in U .S. college
01:01:08.940 --> 01:01:11.219
athletics, which was always my number one love,
01:01:11.340 --> 01:01:14.039
and football was my favorite of football, and
01:01:14.039 --> 01:01:15.559
men's basketball were my two favorite sports,
01:01:15.659 --> 01:01:17.400
but football was always my top one because I
01:01:17.400 --> 01:01:18.900
was in the marching band, so I was a part of
01:01:18.900 --> 01:01:28.280
the machine as well. And you start feeling a
01:01:28.280 --> 01:01:31.000
certain way about what you're seeing, and then
01:01:31.000 --> 01:01:33.000
you start learning about why those things are
01:01:33.000 --> 01:01:36.510
the way they are. it got to the point with me
01:01:36.510 --> 01:01:40.349
where I actually couldn't watch anymore. I couldn't
01:01:40.349 --> 01:01:44.789
participate. And I have a WVU football -sized
01:01:44.789 --> 01:01:48.269
hole in my heart, but I haven't watched the games.
01:01:48.349 --> 01:01:52.070
I only watch passively, sort of like as an ombudsman
01:01:52.070 --> 01:01:54.829
almost, just sort of keeping an eye on what are
01:01:54.829 --> 01:01:57.250
they doing. And it was ultimately the pandemic
01:01:57.250 --> 01:02:00.659
that broke me with it because... There were all
01:02:00.659 --> 01:02:02.480
these stories coming out of the pandemic in those
01:02:02.480 --> 01:02:05.260
early, like that first year, 2020, where we didn't
01:02:05.260 --> 01:02:07.619
have vaccines yet. We didn't even really understand
01:02:07.619 --> 01:02:11.760
what it was to get COVID -19 or how it would
01:02:11.760 --> 01:02:13.420
affect people's bodies or what the long -term
01:02:13.420 --> 01:02:15.980
implications of repeated infections were, etc.
01:02:16.260 --> 01:02:18.039
Things that we still don't actually have answers
01:02:18.039 --> 01:02:20.059
for. Here you have a situation where you've got
01:02:20.059 --> 01:02:23.099
a black athlete coming out of... In the case
01:02:23.099 --> 01:02:24.800
of West Virginia, they have a pipeline with a
01:02:24.800 --> 01:02:27.340
lot of Miami high schools. A black athlete coming
01:02:27.340 --> 01:02:30.079
out of a socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhood
01:02:30.079 --> 01:02:32.920
in Miami, let's say. This is a generic example,
01:02:33.079 --> 01:02:36.880
not any one real player. And why are they going
01:02:36.880 --> 01:02:40.320
to WVU? They're going to WVU before name -image
01:02:40.320 --> 01:02:42.260
likeness came along. Because they could get a
01:02:42.260 --> 01:02:43.860
scholarship, and they could go to university,
01:02:44.059 --> 01:02:45.840
and they could get a four -year degree and go
01:02:45.840 --> 01:02:47.960
off, and most athletes end up having careers
01:02:47.960 --> 01:02:51.320
outside of professional sport just because of
01:02:51.320 --> 01:02:54.219
sheer numbers. And football, it has one of the
01:02:54.219 --> 01:02:55.760
lower through rates because there are so many.
01:02:55.860 --> 01:02:58.800
There's like 125 players on a D1 football team,
01:02:58.900 --> 01:03:01.239
and not all of them are going to go. Very few
01:03:01.239 --> 01:03:03.079
of them will go pro, even on the best teams.
01:03:03.840 --> 01:03:06.639
And so really, you're there. The attraction is
01:03:06.639 --> 01:03:09.400
the scholarship, and you're meant to be a student
01:03:09.400 --> 01:03:14.869
athlete. hyphen athlete uh that was your meant
01:03:14.869 --> 01:03:16.670
to be your identity and was put in that order
01:03:16.670 --> 01:03:18.809
for that reason you're a student and also an
01:03:18.809 --> 01:03:20.730
athlete but now it's been completely inverted
01:03:20.730 --> 01:03:24.469
now you're an athlete who you know yeah takes
01:03:24.469 --> 01:03:27.269
classes if they even exist like if you look at
01:03:27.269 --> 01:03:29.809
the unc example where there were students enrolled
01:03:29.809 --> 01:03:32.550
in subjects that didn't actually exist in reality
01:03:32.550 --> 01:03:35.409
uh but before i digress and go too far too far
01:03:35.409 --> 01:03:37.809
down this if i decide to leave this in the podcast
01:03:37.809 --> 01:03:42.550
anyway Before I go too far down with this digression,
01:03:42.690 --> 01:03:48.309
what I'm getting at is inevitably you reach a
01:03:48.309 --> 01:03:52.070
threshold in academia, in your own research,
01:03:52.110 --> 01:03:54.289
where you learn too much about how much the sausage
01:03:54.289 --> 01:03:57.269
is made. But then you're also contributing to
01:03:57.269 --> 01:03:59.269
that knowledge about how the sausage is made.
01:03:59.329 --> 01:04:02.690
So now suddenly you have in the world a very
01:04:02.690 --> 01:04:05.710
unique perspective on no one else is watching
01:04:05.710 --> 01:04:09.650
a sport mega events the way you are. because
01:04:09.650 --> 01:04:12.309
you're actually helping to redefine our understanding
01:04:12.309 --> 01:04:15.130
of it. And so that's kind of one of the reasons
01:04:15.130 --> 01:04:17.889
that I started this podcast is to tap into some
01:04:17.889 --> 01:04:19.849
of those. That probably won't go in your thesis.
01:04:20.070 --> 01:04:23.090
No. The way that you're... No, probably not.
01:04:23.349 --> 01:04:26.730
But it's been interesting in terms of even just
01:04:26.730 --> 01:04:29.070
understanding other people's and taking on other
01:04:29.070 --> 01:04:32.150
people's perspectives on the same space. I think
01:04:32.150 --> 01:04:33.949
whereas before you just happily give your two
01:04:33.949 --> 01:04:36.550
cents, I've actually found myself to be a bit
01:04:36.550 --> 01:04:38.920
more diplomatic and... sit back and just listen
01:04:38.920 --> 01:04:41.900
to what other people think about the space that
01:04:41.900 --> 01:04:46.420
i would arguably be quite knowledgeable in at
01:04:46.420 --> 01:04:49.360
this point in my research and people are making
01:04:49.360 --> 01:04:50.940
comments on it it's like oh that's interesting
01:04:50.940 --> 01:04:53.840
like rather than just dismiss it yeah it's like
01:04:53.840 --> 01:04:57.019
hmm where is that perspective coming from yeah
01:04:57.019 --> 01:05:00.840
and so you'd run it through a filter first before
01:05:00.840 --> 01:05:04.980
either you know filing it or putting it in the
01:05:04.980 --> 01:05:07.260
trash can. Yeah, that's right. That's right.
01:05:07.539 --> 01:05:09.420
Another interesting idea I ran into recently
01:05:09.420 --> 01:05:12.619
is that all behavior, human behavior, makes sense
01:05:12.619 --> 01:05:15.659
with enough information. Yeah. But you have to
01:05:15.659 --> 01:05:17.800
get that information. Yeah. If you just jump
01:05:17.800 --> 01:05:20.119
to conclusions and make judgments. Just dropping
01:05:20.119 --> 01:05:21.880
pockets of wisdom today, aren't we? Yeah, that's
01:05:21.880 --> 01:05:23.860
right. I really like that. It's true though.
01:05:24.039 --> 01:05:27.199
There's a lot of validity to that. And I think
01:05:27.199 --> 01:05:29.400
doing and going through a journey like this around
01:05:29.400 --> 01:05:32.420
such a thorough piece of research and just involved
01:05:32.420 --> 01:05:35.349
in academia, I think, justifies what you said
01:05:35.349 --> 01:05:40.030
and that's where if you if you want to be oh
01:05:40.030 --> 01:05:42.070
my god now i'm going to quote ted lasso you it
01:05:42.070 --> 01:05:46.389
is we're talking about football be curious not
01:05:46.389 --> 01:05:50.610
judgmental 100 so that i don't continue to drop
01:05:50.610 --> 01:05:53.130
more quotations from things i've read and tv
01:05:53.130 --> 01:05:56.289
i've watched we can move into the uh the last
01:05:56.289 --> 01:05:58.250
two questions that i ask everybody and the first
01:05:58.250 --> 01:06:01.050
is What's on the horizon for you in terms of
01:06:01.050 --> 01:06:03.469
finishing up the PhD, maybe what you're thinking
01:06:03.469 --> 01:06:05.710
about in terms of your career, other conferences
01:06:05.710 --> 01:06:08.250
you're looking at attending, et cetera? Yeah,
01:06:08.309 --> 01:06:12.849
I think the forefront of mine would be get this
01:06:12.849 --> 01:06:15.710
thing over the line, hopefully early next year,
01:06:15.829 --> 01:06:20.710
that ideal target of when to finish. scholars
01:06:20.710 --> 01:06:22.769
of the past probably know is it keeps running
01:06:22.769 --> 01:06:25.449
away from you yep so eventually i'll get my hands
01:06:25.449 --> 01:06:28.590
on it and we'll get there but so once that's
01:06:28.590 --> 01:06:33.389
through um i think ideally remain in the space
01:06:33.389 --> 01:06:36.670
in terms of academia um i really enjoy the teaching
01:06:36.670 --> 01:06:41.269
side of things um so i think i've got a few i've
01:06:41.269 --> 01:06:43.929
had a few conversations around a few different
01:06:43.929 --> 01:06:46.719
institutions ideally keeping around UTS as much
01:06:46.719 --> 01:06:49.239
as possible next year to continue to teach would
01:06:49.239 --> 01:06:52.159
be amazing. And, you know, keep an eye out for
01:06:52.159 --> 01:06:55.940
that full -time role at some stage. So, yeah,
01:06:56.000 --> 01:06:58.619
I think the teaching side I really, really enjoy.
01:06:58.820 --> 01:07:02.880
I think I haven't thought too much about where
01:07:02.880 --> 01:07:06.119
next with research. I think the key will be to
01:07:06.119 --> 01:07:09.719
step away from this giant project, refresh my
01:07:09.719 --> 01:07:13.179
mind, and then understand. what I'm passionate
01:07:13.179 --> 01:07:15.159
about understanding next and what I want to delve
01:07:15.159 --> 01:07:18.300
into. Because I think the thought of the next
01:07:18.300 --> 01:07:21.960
piece of research makes me physically ill, to
01:07:21.960 --> 01:07:24.039
be completely honest. And it's nothing against
01:07:24.039 --> 01:07:25.760
the research side of things. I just think I just
01:07:25.760 --> 01:07:28.739
need to step back before understanding where
01:07:28.739 --> 01:07:31.179
I want to go next. And I think as long as I'm
01:07:31.179 --> 01:07:32.780
passionate about it, I'm happy to throw my head
01:07:32.780 --> 01:07:36.860
and go head first into it. So, yeah, I think
01:07:36.860 --> 01:07:39.989
that would be... That's kind of the next 12 months
01:07:39.989 --> 01:07:42.269
is probably going to be just take on as much
01:07:42.269 --> 01:07:45.869
teaching as possible and get this PhD over the
01:07:45.869 --> 01:07:49.469
line. Try and put a few papers out, which I've
01:07:49.469 --> 01:07:52.030
already put one, but try and push that into some
01:07:52.030 --> 01:07:55.150
different places. I went to NASM this year in
01:07:55.150 --> 01:07:58.750
San Diego. That was cool. And then I'd like to
01:07:58.750 --> 01:08:01.550
get to an ESM. That's the one I haven't been
01:08:01.550 --> 01:08:04.849
to yet. I went to more of a sports science one
01:08:04.849 --> 01:08:07.730
a couple of years back in Paris. That was a nice
01:08:07.730 --> 01:08:11.489
way to convince the missus to take a trip when
01:08:11.489 --> 01:08:16.149
you go into parish. But yeah, Samans, I always
01:08:16.149 --> 01:08:18.149
enjoy going to. It's such a good cohort of people
01:08:18.149 --> 01:08:21.909
that are incredibly supportive. And obviously
01:08:21.909 --> 01:08:23.590
people like yourself there, it's just a great
01:08:23.590 --> 01:08:25.310
way to catch up, particularly the timing of it
01:08:25.310 --> 01:08:28.670
at the end of the year. So yeah, I think getting
01:08:28.670 --> 01:08:33.789
to more Samans conferences and yeah, just really
01:08:33.789 --> 01:08:36.729
finding my way in the space, not to get too deep.
01:08:37.260 --> 01:08:40.680
But I think for a lot of my PhD journey, I had
01:08:40.680 --> 01:08:42.739
a lot of imposter syndrome. I think being in
01:08:42.739 --> 01:08:44.680
this space, sort of going, where do I actually
01:08:44.680 --> 01:08:46.420
fit in? I'm sorry to say that doesn't really
01:08:46.420 --> 01:08:50.000
go away. I'm not expecting it to. So I just think
01:08:50.000 --> 01:08:52.739
it's just being authentically yourself and finding
01:08:52.739 --> 01:08:55.920
what's best for you. And that's really worked.
01:08:55.960 --> 01:08:59.140
And I've sort of finally grasped that, I think.
01:08:59.319 --> 01:09:03.699
And yeah, so I'm excited about what's next in
01:09:03.699 --> 01:09:05.579
this space. And I think... yeah the teaching
01:09:05.579 --> 01:09:09.000
side of it i've really enjoyed so long term potentially
01:09:09.000 --> 01:09:11.039
reaching out to organizations with some consulting
01:09:11.039 --> 01:09:13.659
work uh but that might be a part two podcast
01:09:13.659 --> 01:09:16.659
one day yeah if it eventuates where are they
01:09:16.659 --> 01:09:20.300
now yeah the last question that i ask everybody
01:09:20.300 --> 01:09:22.159
and you might have answered it a little bit there
01:09:22.159 --> 01:09:26.060
uh is something not related to your phd at the
01:09:26.060 --> 01:09:29.500
moment that you're excited about yeah um yeah
01:09:29.500 --> 01:09:32.560
maybe further into that you know consulting space
01:09:32.560 --> 01:09:36.529
uh I think the long -term thing that would be
01:09:36.529 --> 01:09:38.569
amazing would be to find a way to be part of
01:09:38.569 --> 01:09:41.970
the Brisbane 2032 Olympics and just be within
01:09:41.970 --> 01:09:46.210
that space working on the event, just finding
01:09:46.210 --> 01:09:48.529
a way to contribute to it and be in and around
01:09:48.529 --> 01:09:51.649
it would be really cool. So that's kind of the
01:09:51.649 --> 01:09:56.930
longer career goal. which organization i'm with
01:09:56.930 --> 01:09:59.329
at that point i don't know that people go aoc
01:09:59.329 --> 01:10:02.069
but i think there's a range of different areas
01:10:02.069 --> 01:10:03.850
that you could be in to be part of that space
01:10:03.850 --> 01:10:07.890
so i think that that's one thing on the i guess
01:10:07.890 --> 01:10:10.689
the vision board but yeah the the consulting
01:10:10.689 --> 01:10:15.689
within organizations even just other sports but
01:10:15.689 --> 01:10:19.310
looking at their attempts to grow It may not
01:10:19.310 --> 01:10:20.930
just be women's sport, it might just be the sport
01:10:20.930 --> 01:10:23.090
itself is looking to how do they leverage things
01:10:23.090 --> 01:10:25.550
and grow. I think that's a really interesting
01:10:25.550 --> 01:10:27.989
space that I'd like to take my knowledge from
01:10:27.989 --> 01:10:31.170
this research and help those organizations understand
01:10:31.170 --> 01:10:35.689
this is the way to go about it. Yeah, so I think
01:10:35.689 --> 01:10:39.390
that will become a lot clearer once, again, the
01:10:39.390 --> 01:10:42.029
PhD is done, just a clearer train of thought.
01:10:43.890 --> 01:10:46.210
Yeah, other than that, I won't dive into probably
01:10:46.210 --> 01:10:49.899
the... personal marathon goals that i seem to
01:10:49.899 --> 01:10:51.979
be getting the itch for as i loom on to getting
01:10:51.979 --> 01:10:55.640
to 30 that i swore i'd never get but you swore
01:10:55.640 --> 01:10:59.399
you'd never get to 30 no well no i'll i swore
01:10:59.399 --> 01:11:02.300
i'd never become that the running type but apparently
01:11:02.300 --> 01:11:04.800
it's it's either what is it smoking meats running
01:11:04.800 --> 01:11:08.130
or Brewing your own beer. Yeah, something like
01:11:08.130 --> 01:11:10.710
this. One of the three you take on. So it might
01:11:10.710 --> 01:11:13.850
be the running path. But yeah, I think it's been...
01:11:13.850 --> 01:11:16.310
Or birdwatching. Or birdwatching. Maybe that's
01:11:16.310 --> 01:11:19.329
a once in 40. If I do endeavor to hit all those
01:11:19.329 --> 01:11:22.250
milestones, don't worry about that. But yeah,
01:11:22.310 --> 01:11:26.609
lots of cool things out there. And yeah, I think
01:11:26.609 --> 01:11:31.789
that being in this space has really realigned
01:11:31.789 --> 01:11:34.699
and given me a lot of excitement about... what's
01:11:34.699 --> 01:11:37.159
next and the opportunities i think that's the
01:11:37.159 --> 01:11:40.140
biggest thing this phd has given me is just a
01:11:40.140 --> 01:11:42.840
wealth of opportunities that has made me excited
01:11:42.840 --> 01:11:46.199
about what's next um yeah so that's been really
01:11:46.199 --> 01:11:48.539
cool and isn't it amazing as well especially
01:11:48.539 --> 01:11:51.399
because for you you went so far along an alternate
01:11:51.399 --> 01:11:54.340
pathway toward the afp and everything yeah uh
01:11:54.340 --> 01:11:57.420
and now you're here and that wasn't the plan
01:11:57.420 --> 01:12:00.500
yeah but you sort of made decision by decision
01:12:00.500 --> 01:12:03.340
for your happiness what made sense at the time
01:12:03.760 --> 01:12:06.479
with a bit of a long view the vision board and
01:12:06.479 --> 01:12:09.199
here you are yeah i think we we got there eventually
01:12:09.199 --> 01:12:12.020
but uh yeah it's amazing what what happens in
01:12:12.020 --> 01:12:14.340
life and where the universe tries to steer you
01:12:14.340 --> 01:12:16.060
towards but i just think you're just taking your
01:12:16.060 --> 01:12:18.739
stride and whatever's next to you as long as
01:12:18.739 --> 01:12:21.420
you're enjoying it i think that's that's the
01:12:21.420 --> 01:12:24.460
most important thing yeah yeah that's right uh
01:12:24.460 --> 01:12:27.890
well i've enjoyed this chatting to you and uh
01:12:27.890 --> 01:12:29.909
this is really not much different to what you
01:12:29.909 --> 01:12:31.689
and i do on a regular basis we just involved
01:12:31.689 --> 01:12:33.930
microphones this time we have yeah microphones
01:12:33.930 --> 01:12:36.529
and very cushiony headphones so it's uh i appreciate
01:12:36.529 --> 01:12:38.250
it man and i think what you're doing with this
01:12:38.250 --> 01:12:40.350
podcast has been really awesome uh just giving
01:12:40.350 --> 01:12:43.050
a space for people with a phd to actually share
01:12:43.050 --> 01:12:44.949
their story and we spoke about it before but
01:12:44.949 --> 01:12:47.770
yeah it's a very siloed experience at times and
01:12:47.770 --> 01:12:51.760
i think to actually talk about it and just you
01:12:51.760 --> 01:12:55.000
know yeah shoot it out there is really cool um
01:12:55.000 --> 01:12:57.420
and i've enjoyed listening to previous ones and
01:12:57.420 --> 01:13:00.039
i enjoy listening to uh the future ones that
01:13:00.039 --> 01:13:02.420
you have so thank you well i appreciate it and
01:13:02.420 --> 01:13:04.859
thank you for taking the time it uh it'll be
01:13:04.859 --> 01:13:07.039
interesting for you you know leanne of course
01:13:07.039 --> 01:13:09.239
leanne sobel who was one of the first guests
01:13:09.239 --> 01:13:12.439
that i had on uh and then in this same season
01:13:12.439 --> 01:13:15.020
that i'll release your episode and i've got a
01:13:15.020 --> 01:13:18.640
second episode with her uh so She was saying
01:13:18.640 --> 01:13:20.659
before she sat down to record that, I think we
01:13:20.659 --> 01:13:23.260
had about two years between recording them. She
01:13:23.260 --> 01:13:25.340
was just about to do stage two the first time,
01:13:25.359 --> 01:13:26.979
and then she was just right at the end awaiting
01:13:26.979 --> 01:13:30.420
her examination results the second time. And
01:13:30.420 --> 01:13:32.140
she was saying she went back and listened to
01:13:32.140 --> 01:13:34.300
the first one just to make sure she wasn't repeating
01:13:34.300 --> 01:13:36.840
herself on another one. She said, I was a completely
01:13:36.840 --> 01:13:40.100
different person then. Where are they now? Yeah,
01:13:40.100 --> 01:13:43.300
I mean, yeah, her finishing up, it's someone.
01:13:43.800 --> 01:13:46.319
one less person to annoy on level six but uh
01:13:46.319 --> 01:13:48.359
but i just always told her that she would never
01:13:48.359 --> 01:13:50.439
come down and talk to people on level five because
01:13:50.439 --> 01:13:53.720
it's beneath her anyways you might be you might
01:13:53.720 --> 01:13:55.859
cut that one out this is gonna stitch up but
01:13:55.859 --> 01:13:58.319
uh that's her reward for making it to the end
01:13:58.319 --> 01:14:02.420
of the episode get stitched up yeah exactly that's
01:14:02.420 --> 01:14:04.539
a maybe i will leave that in there then hi leanne
01:14:04.539 --> 01:14:08.220
yep cop that uh but no mate it's it's been it's
01:14:08.220 --> 01:14:11.649
been really nice uh just yeah I've just outside
01:14:11.649 --> 01:14:14.250
of this as well, enjoying your company. So yeah,
01:14:14.449 --> 01:14:16.649
I look for, like I said, look forward to hearing
01:14:16.649 --> 01:14:18.890
this and, and all the other ones coming forward,
01:14:18.930 --> 01:14:20.609
but this has actually been really fun to sort
01:14:20.609 --> 01:14:25.289
of reflect and dissect and try and solve many
01:14:25.289 --> 01:14:28.590
of life's problems. Maybe we've got a few. Yeah.
01:14:28.770 --> 01:14:29.850
We'll go get some pie now.