Why is it that the only girls who are associated with rugby league and the ones that get all the credibility are the cheerleaders?
But what about the females involved who don’t dance in skimpy outfits, but who go to the games to watch and to report. What about female rugby league journalists?
“No”, I hear you say, they’re just an urban myth, they don’t exist.
Contrary to popular belief, there are a few chicks out there who want to write about the greatest game of all.
But they’re in hiding, scared to tell people what they want to do just in case they get laughed at.
I should know, I’m one of them.
But even my own friends don’t take me seriously when I say I want to be a rugby league reporter.
And for the few females making a go of it, their performance is judged more severely than that of the players. Any minor slip up is criticised and their work ridiculed. Because girls don’t know what they’re talking about, do they?
When I was starting out as a journalist, a fellow female sports reporter told me that talking to players would be easy because basically, “they think you’re stupid. They’ll think you don’t know what they’re talking about,” she told me.
But the interview wasn’t half my problem. It was getting the interview in the first place.
A male friend of mine who is also a journalist was interviewing a rugby league player for a feature story. He had no worries phoning the player and even getting the coaches home phone number.
I, on the other hand, was trying to perform the same task, but I had to jump through more hoops, knock on more doors and sweet talk my way to finally being granted an interview.
For weeks I was on the phone to the team’s media manager, almost daily, asking for permission to interview a certain footballer.
At first I was told no, that it was impossible as the team was too busy, even though I said I was willing to wait a few weeks for an interview.
But after proving myself (see ‘jumping through hoops’ above) I got the interview as I had “passed the test.”
After completing the main interview, I then had to talk to another player in the same team for a secondary interview. It was horrible. He repeated my questions as if he didn’t understand and refused to shake my hand at the end of the interview.
Not only was it infuriating, it was also embarrassing to have a player talk to me like I was an idiot. And this is a person who is in the media a lot and has a huge fan base.
All up, the entire organisation and interviewing procedure took me over 10 weeks. All for a 1000-word feature story.
That was just my experience and I survived.
But I’m sure this sort of demoralising treatment would deter a lot of other young aspiring female journos from pursuing a career as a rugby league commentator.
So guys, we can write and do the job just as well, or even better than you.
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