Can We Predict The Future Of Womens Sport With Futurist Reanna Browne

I first heard Rhianna Brown speak at an AFL Players Association leadership conference,

and she spoke about some of the trends that she's seen around the future of women's sport,

concussion, mental health in sport.

And after she spoke, I made a beeline for her and said, I would love to get you on the

podcast.

So it's been an incredible chance to sit down and pick Rhianna's brain and learn more from

an incredibly intelligent person.

She's an academically trained and practicing futurist.

I'll let her explain to you what a futurist is and what they do.

And she's also got an incredible career in cricket.

She's got a background as an elite cricketer, working as both an athlete, coach, and game

development administrator.

This was an incredible chance to sit down with Rhianna and really challenge some of

the assumptions that people have held onto about women in sport and how that often

changes.

It really shapes the decisions that are made moving into the future.

I hope you enjoy this one.

Rhianna Brown, welcome to the Female Athlete Project.

Thank you.

Thank you for having me.

I'm really looking forward to this chat.

I got to hear you speak at a recent AFL Players Association delegates conference about the

future and being a futurist.

But before we get into that, can you give us a bit of a background?

You've got quite an impressive sporting resume.

Can you give us a bit of a background?

Take us back to your childhood.

We were talking earlier off air about your long travels to pursue this career.

I don't know if it's that impressive as a sporting background, particularly in the

company I keep right now and all of the other athletes I'm around.

My partner is a former athlete.

Our friends are.

But yeah, I grew up in a regional part of Queensland.

Sport was like the heart of communities.

I think it still is, actually, a random side fact that when local sport declines, it's

the lead indicator of declining community.

Wow.

Which is really interesting.

But yeah, it's part of that thing of growing up regionally where you just play any sport

you can.

I played, I think my, I mean, my dad was a jockey.

My brother was a jockey.

My sister-in-law was a jockey.

So horse riding was the first sport in our house.

But besides that, I was very keen on NRL.

Because that's just what you do in Queensland.

But, you know, the early story of you hit 10 years old or 11 years old and you can't

play anymore.

So I played a whole bunch of any sport that I could play, I played.

It was cricket, softball.

It was strangely netball.

I think I hit my peak in about year six with netball, unfortunately.

It was touch footy, soccer.

Gosh.

Anything that I think was in front of me.

We played.

But given that we're in a remote part of Queensland, our local region included Mount

Iser, which was six hours away.

So it wasn't uncommon to be, you know, every weekend driving a minimum of six hours just

for your kind of semi-local competitions before you went to state titles.

So yeah, very different experience of sport.

But for me, sport is the glue of regional Queensland, as I mentioned before.

The glue of society.

It's such an integral part of a healthy society.

And for me, it offered really incredible pathways that you don't get outside of being

able to play sport.

And, you know, I was exposed to going to Brisbane very early in my life, like six or seven times

a year going to Brisbane for different sports.

It was an expensive endeavour for my family, but it becomes a brilliant pathway and exposure

to a whole new world.

A whole new world outside of your little remote town.

Was there pressure for you to follow in the footsteps to become a jockey?

Absolutely.

I think Dad said to me once, it's the biggest disappointment that I wasn't the jockey and

my brother was because he stopped riding maybe when he was about 15 or 16 because he just

got too big.

And I'm still probably small enough to almost make the weight.

But I decided probably as I got to my teens, you have to start making a bit of a difference.

You have to make a bit of a call.

Some sports are ruled out like NRL, though I have unfinished dreams and business of being

a halfback for the Roosters who I supported at the time.

But yeah, then I started to play a lot more cricket as I got to my early teens and exposed

to early pathways with Queensland.

I think I played in my first under-19s Queensland tournament when I was 12.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

That's very impressive.

I didn't have a pair of spikes.

I'm not even sure if I had any other cricket equipment other than a bat, but I'd never

played on a turf wicket or anything like that.

We didn't have a coach who was like the groundsman at the time that would just throw balls to

you.

Great.

Yeah.

Not great, but great.

Yeah, that's true.

Sport's the pathway.

Yes, it is.

Yes, it is.

Wow.

And you also had some national representation thrown in there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I played state cricket from like 12 right up until senior women's cricket for Queensland.

Spent some time in the UK playing county cricket there.

Some time playing with the, I think they call them like the shooting stars, like the under-23s

Aussie team for a while.

And then in the off season, I used to play the sport that I actually loved the most,

which was Gaelic footy.

So to keep fit, a lot of cricketers would play Gaelic footy.

And it was a sport that was really thriving in Brisbane at the time.

There was two divisions for women, which was amazing.

I think it was a lot more dominant than the AFLW was back then.

So it was really thriving.

I don't know what was going on at the time, but there was a lot of kind of Irish people

living in Brisbane and the league was huge.

So I played that in the off season.

And really got into that as a sport, it was awesome.

Is that, do you know if it's still thriving in Brisbane?

It's a good question.

I don't know.

I would suspect there's still a competition.

There's also a big competition there was in Melbourne as well.

It's kind of everywhere.

When I lived in the UK playing county cricket, I managed to play a few games in the London

league there as well.

So it is everywhere.

I don't know where the growth of the game is at now.

But it's a breeze.

It's a brilliant sport.

I always wonder though, if AFLW had been as dominant as it is now as the primary sport,

whether I would have got into that.

But I definitely loved the shift from a game that went for seven or eight hours to a game

that was kind of over in 45 minutes.

It's a long time, cricket.

Yeah.

It's a long day.

It is.

It's a long day.

Let's jump into the juicy stuff.

I'm so keen to unpack some of this.

Can you tell me?

What is a futurist?

Sounds like a made up term.

I had never heard of it prior to hearing you speak.

Okay.

Some people have, I think these days.

A lot of people confuse it with, I mean, it's historical roots is kind of the image of the

clairvoyant, which is just absolutely not what we do.

I describe myself as an academically trained and practicing futurist.

So I studied a master's in this.

Studied both in Australia and in the UK.

Part of the work, I guess, is less about what we think it is, which is predictions, trying

to get the future right.

I think the work of the futurist is, for me at least, more about conversations about change.

It's about how do we actually think differently about change?

How do we anticipate change?

What have we assumed about the changes that might happen in the future?

When we talk about the future of any topic.

Yeah.

So we really only have two data points.

So we've got data about all the stuff that's happened in the past.

Let's say about sport.

We've got data about the things that have happened in the past around sport.

We've got data about what's happening today around sport.

But we don't have data on the future because the future hasn't happened.

So we've only got data and most people in the future space will do work around that.

It's like trends, right?

We talk about trends, what's happening in sport.

Mm-hmm .

And what we don't have around the future is our ideas and images.

What do we think the future of sport will be like?

And those two data points, I guess, are the two key things that I do work around.

Talking about what's changing, what has changed over time, but also talking about what do

we want to change?

What are we imagining when we're thinking about sport?

What are those ideas and images that shape how we act today?

And that's kind of the neat space, I guess, of working around those two things.

Yeah.

Working around those two data points with people and helping them step away, ask questions

about change, think about what they want to change, and then acting.

How do we move from where we are today to where we want to be in the future?

One of my favorite takeaways from hearing you speak was this principle and this idea

of when you change how you think about the future, you change how you act in the present.

Can you tell us what you mean by that?

Yeah.

I kind of got to this point after about 10 years in this space, and I used to think,

if only I can come in and tell people about the trends of what's happening, that they

might do something different.

But no one does.

You know, I don't think data really changes minds anymore.

So what I worked out is to do good futures work is to really get people to challenge

how they think about the future in the first place.

So we have a lot of assumptions about what the future is and how it happens, and they

shape.

But we also have assumptions about action in the present.

So a really good one is that we think that the future is something that's out there and

down the track.

It's like the future of women's sport is in 10 years' time, but the future never arrives

because we're always in the present.

Right?

So that's so-

It's kind of weird to get your head around it though, isn't it?

I know.

I know.

It took me 10 years to even understand that concept.

But this whole sense that if we think the future is out there and down the track, then

we start to plan with that in mind.

Yeah.

So when I used to work in cricket very early on, and we were talking about the future of

women's cricket, for instance, we'd often speak about it as something that would eventually

kind of arise, but we never get there.

So the future is shaped by our actions and our inaction in the present, because all the

things we don't do shapes that.

So that's one way of kind of flipping our assumptions and how we think about the future

shapes our actions.

You know, people say, oh, it's a long-term thing, but we never get to that because we

never get to the long-term.

And we're always in the present.

The other thing too, I think, is a couple of key assumptions that shape how we think

about the future, which shapes how we think about action, is that the future of anything,

let's say, again, sport, it doesn't exist.

So Professor Jim Dator uses the quote and the line that there are no future facts because

the future doesn't exist.

It hasn't happened yet.

And when we think about that and step back, it's just like, what?

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

The way that we think about action is usually based on a sense that the future is predicted

or knowable, that there are facts.

When we're talking about the future, let's say of women's sport, if the future doesn't

exist, what we're actually talking about is just our ideas and images, because it hasn't

happened yet.

Yeah.

Do you get pushback and questioning from people?

How often are people willing to accept that?

Yeah.

And it's kind of defaulting to those assumptions of, it's long-term, it'll eventually happen.

I think that's where I position my work is to actually ... I talk about the acupuncture

point, is to just go and blow open all of the assumptions.

People usually get that and they're like, well, the future never arrives, we're always

in the present.

So everything I don't do influences my future.

It's when we go to act, we tend to go back to our default behaviors of how we've done

things before.

So it's actually supporting people to act differently.

But the other assumptions I think that are really important to think about is that I

always talk about this idea that the future is likely to arrive via things that we consider

to be ridiculous at first.

So the best way to understand that, because people are like, always say to me, oh, that

will never happen.

I love listening out for this, they'll say, that will never happen.

And then they say, oh, but that's an American sport thing.

That's not relevant to us.

That's a classic, isn't it?

Or it's not relevant to football or whatever it may be.

And then they say, oh, that's normal.

We've always been doing it.

Athletes have always been advocating for things.

We've always been talking about mental health and sport and how it's important.

We haven't, for instance.

So when I talk to people, I get them to think about the future and I get them to challenge

what we think might be ridiculous.

And the best way to understand that is kind of...

Yeah.

...looking at the past.

And we've spent heaps of time talking about this, but when we think about the past of

sport or like the past of footy, we look back and some of it seems absurd now.

I laugh with my friends all the time that any time we would get any media, it used to

be the headline would be like, you know, sister of a jockey makes the Queensland team

for blah.

And my friend had a...

Her brother was a really good NRL player and it was always...

Like the article was always about him and then somehow she was mentioned as a kind of

subsequent thought.

Yeah.

But I mean, that's one version of how this sport was ridiculous.

I don't know.

Are there things that you can think of where you think, I just can't believe that we used

to do that in sport?

Oh, gosh.

I'm sure there'd be plenty.

What...

Oh, I should be able to think of one off the top of my head.

I mean, we used to like watch the old footage of, you know, there'd be like drinking

beers at lunch or like, there is no way on earth.

Yeah, just like smoke like a cigarette at half time.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Or, and again, it can be like objective things like wearing culottes, playing cricket.

Oh my gosh.

Yes.

Yeah.

That was kind of outrageous.

Firstly, they didn't fit anyone.

So, they were never fully done up because I think they were like designed for women

in the 1930s or something with like tiny waists.

But secondly, I think I still have scars on my knees either from like long-term sunburn

or just grazing from how impractical they were.

It's hard to imagine that you'd even contemplate wearing those types of uniforms.

Yeah, like we called, we said skungies in New South Wales.

Skungies.

Skungies.

I think all the states have different words, like pretty much undies over your undies.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

I think we call them runners.

Yeah.

Right.

So, I was in primary school wearing like this, and my school uniform had a white t-shirt

and these red skungies and it was like, what, why am I running around in my underwear?

Like what's going on here?

Doing high jump and long jump, like what a ridiculous thing that was.

I think my mum's generation, to use your term because it's a very vivid term, they also

played like adult, was like touch football or something in skungies.

Wow.

I think my partner talks about her mum playing basketball in skungies as well.

I can't say skungies.

I have to say runners.

The more that we say it, I'm like, is that definitely the word?

If I got the word wrong, I'm pretty sure they were called that.

I'm going to look it up after this and I'll make sure I edit it out if I got it wrong.

I think some people would say bummers.

I think we used to say runners, but either way, like just outrageous.

Outrageous.

There's kind of no way that I imagine they would be as wide scale as like a standard uniform.

Not for like supreme advantage.

Not for like supreme elite athletes wanting to wear the bodysuit.

I'm talking about just a standard like community level uniform.

So those types of things, we look back and we're like, that's so ridiculous.

But it's not just the things that we can see or the technology.

It's also kind of our beliefs about things have really shifted over time.

I mean, attitudes towards women in sport is a very good example of, gosh, when I was playing

sport very early on, how radically different.

Some of those attitudes are now.

And just the kind of appreciation of the skill and the professionalism that just absolutely

wasn't around.

And it's hard to imagine that as a very dominant state still exists, but as a dominant belief

system and narrative.

So thinking about the only time that makes sense for us in sport or whatever topic is

the present, because we look back, it seems ridiculous.

So the whole premise is that the future of sport is likely to appear.

To appear ridiculous to us today.

So what are some of those things that are like, we just can't believe that happening.

If I was sitting there in the work that I was doing in cricket game development many,

many years ago, like decades ago, the notion that I would be at a game of women's cricket

only, not a curtain raiser with my teenage nephew, who was there by choice for his birthday,

with 85,000 people packed up.

The MCG people would have said that is absurd, but there's just no way that we can see that

ever happening.

And part of it's important to unpack because our, what we consider to be possible shapes

action.

So back then no one was planning or thinking about filling the MCG because we didn't think

that that was possible.

So part of good futures work, I think, is how do we challenge what we think is possible?

How do we push the edges?

How do we show evidence where things could be very different in the future?

How do we challenge what I say, like our range of thinkable futures and remember the future

hasn't happened.

So it's really important to have those discussions.

And now how does that influence how we act in the present?

If we have a narrow view of the future, our actions will be very narrow in the present.

Yeah.

It's so interesting.

This idea of, if you don't think that it's possible, you think it's ridiculous.

Why would you try and work towards it?

Because you yourself don't believe you could ever get there.

So it would feel like waste.

It would feel like wasted energy to work towards that.

Exactly.

Exactly right.

And I kind of think part of the work, I always talk about this idea of the politics of the

future.

So if the future is really just our ideas and images of a time later than now, because

it hasn't happened yet, right?

Then who is shaping the story and the narrative and the conversation about the future?

And NAB Jane has this lovely quote that she says, those with the least power to shape

the future suffer its worst consequences.

So who is in the room when we're talking about the future of sport, the future of women's

sport?

Who isn't in the room?

Who has the loudest voice?

Because we shape our images of the future of the game or women's sport, and then thereafter

they shape us in the present.

Wow.

So I think that's a really powerful conversation that we need to have now is, what is our preferred future?

What do we want to see more of?

How can we be more imaginative?

What are we narrowing in on?

Where are there possibilities that we're not seeing?

And now how does that influence action in the present?

And there's discussion around, obviously at T-FAT we do a lot of work in the athlete space,

but there's so much room for improvement in officiating, coaching at executive level.

Even just what you touched on there about who is sitting in those rooms, those are the

people that have the power to shape the future.

Yeah.

It's really, it kind of like hits you a little bit when you look at it like that because

it's true and the people who aren't in those rooms don't have that power.

So when we talk about diversity quotas and things like that, it's not just to tick a

box.

It's because they have so much power, the people who sit in those rooms.

Yeah.

And their assumptions and ideas and images about the future influence those decisions.

And if those assumptions aren't challenged, if those assumptions are narrow, if those

assumptions about the future are how things have happened in the past, then they will

project a future that is more of the same.

If we were sitting around 20 years ago talking about the future of women's sport and not

having the conversation that was broader than how can we increase participation a bit more,

we never would be where we are today.

And I think part of that work is how do we blow open those conversations.

Mm.

it's I think uncertainty is less about what we want to happen because part of the conversation

about the future is this work isn't just about trying to get the future right you know people

always say to me oh what are the trends how can we predict the trends and I say like that's

interesting but that assumes that the future happens to you and that you don't have any

influence or agency over the future remember it hasn't happened yet so we do have agency to you

know an influence to shape things we do have influence to shape what is possible

um the Matilda's such a good example of actually it with in concrete ways I guess

showing and expanding our visions of what is possible for women's sport and I think that's

where some of the work needs to happen now is actually expanding the imagination being more

creative about what is our preferred future here not what might have you know what's imposed

on us what do we actually want to see here in the future and it's less about uncertainty about

what that is how we get there is is you know that's the debate and the conversation

um but if we don't think about that now we never get there because we never we're always in the

present right so we just never end up somewhere different if we don't think about being somewhere

different do you have a process or something practical that you implement to challenge

assumptions that people have there's quite a few but there's a fun little process that i use and

it's based on some of jane mcgonigal's work um i call it a flip fax process it's literally like a

two second kind of game that you can play that that shows that we all have assumptions about

the world and they're just that assumptions they're not necessarily facts so what you're

you do is you take a current fact let's say around sport and it's like an unquestioned truth

right we don't even think about it so let's say you know the idea that um uh all athletes at the

moment are banned from taking drugs or let's say the idea that all sports coaches are human

or the idea that you know sport is gender-based so there are three kind of core facts right nobody

really necessarily

questions them that much and what the game is is to say let's just create an opposite statement

for that so instead of saying you know athletes olympic athletes banned from taking drugs we just

flip the fact and we say open you know open to doping athletes can be open to taking drugs

whatever um instead of saying coaches are human we say coaches are ai i'm just making up opposite

statements so you don't have to get it right instead of saying sport is gender-based

let's say like totally open non-gendered sport and what the game is is that you take that flipped

fact and you go and google it and you try and find what i call a signal of change so a concrete bit of

evidence where that flipped fact actually exists in the present so are we gonna do this i just got

my phone out let's do it okay right so we've got the three facts let's do the flip facts so athletes

are taking drugs. So it's like free for all. Coaches are AI. And sport is a non-gendered

base. So what you do is open up Google, type it in, look for a news search, see what we find.

I'll do coaches are AI, shall I?

Yep. Okay. Now I've just randomly chosen these three things. You could

almost literally choose anything. Okay.

Okay.

What have we got?

I've got an article about an artificial intelligence tool to help Aussie rules

football coaches make decisions based on real-time stats.

So we've already got concrete evidence or a signal of change or a pocket of the future

and the present, as I call it, where coaching is integrating and relying on AI tools.

And it's not that idea of flipping it so far to think that a robot is coaching the team,

but it's like little hints of,

progress towards that direction.

Although sometimes you will find the robot example.

Yeah.

And that's the ridiculous future that I tell people to pay attention to. So

let's have a look. So I flipped the fact of, let's say like Olympic athletes being open to

taking drugs, which again, an absurd kind of statement and found an example, a concrete

bit of evidence. The PayPal co-founder, Peter Thiel, is backing an effort to create Olympic

games that welcomes drug use instead of discouraging it.

Insane.

So it's like superhuman athlete or the flip fact with sport and gender-based sport of,

I think it's British triathlon already have an open category, an additional open category.

But again, there's some signals from a few years ago now, I think it was the New Zealand

weightlifter at the Laura Hubbard, I think, at the Tokyo Olympics.

So there'd be heaps of signals. And the point of the game isn't that, you know, the Olympics

is now open.

It is now going to be just a free-for-all from a doping perspective. It's not to say

that that flipped fact or that signal will become the future. It might. That's what

futurists do. We keep an eye on how they change. What it is to say is that we have assumptions

and that the future never arrives, right? We're always in the present. But William Gibson

has this brilliant quote and he says, the future is already here. It's just unevenly

distributed. So where are those little pockets of change?

That already exists today. And I find that really useful for two reasons. It challenges

our assumptions. So as soon as someone says to me, we can't do that. No, I just flip the

fact and I try and find concrete evidence where it already exists today. But also it

gives us a hint of, you know, it expands our range of what is possible in the present.

And it's kind of my favourite game to do, especially when I've got people that are really

resistant to things in the room.

I can see that would be quite fun.

Yes. We all kind of have assumptions about the future. It's based on where you grew up,

where you went to school, your gender, a whole bunch of things. And that shapes our

images of what is, isn't, isn't possible. Part of the work is to challenge those because

they shape our action in the present more so than I think data on trends. It's what

we believe is possible informs how we act today. Yeah. From what I understand, a lot

of your work is about reading.

And researching and staying up to date with a whole range of data and information and

articles across a whole range of topics. But if we look at it in a sporting context, are

there signals that you have started to see pop up or any examples that would be good

to chat about?

My job, you're so right. It's like scanning for these signals every day. I think I've

done this my whole life, to be honest. I think it, I just fumbled my way into a profession

that actually validates this.

I think it's, it's a process. But people that are curious about change do it a lot. I think

you do it. You're always looking at articles and saying, oh, this interesting thing happened

over here. So again, a signal is a small bit of, it's an event or, you know, a phenomena

or a small kind of hint and concrete evidence of something that's happening that suggests

a bit of a change. I look at thousands of them. I probably read 50 of them every single

day. And part of the work is to say, now I've got a little bit of information about this.

I've seen a pattern emerge. What is that pattern? But it all starts off with a bit

of a signal. So some that come to mind, which I find kind of interesting was the Climate

Council report. So they spoke about the idea that, you know, this link between sport and

climate change and what does that kind of mean and how is it showing up now? But they

spoke about the idea and also the fact, sorry, that prolonged drought in Australia has resulted

in more shoulder injuries because sports play a big role in that. So I think it's a

really good example of, and I always encourage people when they're thinking about this work,

when you hear a change or you read a signal, you read an article, ask the question, so

what, now what? So what, like, what are the implications for what we do now and what we

might do? You know, does that shift how we think about our strength and conditioning?

Does that change the types of grounds that we might want to play on and in what location

and where? Does it change the work of groundskeepers? I don't know. And now what, what might we

do?

Do we want to just keep an eye on this or do we actually want to start to implement

some small little changes? Some other signals that came to mind, I'm really big on this

and it's a bit of a taboo in many ways inside sport, but a lot of signals around sports

betting, which I think is kind of subtly and also overtly fundamentally changing the nature

of sport. You know, 75% between sports betting and sports betting, it's a bit of a taboo

of, I think it's 75% of kids between eight and 16 believe sports betting is normal.

Wow.

It's a lot of kids I think have now grown up in a generation where they don't quite know

the difference between sport and sports betting. 40 minutes of an NRL game and you get about

15 minutes of gambling ads, almost 200 and something unique ads at once. And we're now,

I'm now looking at emerging signals of change where you can bet live on athlete biometric

data. So I can't remember if it was squash, it was a particular sport.

It was a particular sport where they were thinking about, or maybe they're already

doing, but you know, I can watch your heart rate live and make specific kind of, you know,

micro bets around that. So the question for me is kind of, again, so what now? It's not

opposed to sports betting at all, but the question should be for those inside of sport,

what does this mean for us? You know, does it change the nature of sport? Are we seeing

increased harm amongst our athletes, especially young male athletes? Are the highest risk,

I think athletes are like, I don't know, three or four times more likely to have sports betting

problem. And yeah, what does that mean in terms of what we might do come Monday?

Not whether it's right or wrong and whether it's debated, it's just saying this is the

change that's occurring. What does that mean for us in terms of action?

I think the stuff I've been following probably for about 10 years is concussion. I always use

this line that a friend said to me once, you're my most and least favourite dinner

in the same night. And I think it's because part of the work is to talk about this,

the cool fun stuff, you know, the cool technology. And then part of this work is to talk about

the changes that are already occurring that we don't want to talk about. And concussion

is a really interesting one for me for a variety of reasons. Someone has also experienced concussion

through sport.

I think it's maybe like seven or eight years ago, maybe even longer when I first went to

the US and I really started to pay attention to their investment in flag football. I thought

that's really interesting. But again, concussion is a very old issue. I always talk about this

idea. And I think it's a quote from Andy Hines. He says, change is only fast. It seems fast

because we're not paying attention. And we're taught to look twice as far back on a topic

as we do forward. So concussion's been around since 1990.

I think it was like Teddy Roosevelt. This is a random side tangent, but it's a really

interesting one.

I'm here for it.

When they first had college athletes playing NFL, essentially, or yeah.

American football.

American football. And they started to notice injuries. And I can't remember how they described

it, but essentially describing not just physical injuries, but kind of changes in moods and

how they're like.

Right.

Yeah.

bunch of things and I think that was when they started to invest quite heavily in new equipment

so we saw like the introduction and the changing equipment requirements for American footy and

then there's a really so we're on a trajectory for like a lot of intervention very early on

we're talking like early 1900s I think asterisks anyway it was a long time ago then we went to

well they went to war and and returning from war what that changed was attitudes towards sport

and warriorship and pain and you know the toughness of getting up after a kind of a head

knock and it almost regressed yeah the conversation about concussion anyway a random back story is

because I started to get really intrigued about what was going on in this space something that

feels like it's been around for a long time because it has

but also I look at signals of when things inside a topic is also starting to change in different ways

there was a really fascinating signal it was an article and I'm a bit obsessed

with this and I'd love to do this at a I think they've done it with the NRL but

how the demographics of American football have changed so there's all the conversation around

concussion around the obvious things about the injuries and all the things that you know are

obvious and in hot

debate right now, but the thing I've been interested in is how it's slowly and quickly,

I guess, changing the nature of who plays the game. So I think it was a Washington Post article

and they spoke about the declining participation over time in football, but particularly in less

liberal areas and among wealthier kids. So the more conservative you are

and less wealthy, the more likely you are to continue to or advocate or be playing NFL.

And so they've started to watch this kind of, the changing face, I guess, of American football

and who plays, which is really interesting. At the same time, I'm looking at signals of

their investment in flag football and how that's really booming.

Will be an Olympic sport in LA in 2028.

Wow. I didn't know that. Okay. That's a signal you're going.

Yes. I passed the test.

You're nailing the signal.

Yes. Look at me go.

Yeah. I mean, for me, that's a whole thing in and of itself to say the changing investment.

The point is that it's not whether things will exist or not exist. It's to look at it

more richly and say, what are the changes and what can we do now? I think we were talking

about it earlier to some of the advancements in technology that are emerging in this space.

You were sharing something.

Yeah. Because I saw this post on Instagram and I thought of this idea of signals that

I'd heard you speak about. And it's, I think it's called the cue collar and it goes around

people's necks, almost like a horseshoe type shape. And it sits quite close to their necks.

And from what I could understand, it's meant to have a role in preventing concussion. Because

we've got in, in Aussie rules, we've got mouth guards that are tracking the data around concussion

now where they're building in the technology into the mouth guards. But from what I understand,

this cue collar is meant to be a piece of equipment that helps to prevent concussion.

I don't know the exact mechanics. I couldn't get, I couldn't really understand how it

actually worked, but a couple of NFL players have started to wear it in different sports.

It's starting to become a little bit more prevalent. And I saw it and I was like,

I started to wonder what could that look like if an AFL player wore it? How could that work?

If they're making a tackle, could it get pulled? Can it actually help prevent incidents of

concussion?

Yeah.

A brilliant example of saying, here's a signal. And so what now? What does this mean for me in

my context? You know, what, how could this be utilized in our context of AFL? Could we,

would we need to make adaptations? And what's one small thing we could do? Maybe we can go

and find out about, you know, who's doing the tech? What does that actually look like?

But there's some really, you know, at the same time, there's some challenging conversations

and some exciting signals around emerging technologies in this space.

I think it's just a hard conversation that we have to manage as part of players, athletes,

you know, coaches, people that are involved in the game. I think it's been around for a long time,

but change changes. And part of what I'm seeing is some interesting changes. I think there was

a signal of a, oh, was it a Sydney's girls school that is no longer playing AFLW?

Yes. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Lousy rules for concussion concerns from, from parents and staff, I believe.

Yeah. And I think part of the declining participation, I think with the NFL and the

investment in flag football was driven by primarily, I think, concussions cost and the

competition. So again, it's like, it's, it's not, people are like, oh, well, we want to keep playing.

And I keep saying, it's not about, it's not about an either or, it's about what's the

information that we have.

And what are the decisions that we need to make right now? Where is there some emerging,

exciting advancements in this space? And what does that mean for what we do right now? What,

what are our small bets in a long game? Which is like, I always talk about small, tiny things.

You know, are we thinking about certain investment funds? What are we doing from a research

perspective? A whole bunch of things that could become very useful as the conversation around

and the issues around this space kind of emerge over time.

But it's certainly the least favourite dinner guest competition, but I'm really,

I'm really paying heaps of attention to it because I think it's nearing a tipping point in many ways.

When I sit on panels, I think one of the most common questions I'm asked is,

what do I think the future of women's sport will look like? Or what do I hope the future

of women's sport will look like in your job and with your experience? How do you approach

a question like that?

This is a classic futurist answer, but I,

always say it depends um do you know that reminds me of when we think about where women's sport is

at now and you know the notion of kind of getting heaps of people in stadiums uh and that sense of

that it's some of this is actually old ideas so I found this clipping this is a random

Brianna side share but I found this clipping from the paper from 1929 and it was

a photo of a women's Aussie rules game between two pajama factory workers

at I think it was the Adelaide Oval and had 41,000 spectators and the reason I'm sharing that is

because part of it I think is less about trying to say what the future will be or an end state

of what I want it to be and more a conversation of what do I want it to be what do we actually

prefer

what what's some radical imagining and I guess the point is is that

the story of sold-out stadiums is kind of an old one it's not necessarily a new thing but also

what's our preference here like if we could sit back and and design a preferred future of women's

sport from scratch what would we say what would we include it hasn't happened yet so I actually

think the work to be done is to is for radical imagination

and I mean not just like borrowing a future from men's sport so I'm really big on this

there are components of men's sport and elements that are useful to think

about as parts of a vision of a future for women's sport but also we always talk about this idea

of like a borrowed future I don't think the work is to mimic um you know men's sport I think we can draw from you know

from that, but I don't think the work is to mimic it. I think that narrows our vision of what is

possible. I think women's sport brings its own unique value proposition. I think part of it is

blowing open our assumptions. What are the edges of what we think is possible for women's sport?

Because remember, if we have a narrow view based on what we think is or isn't possible,

that shapes how we act and the investments that we do or don't make in women's sport.

What would it look like if we just blew it open? Radical imagining. What would we actually

want to see more or less of? Not specific, like what's the end point, but what would we want to

see more or less of? I think for me, that's the way I tend to talk about it, is what would I want

to see more or less of? As a good example, I think it's not just about equal pay. And again,

I think we get caught up debating the means, not the ends. The means being

equal pay. The means being equal pay.

I mean, that's important, but, you know, I think when we just talk about equal pay, we miss things that enable the system that helps women's sport to advance.

Like, we don't invest in the business of women's sport.

We don't invest sufficiently in the marketing and promotion of women's sport.

I think I would want to see more investment of which we can then start to reap the benefits from those changes and then have conversations about revenue generation.

Do you know what I mean?

It's like when we debate kind of an ends of equal pay, we actually don't allow ourselves to build those fundamental foundations that would allow for those very things.

Yeah, I guess it kind of comes back to what do we want it to be?

I don't know.

That's a good question.

What do you answer when you're on those panels?

Yeah, I don't know.

I think I might look at it differently now.

I'm learning a lot from you, and one thing that came to mind is, yeah, I think probably on that equal pay piece.

Like, when we look at women's sport as a whole, there's so many people, and you and I chatted about this off-air earlier, there's so many people that are engaging with it and coming along for the ride because it's about the advancement of women.

And I see it as people love seeing women existing.

And so I think, yeah, just like stepping away from that idea of equal pay and just having to copy and paste in the men's game to realize that women could, if we're talking ridiculous futures, women's sport could bring in more money than men's in the future if it's done correctly.

Because there's this hugely untapped audience that hasn't been invested in, that hasn't received the exposure.

So I like that for a ridiculous future.

I mean, there's a little flip-flop game.

I'm sure there are already pockets of where it already exists, where women's sports bring in more revenue.

But you're so right in that this is a conversation about sport and its future.

This is a conversation about women and its future.

And then what do they mean in relation to each other?

What future, you know, are we just, is it just an extension?

An extension of what we're doing in the present?

What really blows open those assumptions?

And I think part of this is how do we create a collective and shared image for that future?

For me personally, I think sport is a really powerful setting for social change and health.

You know, what happens when you start to think about women's professional sport through that lens?

Part of this is both personal and collective.

And how do we make those images?

Shared?

How do we make sure who gets to talk about women's sport where that's diverse and we have other people in the room?

I think that's equally as important.

When we're having conversations about what we want the future to look like, who's in the room, who's not in the room, who's got the loudest voice and what are they saying?

And do we need to challenge that?

Yeah, I'm loving it.

Every time you chat about these things, I feel like it's a very empowering thing.

And again,

it's that it's shifting this idea that even though you feel like you might feel like a tiny little fish, you can create change in what you want to do.

And I'd love to kind of wrap up with the people that are listening that might love sport, might not love sport.

But how can people actually practically do something if they've listened to this and felt like, oh, yeah, I like this?

How do you actually practically apply something like that?

It's such a good question because I think good futures work leaves people with a sense of agency.

And pathways, not overwhelm.

And I think the favorite part about my work is when people step away and think, I can do something.

You know, the future hasn't happened.

I have some capacity to influence the future.

I always talk about small bets, like what's one small thing you're going to do come Monday?

I sat on a gender equity panel recently and there was like 700 women mostly in the room.

And we were talking about the business case and how difficult it would be to advocate for the business case to pay women equally.

And I kind of just got my book of notes and closed it and waited until the moderator asked me a question.

And I didn't ask the question, of course.

And I just said, I just want to say out loud what we're saying here.

We're saying it's too expensive to pay women, i.e. you, fairly for the same.

And I said, I just want to say out loud what we're saying here.

And I just said, I just want to say out loud what we're saying here.

And part of the provocation was to say the future hasn't happened.

You know, what is a preferred future?

Because you're going to be inhabiting that.

You already are.

You're already being paid less.

What are the small micro-activisms that you can be doing right now come Monday?

You know, and I'm talking about from a gender equality stance at the moment.

But just kind of really giving that audience a sense of agency.

That they can do things.

They make decisions every day.

It's how they talk to their children.

It's the jobs they decide to take.

It's a whole bunch of things that influences the future.

And the question is, what is the preferred future that you actually want?

Is that one where in 10 years' time you're still advocating for the cost to pay you in the room fairly to do the same work?

Anyway, the point of that, I guess, is that we do have capacity to shape and influence the future.

Our own and then equally society.

I fundamentally believe that even through very small actions, very tiny actions, you turn up to games.

You follow the broadcast.

You do a whole bunch of things.

It's how you talk about women's sport.

It's all of those things.

I think some practical things.

I think thinking about the way that we talk about the images of the future for women's sport and how we challenge them.

And how we have full permission to challenge them because the future hasn't happened.

Yeah, I love that.

It's my favorite thing.

It's like I've done this work with lawyers once and they just couldn't argue in the end because I just said, that's your image of the future.

Great.

Ours is mine is different.

And the conversation is about the difference.

But the future hasn't happened.

So you do have influence.

You do have agency.

What is the conversation that you're having with other people about what is possible for women's sport?

Where are we?

Are we limiting that unconsciously?

Think about the ridiculous.

So hold space for the ridiculous and challenge our assumptions every time we kind of narrow possibility.

I love telling people to scan for signals.

And I kind of have this rule of three strikes.

So the third time you hear something, start to pay attention.

You're like, oh, that's the third time I've now heard this phrase or this technology or an athlete talk about blah.

That's a really interesting thing.

And then kind of practically this idea of small bets in a long game.

So people always feel overwhelmed about change.

You know, this is where I am at.

This is where women's sport is at now.

This is where we say we want to see more of and move towards.

That feels like a big, heavy space.

And I'm really big on to navigate that big, heavy space.

What are the small bets in a longer game?

And they are micro, you know, experiments, interventions, things that we test,

things that we learn from that start to move us more towards the future that we want

and away from the futures that we don't want.

If we think about the best analogy is trajectory of a plane.

If you change it by two degrees, you end up somewhere very different at the end.

And all the work is to do is to think about, you know, what are those preferred futures for women's sport

and what are the small things we're going to do come Monday to help move and turn the trajectory of where we are today.

Yeah, I love it.

Thank you so much for your time, Rihanna.

I just love learning from you and listening to you talk about these things.

As I said, I walk away from these conversations feeling like I can do really small things to create change.

And I think that's a really powerful thing.

So thank you so much for your time today.

You're welcome.

I think the Female Athlete Project is a perfect example of something that is already creating change in the present.

So well done.

Big fan.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Yeah.

Thanks for taking the time out to chat.

I loved it.

Thank you so much.

Thanks so much for listening.

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