The Tillies are the Australian football team taking the country and the world by storm.
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The Tillies are the Australian football team taking the country and the world by storm.
But behind every great football team, there's an amazing team of experts working behind the scenes.
Incredible women who help to manage the Matildas.
On today's episode, we meet Anne O'Donnell, the media and PR manager for the Matildas.
Anne is responsible for making sure the fans get access to the players and get to learn about their lives.
But she's also equally responsible for looking after the players.
And remembering that they too sometimes need a break from the media.
At an incredible Home World Cup, Anne and the media team worked hard behind the scenes to make sure the Tillies captured hearts right around the world.
But Anne is also a huge advocate about stepping into the foreground to be a visible role model for young women and girls.
And is the inspiration behind this series.
My name's Sophie and I'm the producer here at the Female Athlete Project.
This episode proves that there are so many roles in football.
And opportunities for passionate sportswomen both on and off the field.
So we hope you enjoy the final episode of this mini-series, Managing the Matildas.
Anne, welcome to the Female Athlete Project.
Thanks for having me, Chloe.
This is very cool to sit down and have a chat.
We came up, well, you came up with the idea of this mini-series when we caught up.
And I love this idea.
And one of the main reasons you said behind it was about allowing young people to see opportunities.
Young people can see opportunities.
In sport, when they're not necessarily the athlete.
That, and I also just wanted to make sure some people got their flowers.
So it's been really good.
Yeah, I like that.
Yeah, absolutely.
Where did your love for sport and for football first come from?
It actually came from my mum, which was quite surprising now that I think about it.
But my mum was always into sport.
We came to Australia in 1990 as refugees from Uganda.
Yeah.
And I remember when we were young, my mum was always about sport as our way to fit into Australian society.
So when we were younger, she taught me the rules of cricket.
She taught me about AFL and went to my first game with my mum.
And then football was just always massive because my grandfather and my baba was a massive football fan.
So she always grew up with it.
And so she taught me those rules as well.
And then when we were younger, we were put into netball and I hated it.
I'm sorry, netball.
But it just wasn't, it wasn't my game.
But football was just always a constant in our house.
Sport was always a constant.
I remember when I was younger, every summer I would go to the test at the WACA.
And it was just after school and it was past 5 p.m.
You could go in for free.
And I remember I'd always just finish school and then hang around and wait for sort of 5 p.m.
to be able to go into the WACA and watch test matches.
So, yeah, sport was just a big part of our lives always.
I love the way that your mum introduced you to those sports.
Did she learn about them after arriving here or did she already have a bit of knowledge and understanding about them?
Cricket and football, she already had the knowledge and understanding.
But AFL, yeah, she didn't know about this sport.
Like we'd dance.
Definitely not getting that in a village in Gulu in Uganda.
But she was just always somebody who was inquisitive and liked learning.
And she passed that on to us kids and always trying to try new things and learn new things.
So when she kind of got into AFL, she passed that on to us.
My sister, not a sports person, that lesson flew over her head.
My younger brothers.
My youngest brother, again, he's more into arts and anime and all that kind of art area.
But my middle brother, him and I, we're just massive football fans.
He actually moved to Sydney around about a couple of years after I did.
And he lives about 15 minutes away from me.
So I'll still like come to his house and like at the moment we're doing the Euros and we'll still watch games together and we'll talk about games together.
So, yeah, at least.
Two of the four kids picked up sport.
Yeah, it's really cool.
Do you remember a specific moment where you thought that a role in media might be for you?
Role in media.
Look, I think the specific moment I thought it was possible as a female to be involved in sport.
And I actually spoke to her about it probably about three or four weeks ago.
I was watching the 98 World Cup in the morning, 2 a.m., 3 a.m.
wake ups and seeing Tracey Holmes on the coverage.
And that was 98.
And I think I would have been 14.
And that was the first real conscious, I guess, representation of a woman in sport that I saw that I was like, oh, cool, we can kind of do this.
But as I kind of went through it, it was very especially because football was going to be the sport that I got involved in.
And I just loved it.
But it was very clear that there weren't roles in football.
So I actually probably until 2020 that I thought, oh, OK, I could potentially have a career in media, in women's football, because before then it was very clear that, no, there was nothing.
Wow.
What was it about 2020?
COVID.
Yeah.
So that was the.
That was the year we had COVID.
There was a conversation about it.
So we were set to do the Olympic qualifiers in January in 2020.
And we were due to go to a little place in China called Wuhan.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Sounds familiar.
Yeah.
We were about to go there.
So we were set to travel there for the Olympic qualifiers.
And the previous.
The media manager at Football Australia, Ben O'Neill, he was with the U23s, he was with the Oli Roos, and they were trying to qualify for the Olympics across in Thailand.
And there was only one media officer at the time at Football Australia.
So Ben was already in Thailand.
So there was nobody with the Matildas.
And I was the digital content lead at the time.
And Ben was like, well, can you go in and sort of do both roles?
And I was like, yeah, I'll give it a go.
Like, I'd never trained in it.
And I'd kind of just watched what other media managers had done in the past.
And that was all the stuff I sort of brought through.
I was like, I'll just kind of wing it.
So I got in and then we made the decision that, no, we weren't going to go to Wuhan.
We were going to stay in Australia and we'd have the Olympic qualifiers there.
So I then had that.
And I kind of acted in a dual role.
We qualified for the Olympics in that tournament and the previous game after against Vietnam.
And then the Australian Olympic Committee asked me if I wanted to be the media liaison officer for the games.
And I said yes.
And then sort of was in an acting role for kind of six months before two friends of mine actually said,
just ask for the role, which was Steph Brown.
And then I was asked to do a role for France and Tracy Holmes.
Icons.
Yeah.
So I wasn't like sure about it.
And I didn't know if it was something that I could actually go for.
The role didn't exist.
So Peter Philopoulos had just come in as the head of communications.
And they were the ones that actually gave me the courage to go to him and say,
if you really want it in the end, ask for it.
And I did.
And I still remember.
how I absolutely I fumbled the asking so badly um and but he was lovely and he said sure we'll
work through it and so then I officially transitioned across into the role in in July of
2021. Ahead of the 2020 experience what do you think you had already in your bag in your skill
set that prepared you to do something like that? I actually didn't have any traditional comms
person skills. I think the two attributes I had was I wasn't afraid to fail
and I loved this team and had been around this team since 2005. So I knew who they were I knew
what this team meant and what they stood for from the current team but also I had
a little bit of a recipe. I didn't have any traditional comms skills. I actually didn't
a lot of connection with the alumni and some amazing people taught me about the history of
the team and the history of the game throughout the years. So I think those two things, and when
I say I wasn't afraid to fail, I absolutely knew I would fail because I didn't know this job.
Um, but I was, I tried to always be vulnerable and raise my hand up when I mess up and take
ownership for when I stuff things up. And so being okay and understanding that that is not a weakness,
that it's actually a strength to be open and honest with people of what your capacity is.
It allows people to give you a lot more grace when you inevitably do stuff up,
when you do stuff up.
Yeah.
When you inevitably do mess up. So I think those were the two things that I went in with. And I,
I, again, when I'm talking about fumbling, asking for the role, um, I said to, I said to Pete two
things. I said, look, um, I promise two things. I'm probably going to mess up because I don't
know all of this. Um, I'm from the university of Google and will continue reading from that
university, but I promise I'll only mess up once and learn from it.
Um, and I will love this team and this job and give it absolutely everything I've got.
You touched on 2005. How different was that, uh, exposed to that team back in 2005?
I didn't even know who they were.
Wow.
Yeah. The, the way I found out about the Matildas was, um, my mentor, Penny Tanner. Um, she had
actually got me to start on community radio talking about football with the world football program in
Perth.
And she'd just seen me around games and then saw that I kind of loved the game. And she said,
do you want to join this show in January? And I said, yeah, sure. Like, you know, the naivety of
youth, I was 20 and I had, you know, no idea about anything really. And I was like, okay,
I'll give it a go. Anyway, midway through the year, um, we went to a women's standing committee,
uh, meeting at Football West and the guests there was Tom Samani. Um,
This, and it's okay, Tommy and I are good friends,
so it was like this short, statured, moustached man
with a strong Scottish brogue and he said,
oh, you know, I'm the head coach of the Matildas.
And in my head I was just thinking, who the hell are they?
And I just kept my face really neutral and I asked Penny afterwards,
I'm like, who are the Matildas?
And she's like, oh, they're the national team.
I'm like, we have a national team for football?
Wow.
And she was like, yeah.
And so from that moment on I was, because he'd just come back
into the role after being away for a number of years,
from that minute on we consistently tried to cover the Matildas
wherever they were or whatever they were doing
on the world football program.
But, yeah, up until this point, no idea we had a national team.
Isn't that insane?
And look at you now.
Well, for so long when I was covering them,
I had this whole spiel of like, oh, yeah, I cover the Matildas.
They're the Australian women's national soccer team.
And I'd just say that consistently.
And I think it was fascinating that about 2020 when my former boss was like,
because I used to always use my leave from my day job to cover football.
And I remember being in a lift and he was like, where are you going?
And I said, oh, I'm off to the Algarve Cup.
And this was about 2016, 2017.
I said, oh, I'm off to the Algarve Cup.
I'm going to be covering the Matildas.
And I started doing this spiel.
And he's like, oh, no, no, I know who they are.
And I was like, oh, my God, somebody other than me kind of has an idea
of who they are.
So that was a pretty cool moment.
And for a long time it was about just getting people to know
who the team was.
Can you give us insight into your current role with the Matildas in 2024?
Yeah, so I look after media and PR and I look after the Matildas
and I try and tell people we've actually got five Matildas teams.
So we've got the senior team.
We've got the under-23s, the under-20s who are the young Matildas,
the under-17s who are the junior Matildas,
and our para team who are the para Matildas.
So I look after all.
Five of those teams in the media, PR and comm space.
And it's just about, again, it's a really easy mission is getting people
to know and love this team the way we know and love them
and getting people to understand what they stand for,
what they're looking to leave as a legacy,
and how you can be a part of women's football and be somebody
who loves the game but also helps contribute.
to the future of the game as well.
So that involves all sorts of things.
That involves things with liaising with the media
and building relationships with the media looking at,
you know, where Australians are and making sure
that Matildas hit that touchpoint.
So if Australia are in the music scene,
let's get the Matildas collaborating with Pink or collaborating
with other musicians that they love as well.
If Australia is in the music scene,
go meetocardian.com.
Maybe you can fill in as he goes disturb.
Sorry,Playful. So guiding play.
are at the Australian Open. Let's get the girls to the Australian Open. So it's finding where
Australians live and getting them to know who the team is and what they stand for and what they want
to leave behind. The players themselves have obviously built such a huge brand based on their
performance, but I think there's some areas that you've touched on there, how much goes on behind
the scenes to create and build this brand that Australians have fallen in love with.
Yeah, it's interesting, the word brand, because that feels in some ways quite impersonal
when you work with human beings, you work with people who have life stories and
complexities and have things that they want to achieve. And I think that's where
all of our staff, we try and, you know, your previous guest Gina has spoken about
the red carpet, is we try and provide that red carpet so that they can perform.
And part of that performance is handling the media because media, social media, those are all now
part of sport, like you can't get away from them. And assuming that you can, actually can be
detrimental to performance if you can't work and handle those well enough. So what we try and do,
particularly on the...
And so I guess the media side is just allow them to be themselves and look to build something that
is authentic and real so that they don't have to create a persona or they don't have to create an
identity that is not something that they can own and wear. And so you have then the complexity of
trying to be this brand that doesn't really work for who you are rather than building something
that's quite real.
So they can just be themselves. They don't have to fake anything. They don't have to try and,
you know, pretend to be something. It's more like, okay, this is who they are. And that's
something that we've worked really hard to show is that this team is 23, 25, 27 complex
personalities with different stories. And those personalities, somebody will find themselves in
the player. So you might not be a Steph Catley, but you're a...
Alana Kennedy. You might not be an Alana Kennedy, but you're a Mackenzie Arnold or you're a Mary
Fowler. You'll find yourself within one of the personalities within the team and be able to
connect with them. So it's really important that we then tell all the stories so that people can
find that particular connection. Looking at the World Cup, I think from the outside,
it felt like you've been involved with this team and you've known this team for so many years,
but from the outside...
It was like just this building momentum, momentum, momentum as it got closer and closer. What was it
like being in your role as this groundswell of anticipation was coming ahead of the World Cup?
Probably similar to Gina. I wanted to chuck my phone away so many times. It felt
controlled yet overwhelming at the same time. We tried to control as much as we could. We tried
to do as much planning.
As possible. I started planning for the World Cup in November in 2022 and sitting down...
It's a long way out.
Long way out. Sitting down and looking at what are the different phases? How did we want to
work with the team? What did the team want their message and legacy being? Because my job is,
and our job as staff, is to facilitate what they want, not the other way around, not to impose
on it. So having conversations...
Having conversations with players of, what do you want your message to be? What is that thing
that you want Australia to know about you guys? When we finished the tournament on the 20th of
August, what is it that you want to have had left behind? And then my job is to take all that
information that they give me and simplify the communication of that. And for us, it was just
three really clear points, which is leave a legacy, transform the game and unite a nation.
And just keeping it really clear,
simple in those three pieces. And so that was the control that we could have.
The control we couldn't have was the reaction and the just the ferocity of want and
connection and the media requests that came in. And we'd had the conversation really early on,
again, our job is to protect that high performance environment
and to make...
Make sure that they're able to get up that next day and do the job. Because ultimately,
my job doesn't exist if they don't perform or can't perform. I'm basically superfluous
to the task in the end. So being in a situation where they can actually do that, and sometimes
that means eating a lot of crap. Sometimes you have to be the one that just wears it.
You know, cops it, whether it's from media, whether it's from fans, as Gina spoke about as
well. Whatever it is, sometimes it's just, you just got to take that on because that's the task
and that's your job. And I think during the World Cup, you know, as we progressed, there was a lot
more desire to be able to have access to the players, but we couldn't break on that because
that would create much...
Much more, you know, energy drain on them. And they needed that energy to get through
a really tough tournament where you've got seven games across four weeks.
Looking ahead, just prior to game one and the Sam Kerr calf strain, what on earth was
that like in your role? Can laugh about it now.
I can laugh about it now. At that time, it was... You've got 15 minutes to put together.
Yeah. You've got 15 minutes to put together. Yeah. You've got 15 minutes to put together.
Yeah. You've got 15 minutes to put together a comms plan.
15 minutes. Is that all you had?
Yeah.
Whoa.
Because there's multiple stakeholders involved in something that big. But also the key thing,
again, I know we come back to it, is the team had to perform that night, the opening match of the
World Cup, where they'd been preparing for it for two years. It wasn't just the pre-camp or the
anticipation to that match. And so you are trying to do two things. One is protect the player,
protect the human at the heart of it. And then number two is protect the team so that they can
still go out and be able to perform in that moment. And the key thing for us was we had to
keep that internal because it was a performance advantage if that got out. If Ireland knew 12,
15 hours beforehand, that's a performance advantage. And ultimately, the key two things,
protecting the player and the human, protecting the team are the ultimate pieces. And again,
that means you have to cop it. And boy, did we cop it.
Wow.
That's what you do.
They performed incredibly well. I feel like you mentioned those three key focus areas that are
not that...
They're simple, but not that easy to achieve. Like the idea of uniting a nation is a very large
task, but that was achieved over and above. What was managing the beast like off the back of that?
I mean, it was... So straight after that, as Gina mentioned, you're out of the tournament.
Everything stops really quickly, but there was still the momentum with the team. But the reality
is we were all...
We were all exhausted. 10 weeks in a camp, in an intense home World Cup where the focus was
on you all as a team. And then by the end of that camp, as always is the way when your body starts
to know that things are winding down, you start to get sick. So I started getting sick about
the night of the bronze medal match and then slowly started to get sicker and sicker. But
there were a lot of media requests after that. But ultimately, the players needed a break.
We, your staff, needed a break. And to be honest, after that timeframe, there was about five days
where we tried to clear out any media requests that we could before the players went on a break.
And some players were just... They were done. They really needed that just time away. And then after
that, I burnt out.
I just, I couldn't function, talk, think. If you'd asked me to write, let alone a media release,
if you'd asked me to write a WhatsApp message, I wouldn't be able to put those words together at all.
And I ended up going to Vietnam for 10 days just to get away from it. And it was a really
interesting timeframe because we'd been so focused on the task, the mission, the team
for so long. As I said, not just the team, but the team as a whole. And I was like,
those 10 weeks, but also the two years beforehand, that the funniest part was everybody wanted to talk
about the Matildas and the World Cup. And the last thing I wanted to talk about was the Matildas and
the World Cup. Because that had been just the overwhelming focus for so long. It got to the
point where I just needed to be away from all of that. And that was a really interesting time and
moment because how's the World Cup? Yeah, it was great.
And meanwhile, I was like, I just want to go away for a little bit and just not think about it
because that was all consuming for that timeframe. Did that trip away allow you to decompress and be
ready to go when you came back again? Yeah, because the funniest thing was
after that, it ended up being the week after the World Cup, then two weeks away. And then I came
back and then I slightly, first of all, I started to...
get a bit better because I was still sick when I was over in Vietnam and I slowly started to get
better. And then as I kind of like my brain came back online, it was about five weeks after the
World Cup. And then it was like, oh, you've got Olympic qualifiers in Perth. Okay, cool.
Oh, I feel exhausted for you. So it was just like moving from
the World Cup and we had that September window off, which thank goodness. And then it was,
we had the October window and we've got to try and start the qualification for Olympics.
So, I mean, that timeframe, just going away to Vietnam, I went to Hanoi and just was by myself.
I couldn't even go home. I wanted to go home, but I couldn't because I knew my family would
want to talk about it and people would want to talk about it. And I just didn't want to talk
football for a while. And that was the best thing that I did. And again, I was truly supported by
that.
And Peter and Bek Trabojevic, who is our GM of comms, of just going away and throwing away
that phone for a while. What is the most challenging part of your role?
The most challenging, I think, is balancing and communicating to people
the difference between the human and the athlete. I think sometimes people don't
understand that piece.
Of, yes, they're athletes. Yes, they have a job to do. Yes, they have roles to perform,
but they're also human beings. And some of them particularly were not supposed to be in this
intense environment, like the microscope they're under and the amount of media attention they're
under. Unlike men's football, this has happened just like that. And that's a really big learning
curve for some of these players who are still quite young. I mean, you're asking 22, 23, 24-year-olds
to be in the glare of the public eye, and it's just changed like that. And so guess what? They
have human reactions to things. You know, the ferocious media beast that it can be of like,
you know, we want to talk to this player, we want to have this player on. And it's like,
actually, that player is just really tired right now and got to look after them as a person first.
And I think explaining that and working through that, I think that can be really challenging
because there's this expectation that, of course, they want it. Of course, they want,
like, why wouldn't they? And they do. But it's also, you're asking people to be on
quite consistently. And the way I kind of sometimes
say it is,
could you imagine if your job is administration and you are typing, you know, away, tapping away
on your computer and 75,000 people are watching you as you tap away on your computer?
Oh, stressful. It's a good analogy.
But that's what they're doing. They're doing their job and 75,000 people, 60,000 people
are watching them perform their job.
And another few million.
And everybody has an opinion on it.
And on top of that, again, they can be quite young in the scheme of life. They're 22, 23,
24-year-olds and you're asking them to do all that. So when you put it in that context of,
you know, whatever your job or your role is, imagine you are sitting in the center of a stadium
and 75,000, 60,000, 50,000 people are watching you perform your job for 90 minutes.
Yeah, it's stressful.
Do you have a favorite failure in your career?
Do I have a favorite failure? Yeah, actually, I think my favorite failure is I used to run
the women's game. And I remember as women's football started to become a bit more consistent
in its media coverage, it kind of changed. There was a, you know, when I first started with
the women's game, it was about coverage. It was about making sure people knew the who, what,
when, where, you know, kind of just getting that information out. Not even the why or the how,
because we just needed to do the first things. And then slowly it became about the why and the how.
And slowly it became more about being more, I guess, critical. And by that time I was 13 years
into this.
and I knew the players, I knew their families, I knew their partners,
I knew their friends, like there was a connection there
and I was starting to be asked to write more articles
that would be a lot more critical.
And I remember I was asked to actually do one that like basically
was to go in on the team and I just realised I couldn't do it.
I didn't, I don't know if I didn't, I don't know if the word is the guts
or whatever it was, I didn't have the stomach or the metal
to be able to do it.
And I think that's the time I realised I couldn't be a journalist,
I couldn't be a reporter in that way and be that objective
and that's when I slowly moved across to start to do a lot more content
because I realised I'm not going to,
I can't do it because I'm not going to be a journalist.
I can't do it because I'm not going to be a journalist.
I can't do that job.
I'm going to be really bad at that job.
Do you have a career highlight?
Yeah.
I know my career highlight is actually at the Olympics
against Great Britain and when we defeated Great Britain at Tokyo.
And it was a career highlight for two reasons.
One, I remember FaceTiming a couple of friends,
including Sarah Groove and Cheryl Downs who runs Beyond 90 right now
and I remember FaceTiming them on the bench before the game,
before that quarterfinal because they'd been alongside me
in so many big moments and it was just weird not to have them there
for what could potentially be another big moment
and I remember FaceTiming them and telling them thank you
for being just amazing friends and support.
But throughout like my whole, I wouldn't even call it a career,
it was just my whole passion.
And then we played that quarterfinal and we won.
And I'd been through so many like moments where we'd gotten
to quarterfinals and just pain.
2011 in Germany against Sweden.
Sweden's actually a theme here.
So likely they're not in the Olympics because they've been a theme.
Great, great result.
2011, you know, losing the Asian Cup in 2014,
the 2015 World Cup at the quarterfinal against Japan
and losing that as well.
2016, the penalty shootout against Brazil.
There's just been so many of those moments where we were almost there
and it just, we just fell short.
Yeah.
Yeah.
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And we actually made the breakthrough moment that was beautiful.
Yeah.
That's really special.
Yeah.
Any advice for young people who might want to have a career in media,
comms, PR?
Yeah.
I think two things that I would say, I would go back to that vulnerability
piece is be okay with being open with your capability.
Yeah.
Um, Tony has a quote about, um, loving someone for who they are, but also respecting who they
could be. And I think it's that same thing of understanding what your capacity is right now
and being open and honest with people about that, but also understanding what you could
potentially be and working towards that as well. And always looking to build, always looking to
learn, always looking at other people. You don't want to be the smartest person in a room because
then you're in the wrong room. You're not actually going to grow from that. And I always get
challenged by being in rooms with other really senior, really experienced media managers. And
I will always talk to them and tap their brains about what they've done. I mean, even in building
the World Cup plan, um, I can openly and honestly say I didn't do that myself.
I spoke to the media manager of the US, England, Germany, Sweden, um, Canada, France,
because they'd all had home tournaments and ask them what did they do really well? And what did
they wish they'd learned previously? And that helped me build our media plan for, for the World
Cup. So I would say is just understand where you are, be open and honest with people around what
you can and what you can't do, and then work towards that greater capacity.
For the future. Um, that would be mine and love what you do and know exactly why you're doing it
because that why is what's going to hold you through those times. When you are sitting at
3am and you've still got, haven't sent to the media release out, it needs to go out after a game.
Um, but that why is it's, what's going to hold you through the really hard times. And so
understanding that really clearly.
Yeah. It's amazing.
It's amazing advice. Can you touch on the tournament that you're a little side project
that you're involved with organizing that we chatted about a couple of months ago?
Ha ha. Um, yeah, so I'm looking at organizing a women's African cup, um, for the end of this year.
It's called the Kama Umoja Cup, which is Swahili for as one or together. Um, and the whole
tournament is about trying to get more girls from multicultural backgrounds,
being involved in football and loving the game and trying to bring down the cultural stereotypes
about what women and girls can do and how they can perform in the game. So I'm really passionate
about that because I just see so many girls from my background and my community, a community and
refugees and migrants who, um, don't feel included in the game and feel locked out of the game.
And I want to make sure we create a space and a space,
a conversation and a space for them to go, yeah, this is my game as well. Um, because they're
incredible athletes. I mean, we, we felt the sting of it when we played Nigeria in the world cup and
saw just how incredible athletic they are, smart, tactically intelligent, all of those things. And
I think as a sport, if we want to continue to progress, we need to be able to utilize the
talents of our whole community, our whole society. And I think,
that's one of the reasons I'm really passionate about driving that one forward.
Yeah. It's such an incredible concept. And just on that note, that idea of, um, a lot of those
women and girls feeling like they don't belong in sport. What's the importance of also having
diverse representation at the media level as well? It's incredibly important. And it's one
of the reasons we're lucky. We are a reasonably diverse team. Uh, the senior Matildas, we're a
very diverse team now at the youth levels. I mean, we've got girls from, you know,