Managing The Matildas Sports Scientist Georgia Brown

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 Georgia Brown.

She's the assistant sports scientist at the Tillies,

who's changing the game when it comes to research around female footballers in Australia.

Georgia, she's currently completing her PhD on the effects of the menstrual cycle on football performance and recovery.

And we couldn't think of a better place for her to do that research than with the Tillies.

My name's Sophie and I'm the producer here at the Female Athlete Project.

This episode proves that there are so many roles and opportunities for passionate sportswomen both on and off the field.

We hope you enjoy this mini-series, Managing the Matildas.

Georgia, welcome to the show.

Welcome to the Female Athlete Project.

Thanks for having me.

I'm really looking forward to having a chat about your experience and the work that you do with Football Australia

and also some of the incredible research you're doing in that space.

But can you take us back and tell us when you first found a love for sport and for football?

Yeah, I grew up in a family which was pretty football obsessed.

Particularly my dad, he grew up playing his whole life.

And so my sisters and I naturally played football from a young age.

And I fell in love with it pretty young.

I played my whole life.

I coached my teams in high school.

And after high school, I refereed growing up.

And then I've ended up working in football now, which is pretty exciting.

How did you come to the decision to do a sports science degree?

Yep.

So I love football, love sport.

And then I really enjoyed science in high school as well.

I love biology and I love chemistry.

So naturally for me, I thought, why not do a sports science degree?

So I ended up doing a Bachelor of Applied Science at the University.

of Sydney and then got my bachelor's degree before moving over to UTS to do an honours degree.

Were you out at Cumberland campus?

I was.

Oh, I was at Cumbo too.

I did physio at Cumbo.

They've moved now.

It's no longer, is it?

Yeah, they're at main campus now, I think, which is so different to what Cumberland campus was.

They don't get the same experience.

No, no.

I mean, I love that you could just drive there.

Yes.

And park and it was easy.

Yes.

But there wasn't quite the university lifestyle that all my other friends got at other universities.

Yeah, it's probably a good decision to move to the main campus.

I have some friends from university still that I'm very close with.

Yeah, that's awesome.

I think you kind of had all the same people in all your classes, which was really nice.

And for someone who might be looking at a sports science degree, it is quite heavily science.

Would that be your piece of advice?

I teach at university now as well.

And I think some students come in and don't realise how heavily science based it is.

So at Sydney University, at least when I did it, it was a Bachelor of Applied Science.

And then in brackets.

So it was exercise and sports science.

I'm now at University of Technology, Sydney, and it's more practical focused.

And there it is a Bachelor of Sport and Exercise Science.

So slightly different.

But my undergrad was very heavily science based.

So once you finished up at university, what did your entry into the professional world look like from there?

Yep.

So when I finished my degree, it was quite tricky to get into working in sport.

I didn't really have any connections.

So I actually took a three month break and went over to Europe and had a holiday.

That's the way to do it.

I thought I just needed a break.

I was a bit burnt out.

And then after that, the following year, I went to the University of Technology, Sydney,

and I did an internship with Sydney FC Youth Academy whilst doing my honours project with them as well.

So that was, I guess, my first introduction to working with a sports team.

UTS just had a lot of really great connections with sports teams.

After that, I then did an internship at the New South Wales Institute of Sport with their swim team and their exercise physiology department.

I got to work with them.

It was like Bronte and Kate Campbell.

And I remember just watching them swim and they looked like dolphins.

They just fly through the water.

They were absolutely phenomenal.

I think Meg Harris, who's in the Olympics this time as well, and a few other athletes.

Unfortunately, that was a COVID year.

So I didn't get to do as much as I would have liked.

But my supervisor there offered me a PhD at the end of it.

And then my honours supervisor heard about that and said they also have a PhD with Football Australia.

So I had to make the tough decision, which my parents were straight away rooting for Football Australia.

And it's the one that I chose in the end because it came with a role with the under-17s women's national team as their sports scientists.

So from there, I've then moved up to the under-20s women's national team after a year.

We got to go to the under-20s World Cup in Costa Rica, 2022.

And then last year, I was asked to join the Matildas from the World Cup as one of their assistant sports scientists.

And I've been with them ever since.

Before we get into your PhD and what a sports scientist actually does,

how did it feel to have a chance to work with Football Australia?

And then when you also got the call up to work with the Matildas?

Yeah, I was a bit nervous to take on a national team.

Having just done a few internships, I was a bit scared, to be honest.

But it worked out really well.

And I think going kind of into any new job, there's always a huge learning curve.

No matter how well you've done.

At university and how much you've studied, there is a huge learning curve.

And I think working with the national team, it allowed me to develop my own skill set

and my own way of kind of working as a sports scientist, which I really enjoyed.

And as I said, I got to go to the under-20s World Cup.

That was my second ever tournament.

I think it was my fifth ever match that I'd ever worked in.

Because national teams, they don't have that many matches.

And yeah, it was a pretty cool experience.

So for someone who has no idea, what is a sports scientist and what do they do?

Yeah, most people have no idea what a sports scientist is.

When I started my degree, I don't think I knew.

When I finished my degree, I'm not sure if I quite knew either.

But essentially, we're there to look after the physical performance of the athletes.

Within the national teams, we work as both the sports scientist and the strength and conditioning coach.

So we look after things like their gym, their conditioning, whether that be on-field or off-field.

We work really closely with our nutritionist.

She works remotely.

So we implement nutritional requirements for athletes and works with the chef.

We work with the physios to help rehab players and minimize injury risk.

We work with the coaches to help plan training sessions,

do things like their warm-ups, recovery as well.

And a lot of it's around the managing of the players' loads.

Let's talk a little bit about managing player loads and the GPS devices that athletes wear.

For a lot of people who...

Who aren't involved in sport probably don't have a lot of background about why on earth athletes wear GPS vests

and have someone tracking their every move when they're training or playing.

Yeah.

So there's two parts to it.

There's the performance element and then there's the injury risk reduction element to it as well.

So players obviously clock a certain number of kilometers in a match,

a certain number of high-speed meters, so fast running, sprinting, accelerations and decelerations,

so speeding up and slowing down and change of direction.

All of those have a load on the body.

And we want our players to be able to achieve high fitness levels,

so they're able to run more when they need to in a match and run faster when they need to into a match.

So we track that in a match and we're able to kind of work out what they need to achieve through the week.

But then also from an injury risk reduction performance point,

if they aren't hitting certain metrics during the week and then all of a sudden they go and play a full match

or they haven't done it for a number of weeks and then go play a full match,

they're able to do that.

So we're able to track that in a match and we're able to kind of work out what they need to achieve through the week.

If they're not hitting certain metrics during the week and then all of a sudden they go and play a full match,

they're more likely to be injured.

So we want them to be as fit as possible, perform as quick and fast and strong as possible,

but then also to reduce any risk of injury.

So in the national teams, we're in a bit of a tricky spot where our players are based in clubs all across the world.

Not all of them even have GPS.

So we try to get GPS data from each of them, work out what our players are doing so that when they come into camp,

we don't push them too much and increase their injury risk.

We don't push them too little as well and increase their injury risk.

And then we kind of get that continuation of care for those athletes.

So there's not a club environment, then come into camp without proper care and then sending them back.

There was a piece of research that I'd love some insight on just on that topic that you're involved with,

monitoring training load and wellness of female footballers transitioning between club and national teams.

We've seen a lot of public discussion off the back of people saying the Matildas in the world,

cup and then seeing them spread all across the world to their respective clubs.

Can you give us some insight into that research?

Yeah.

So one of the research projects, it was looking at simple measures that we could use to track our players load and the way that they were responding to their load in terms of their perceptual wellness.

So as I said, with the players being based across the world, they all have different GPS devices.

So it's a bit difficult to be able to compare certain metrics and some clubs don't have GPS devices.

So.

So we use simple measures like how many training sessions they were doing a week, the duration of each training session and the intensity, which we track by what's called an RPE scale, which is rating of perceived exertion.

And from that, we get what's called a sessional RPE.

So it's pretty much your duration multiplied by your intensity gives you an overall load for a session.

So we looked at that in addition to the number of training sessions a week and compared from two weeks prior, then into the first week of camp.

Transitioning into the next week.

Next week and then two weeks back in their club.

And what we saw was it was pretty typical of a national team environment is that when they go from a club environment to a national team, we see an increase in the number of sessions, which makes sense.

We have such a limited time to work with our athletes.

The coaches need to get as much tactical and technical work into them to make that team who's based across the world become a national team and perform at their best.

So whilst we saw changes in, for example, their training session count.

Increase when they came into camp that first week, we saw a reduction in their match count, which is pretty typical.

It's usually just a training period and then generally saw an increase in their match count.

So it's quite common to have what we call congested schedules in national teams, again, because it is a short period in tournament mode.

You have instead of one match a week, you have two or three matches a week.

Although we saw those changes, we didn't see really any change in their perceptual wellness.

So to us, that suggested.

That maybe they were still recovering well, they were still coping with the loads, although we know that perceptual measures are just one side of it.

So there could be things that we're not measuring that could be changing with those responses to load.

So you obviously have to communicate a lot with all the different clubs that the players are playing at, but then you also have a lot of different personnel that you have to communicate with in the national program as well.

You touched on like the nutritionist, physio, high performance.

All those things.

Like, what is it like having to build those relationships with a huge range of different people?

Yeah. So currently, because I'm the assistant, a lot of that is on our lead sports scientist, who's Timothy Knight.

But having worked in the under 20s before and under 17s before, that was my role.

I think it's really important to create relationships both within your team and also those clubs externally, because without that, you can't ask them to be sending you data and doing this for you and that for you.

So.

It's really important that we have strong relationships within and outside of the teams.

And I think Tim Knight, who's currently in that role and the previous sports scientist who's been in the role, have done that really well.

It's quite funny though, national teams in the senior team, a lot of them are based in non-English speaking countries.

So there's some things that are lost in translation or there's a bit of Google translation that is used sometimes, which is entertaining.

What has been the biggest challenge of your career so far?

Oh.

The biggest?

The biggest challenge, I think 2022, when I was with the under 20s national team, when I was with the under 17s, although it was my first year with the national teams as a sports scientist, again, it was a COVID year.

So I think we only had two camps that year, unfortunately.

I didn't really get to develop my sports science skills.

And then I was somewhat thrown in the deep end with the under 20s who were going to the under 20s World Cup that year.

So.

I grew a lot as I think both a practitioner and a person that year, being thrown in the deep end and trying to help this team of players who are based all across Australia, who haven't had a lot of football in the previous two years because of COVID and getting them physically to their best point possible for the World Cup.

There's also a big discrepancy between the under 20 teams or the youth teams and the senior teams in terms of things like budget and how many staff we have.

So.

In the under 20s teams, you're working almost 24-7, but it was a credible experience and a huge challenge, but a very rewarding one.

I've been asking people lately, it's sometimes a tricky question, but it's what is your favourite failure?

Yeah, this one was a tricky one when I was prompted for it earlier.

I had to think about it for a while.

I'm a bit of a perfectionist.

I hate making mistakes.

I can get that vibe from you.

I feel like a lot of people.

I work in sports science area, a very perfectionist, very data-driven, don't like mistakes.

Yeah, I don't like making mistakes, but I was thinking about it.

And technically, when I applied for university, I applied for the Masters of Nutrition with Exercise and Sports Science.

And I was close to getting in, but I didn't make it in.

So technically, I failed there.

And I'm glad I did because when I did my first undergraduate nutrition subject, I was like, oh, this is definitely not for me.

I love nutrition, but not in the way that we were learning.

And so I'm glad I failed there and it put me on the path that I am now.

And then I guess, like I mentioned earlier, I failed to get into sport without doing my honours degree.

And it's worked out again really well for me on the career progression that I've had so far.

Yeah, I love that.

Let's take a look at your PhD.

Can you tell us a little bit about what it involves?

Yeah, so I'm looking at the menstrual health and effects of the menstrual cycle in terms of phase and symptoms.

On performance and recovery for football players.

And the PhD is what actually got me connected with Football Australia in the first place.

My supervisors pretty much said, you can do whatever you would like to do.

And I figured that working with female athletes, doing something specific with females would be really cool.

There's also a huge gender gap in research.

There was a review article between 2014 and 2020, which showed that 35% of papers included female athletes or female athletes.

Yeah.

Or female exercise participants, which means 65% were based exclusively on males, and only 6% of those were based exclusively on females.

Ridiculous.

It's crazy.

And it's not just in sport science and exercise.

It's in a range of domains.

But that really spoke to me, and part of the reason for that is the menstrual cycle.

So it's really hard to control for the menstrual cycle.

And when we're doing research, essentially what we're trying to do is look at the effect of changing one factor and how that affects another variable.

But then you have the menstrual cycle, which has these fluctuations in hormones.

It's hard to really control for that.

So that's part of the reason why females are underrepresented in research.

We've also had less female participants in sport, but that is increasing now.

So hopefully making my contribution to improving and increasing the research for female athletes.

Yeah, it's such an incredibly important area.

And can you touch on the menstrual health screening tool that you've developed with some other staff as well?

Yeah.

So as part of my research...

we actually were first looking at just menstrual cycle for performance

and then we realised you have to have a healthy menstrual cycle first

before we can look at how we can use the menstrual cycle

to optimise performance.

So we didn't really know what the menstrual health landscape was

for football players in Australia.

There are a few around general athletes,

but none specifically within football.

So we developed a menstrual health screening tool.

Myself, my PhD supervisor, the lead female doctor at the Matildas,

which is Brandy Cole, and Mark Jones, who is the men's team's

or football Australia's chief medical officer.

We developed a tool that only took a few minutes for players to complete.

It could be completed by all our age groups

and then also had a component which looked at how players perceived

the menstrual cycle to affect their performance.

So it pretty much runs through things like the symptoms they experience,

checking for things like infrequent and absent menstruation,

hormonal contraceptive use,

and then whether they feel like the menstrual cycle affects them

and at what time points and how it affects them.

So their energy levels, their strength, their speed, for example.

Do you have a career highlight to date?

Yeah, so I mean the World Cup.

We can't not talk about that.

The World Cup was pretty phenomenal.

I was actually called by the lead sports scientist at the time

on a Thursday night about a week after I got back from Vietnam,

which was a week ago.

So I was called by the lead sports scientist at the time on a Thursday night

with under 20s.

We'd just been to Vietnam for our qualifying campaign for the Asian Cup

and it had been like 38 degrees and 90% humidity

and it was a pretty crazy tournament.

But we won that.

We got through.

I got back and I didn't have a camp for about two months

and I thought, great, I can't wait to get stuck into my PhD.

And then the lead sports scientist from Matilda's called me on a Thursday night

for like about a week, maybe a week and a half after I got back.

He said, oh, you know, how are you going?

And I said, yeah, great.

And I told him what I was looking forward to and he said, oh, that's great.

He said, any chance you want to come up to the Gold Coast

to help the Matildas for their pre-World Cup campaign?

I thought, oh.

Yeah, he said, oh, we'll see how it goes and then after the week,

if the coach likes you, then you can stay for the whole World Cup.

I said, oh, yeah, how long is that for?

And he goes, oh, about 10 weeks.

I thought, yeah, sure, when do you want to go?

He goes, oh, can you come up in like two days?

Wow.

Yeah, not a problem.

You know, pack my bag again.

So I went on up and I think it was actually two,

two days later, got the ticket of approval from TG, our head coach,

and then we were again in camp for 10 weeks and I wouldn't look back.

It was such a phenomenal experience to be part of it,

to be part of not just the World Cup campaign,

but I feel like the shift in women's sport and how we view women's football

in Australia was just incredible.

And, you know, I look back on footage of all those people on that flight

watching the Courtney Vine penalty kick.

Or AFL matches screening the penalty shootout and then fans going inside

when they turn it off and NBA matches being rescheduled.

That just makes me, like, it makes me emotional when I think about it

because what a shift in women's sport we've seen.

Yeah, it was such a powerful moment.

Do you have any advice for maybe any young women who might be thinking

about a career in sport or as a sport scientist?

Yeah.

When I teach, I teach at university as well.

And it seems like a pretty 50-50 split.

But then when we look in sporting environments,

there's definitely more men working than women,

which is there's somewhere a drop off.

In the Matilda space, there's a lot more women.

But then when we look at men's teams, it's the teams that I worked in,

you know, it's 90% men.

So whilst women may be looking at those and thinking it's disheartening,

I think we are starting to see an increase in women's,

women working in men's sport, not just female sport.

So if it's something that you're interested in, 100% give it a go.

We are just as good at men as working as sport scientists.

I've met some phenomenal female practitioners.

So, yeah, just give it a go if you enjoy it.

You know, I love my job.

I really, really look forward to going into every camp.

It doesn't feel like work.

So I think if it's something that they enjoy,

then 100% go for it.

I love it.

Thank you so much for your time today, Georgia,

and for your amazing insights.

I've learned a lot.

I'm such a nerd for that stuff.

I think our listeners are going to get a huge amount out of it as well.

Oh, I'm so glad.

Thanks so much.

No worries.

Thanks so much for listening.

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