Welcome to The Wrap, a weekly podcast covering women's sports news.
Bez, what have we got around the grounds this week?
Tori Lewis shocks the world with a Diamond League win in the 200 metres.
Molly O'Callaghan swims the world's fastest 200 metres time this year.
How do you think they'd go reverse?
And rugby contemplate making the women's ball smaller.
I'm looking forward to this chat with you about that.
We haven't discussed it off air, but I think this is going to be good.
For the key story, we'll chat to rugby player turned coach Meditiana Robinson
about what world rugby are doing to increase pathways and opportunities
for women in coaching, which we love to see.
My name is Chloe Dalton.
I'm joined every week on the show by my co-host, Bez,
whose proper name is Erin Morton, for anyone wondering.
We've met a couple of people lately who are like, who are you?
What is your full name?
I like to be anonymous.
It's out there now.
We are recording on.
Let's take a look around the grounds.
In athletics, Tori Lewis is fast.
Really, really fast.
On the weekend at the season's opening Diamond League meeting in China,
she shocked the athletics world when she won the 200 metre final from lane nine.
Do you think the middle lane runners didn't know she was even there?
I was thinking that.
But I also think that at those big stadiums,
they often you can see them looking up.
They're looking at the screen in front of them.
So they must have had some.
Some idea of her being out there on a Pat Malone, but she was amazing.
Like she just ran her own race.
Didn't know she'd won.
I'm taking a story.
Well, she was, she's only 19 years old, right?
This was her first ever Diamond League event.
She entered it and was feeling so nervous.
And then she comes out and beats the fastest woman in the world at the moment.
She carried Richardson by point zero three seconds.
How good she ran it in twenty two point nine six.
And the places were decided after a photo finish after you said there's like she looked she had to
like pretty much look up and work out.
She had no idea she'd even won.
How good she said it was so surreal beating Shikari.
I didn't even notice I beat them until I saw the replay.
And I was like, holy crap.
My goal was just to hold on as long as I could.
I was in lane nine.
So I knew that would all be in front of me by 50 or 60 meters.
But I just wanted to do as well as I could.
Well, you did love that for her.
How good she's great in surfing.
The Margaret River Pro wound up on the weekend and Hawaiian surfer Gabby Bryan not only won
the title, but she had an incredible moment when she
shared a wave with a pod of dolphins.
You sent me the video and I haven't watched it yet.
She pulls it in and there's like, I want to say a dozen dolphins just in the wave with her.
Did she get close to it?
Like when they're doing cutback cutback and stuff, did she get close to the dolphins?
No, like she there was no danger of a dolphin getting fin chopped.
I feel like they're smarter than that.
They know to not get fin chopped.
But that was awesome.
Sadly, Sally Fitzgibbons has missed the midseason cut with a loss in the quarterfinal.
She will again drop back to that Challenger series for the second year in a row.
Fellow Aussie Tyler Wright was beaten in the semifinals by Sawyer Lindblad, who also knocked
I just want to say on Sally, like obviously.
She must be devastated that she's missed out on missed the cut again for the second year.
She is some kind of human, though.
She came out of the water knowing that that loss meant that she was out.
The kids all greet her on the on the beach.
They play a game of rock, paper, scissors for her.
She gives away a singlet and then she just takes the whole time walking up the beach
posing for photos and signing autographs after that disappointment.
That's really cool.
I feel like it shows her character, doesn't it?
Love that for you, Sal.
And you know what?
You killed it on the Challenger series last year.
In basketball, the Caitlin Clark draft, as it will forever be known, was watched by a
massive 2.45 million viewers.
Clark was selected number one, as expected, and will suit up for the Indiana
And the singlet sold out in all sizes in just two days.
The frustrating part of that stampede for Clark's gear is that the singlet won't ship
The season finishes, Bez, in September.
It's mind-blowing.
And I think I was going to talk to you about this before we started, but last year I tried
to order an Ezzie Seattle Storm singlet.
Couldn't get one.
It's frustrating, isn't it?
It's really frustrating.
And the Caitlin, granted, you know, may understand supply and demand issues and things like that.
In regards to potentially making singlets for everyone.
But I just think they should, number one.
And number two, the Caitlin Clark situation shouldn't have snuck up on them.
Yeah, that's surprising.
And the suppliers are facing a fair bit of criticism about the delays and shortages.
And I just think, yeah, it's a hard thing, I think, when women's sports so quickly gets
criticized about revenue.
When there is a demand for something that will bring in revenue, it needs to be made
A hundred percent.
And we've put a little post up about Caitlin Clark's first year salary versus Victor Wemby.
He's a long, long man.
Got to see him in real life.
Yeah, I'm a bit jealous about that.
And he's a very tall man.
Anyway, that comparison.
There's already a lot of comments about, well, when the league brings in X, Y, and Z, that
whole, you know, beautiful comparison piece that we talk about so often.
My eyes just rolled back into my brain.
Again, like, here's a little example of...
You're not actually allowing us to support them in a way.
Like, their capacity isn't being generated for us to buy the merch that we want to buy.
That's super frustrating.
She is rumored, Caitlin Clark, that is, to be signing a deal with Nike worth well over
$20 million plus potential bonuses.
That's a lot of money.
It's kind of nice.
She'll become one of the few female basketballers with a shoe deal.
I think there's only three other current WNBA players with shoes.
Aussies, Naidu, Pouch, Isabel.
Paul Borlase and Jazz Shelley were all drafted.
Pouch was drafted to the Atlanta Dream with the 12th pick and will be joined at the Dream
by Borlase, who went number 20.
And Shelley was selected 29th by the Phoenix Mercury.
I think the most disappointing thing about this, and we saw it last year with Shia La
Hill going 7th, I think, but then getting cut.
It's a super competitive preseason camp that now awaits the players.
And they'll be, you know, up against it to make the final 12-person roster for each team.
It's so cutthroat.
We need more teams.
More teams and bigger rosters.
In football, Melbourne City had a very impressive first semifinal performance, beating the Newcastle
Jets 3-0 in front of a record crowd in Maitland on Sunday afternoon.
The 6,836 fans smashed the Jets' previous crowd record by more than 2,000.
Sydney FC got over the Central Coast Mariners 1-0 in an entertaining game in Gosford.
Mackenzie Hawksby broke the deadlock.
Nine minutes into the second half after a sublime pass from 16-year-old future star
Indiana Dos Santos, Marinert Kaya Simon missed a few half chances.
It was really quite interesting how, like, to me, this shows experience and leadership,
this Kaya Simon quote.
She said, they definitely weren't the better team on the day.
I think it was a mistake for myself, and I take full responsibility for that.
It's pretty refreshing to hear an athlete be that open to...
There's something about getting older, having some perspective.
And being able to speak truth.
Love that from Kaya.
In swimming, the 200 metres in Paris is going to be an absolute screamer.
Oh, I can't wait.
So on the weekend, Molly O'Callaghan won the Australian Championship,
stopping the clock in 1 minute 53.57 seconds, beating Ariana Titmuss to the wall.
That time was the fastest so far this year,
bettering the previous best set by Canada's Summer McIntosh.
So we've got these three absolute swimming goats.
And they're going to go at it together.
I wonder if they can swim.
No, I don't think so.
Hooves aren't very webby, I think.
Not webby hooves.
But it is pretty amazing that these three women are going to...
Imagine being in the 200 metres, you'd be like,
oh, I'm not even a chance of getting a medal.
Well, the fact that it's kind of shifting a little bit from the four to the two.
I mean, the four is still going to be iconic, but more.
We love more races with close finishes, don't we?
It's going to be great.
In rugby union, World Rugby is considering the ball size for women's rugby union.
They're currently collecting training and playing data on a size 4.5 ball,
which is about 3% smaller and 3 to 4% lighter than a typical size 5 ball.
The debate around ball size has been around for a number of years
and there are physical differences that do make a sound case for a smaller ball.
Lindsay Starling is the science and medical manager at World Rugby
and said last week typically an adult male hand is 10% larger than that of an adult female.
The report will be released in due course.
Once the results of the trials are analysed,
but rugby union wouldn't be the first to reduce the ball size.
We know that in basketball, AFLW Aussie rules,
there's smaller ball sizes for the women.
Bez, what are your thoughts?
Smaller ball for women in rugby, yes or no?
Oh, does it have to be so binary?
I knew that was going to be your response.
Look, I'm going to surprise you here and say yes.
Oh, I am surprised.
Yeah, well, I love the fact that rugby union is one of these,
one of the sports where everything is the same between the male and female game.
It is, there's no differences at all.
We play the same game as the men do.
However, you cannot escape the fact that we do have smaller hands.
And if that smaller ball increases the product,
again, it's about what we put out in there in the marketplace.
If it increases, if it improves the product, then yeah, I think I'm for it.
And yeah, look, there'll be a lot of traditionalists that say absolutely not,
but I will reserve my final say until I see what comes from this report.
What do you think?
I think that's fair enough.
I mean, you play with a smaller ball.
And I'm really glad that we do because the men's ball is bigger and heavier.
And in my hands, it feels huge.
Yeah, interesting.
My point that I would like to make, though, is that I obviously haven't been playing Aussie
rules for a very long time, but the ball has been that size for a number of years.
So what is it like for women that have been playing rugby for a number of years,
having to learn to adapt to something like that, particularly kickers?
I think kickers are the ones that spring to mind the most about having to adjust.
I think ball in hand, it's going to be great.
You're just going to feel more comfortable with your ball in hand.
Sometimes you see smaller girls running with that footy and it looks huge.
It's like the size of their torso.
It's a good point.
And I like the concept of it to allow probably some more creative offloads.
I thought I was at the Waratahs game watching you guys on Friday night at Allianz Stadium.
Great atmosphere.
We'll get to that story in a sec.
But I thought there was some really good one-handed offloads from a number of the players.
And I think that a slightly smaller ball would allow more players to do that.
And that's the argument that it will, as we said, it will allow the players to
hang on to the ball better and also be more creative in attack.
I think the big thing will be the kickers.
They probably won't love it as much, I imagine.
And I don't know about the AFLW ball, but do you feel like it has a smaller sweet spot?
Yeah, that's definitely something to consider, particularly when you've been doing a,
a lot of reps throughout your lifetime.
I think that's a weird adjustment.
Anyway, time will tell.
So in some more rugby news, the grand final is set and it will be the Fijian Dura looking
for three in a row against a New South Wales Waratahs team that is pretty desperate to
win back the title that we lost for the first time in 2022.
Still hurts, doesn't it?
The first semifinal in Fiji was a really tight one.
It was played in front of over 10,000 gloriously loud Fijian fans.
How awesome is that?
It was a doubleheader with the men.
But it kicked off at 4.30 Fiji time and the Suva Ministry for Employment Government thing
leading up to it basically put a social media post out there saying everyone needs to let
their staff leave early on Friday to go watch this game.
I mean, rugby is a religion in that country, so, but amazing.
The Dura were holding onto a small lead and the Western Force had heaps of chances.
They were definitely hard on the attack.
But an errant line-out throw meant that Dura won a scrum with about two minutes left on
the clock and Atalete Buna ran 80 metres.
She is rapid, the full-back, to score a try and deliver the Dura a 25-14 victory.
She scored three tries on the weekend.
She'll be one that we are definitely looking at.
The second semifinal between the Waratahs and the ACT Brumbies was a high-scoring game.
And although the Brumbies did push the Waratahs at times, the New South Wales team always seemed
to be in control.
And we ran out 47 to 27 winners.
And it was an awesome atmosphere.
And again, it was great to be at Allianz Stadium with our fans there.
Yeah, home alone, it was awesome.
It was excellent.
Let's take a look at the key story.
Earlier, I caught up with one of the real pioneers for women's rugby in Victoria,
Meditiana Robinson, who played for a number of years for the Melbourne Rebels in the Super W
And Meds has actually transitioned into a coaching role.
And it was a really cool opportunity to get.
To chat to her, to catch up about what World Rugby are doing, to try and create more opportunities
for women in rugby, which we love to see.
Meds, thanks so much for joining us today.
When I last saw you, I reckon I was living down in Melbourne.
We used to do a bit of training together for rugby.
And you were still a player, but you made the decision last year to finish up your career
And you've moved into the coaching space.
Can you tell us how that decision came about?
So I think going into coaching was always going to be a natural progression.
For me, I grew up playing many sports, not just rugby and the impact that all my coaches
had on not me as an athlete, but my personal growth as an individual was huge.
And I have a lot to thank all my coaches that I had during my time for the person I am today.
And for me playing, I always had the vision that I wanted to get into coaching because
I wanted to give back what all those coaches have given me.
And I had some wonderful experiences through my time.
Playing rugby with the Rebels, with Alana Thomas, and we had Peter Breen come in and
obviously J.I. at the moment.
And they're all just, the one thing they've got in common is that selflessness and they
give up their time to make you a better athlete and person.
And I really want to sort of take what I learned from them and pass that knowledge on to the
next bunch of athletes and have the same impact for them.
So yeah, natural progression, easy decision.
Yeah, I love that.
It's such an important part of it, right?
Incredible people that contribute to sport, like by developing athletes.
But as you said, like developing people, like it's such a key element of it that sometimes
is forgotten about.
Yeah, more than just a game.
You can be the best player, but you need to have a good group of people as well.
It's so important to have just good people in your team.
In 2023, you're one of 16 coaches from across the world to be a part of the Gallagher High
Performance Academy.
Can you tell us a little bit about this?
We love hearing more pathways for women in coaching.
Can you tell us a bit about the Academy?
Yeah, definitely.
It's such a wonderful idea that World Rugby have partnered with Carol Isherwood, who leads
the program to get more female coaches in the game.
So World Rugby's vision is that they would like to have 40% female coaches at the 2025
So for them to support that, they run this Academy and a person from every country sort
of gets selected to participate in this Academy.
We go through things such as game planning, analytics, finding out, sort of exploring
who you are as a person, being able to communicate effectively, culture building, and you do
that via workshops with all the other individuals from around the world.
So you get to build this wonderful network of female coaches from every country and you'll
sort of be on a Zoom and there'll be interpreters from Russia or Spain doing the language so
everyone can participate at the same time.
So it's more than just learning, coaching, it's building those relationships with other
powerful women across the globe and then you get embedded in your national team.
So I was lucky enough to work with the Wallaroos at the WXV in New Zealand last year and having
that experience within an international team, it's just priceless what you get out of it,
just totally embedded in the team and culture, learning from coaches that are already at
their international level.
It's, yeah, it's huge and I'm very grateful for the experience because what you take out
of that going into your sort of next coaching roles is enormous.
And it's such a powerful thing, right?
Because I think we talk a lot about more opportunities for female athletes and better access to
resources and medical equipment and training facilities and whatever that looks like.
But I think there's so much off the field in terms of the staffing and opportunities
Off the field in these coaching roles.
What do you think some of the big barriers might have been historically?
And I think there's a real sort of perceived credibility people have with female coaches
thinking that they're not experienced enough or their knowledge is lesser than.
And that's just a perceived notion that people already have going into it.
And then that creates for women that self-doubt, the imposter.
And then that creates for women that self-doubt, the imposter syndrome, which I got as soon as
I got accepted into the academy, I had those thoughts of, oh, no, I'm not, I'm not ready
I don't deserve to be here.
And I think a lot of that is outside noise, like being told you don't have the experience,
you're not experienced enough.
And I don't think males experience that to that degree.
You sort of apply for a job and confident and you, because you're male and had years
experience playing and all this other stuff you get looked at a lot sooner.
I think that's a big, big part of it is that perceived credibility.
And it's exactly what this program is trying to get past that, that, that barrier and those
challenges and create strong female coaches.
And we've seen that this year it's actually been expanded to include all formats of the
So one of my former Aussie sevens teammates, Shannon Parry, getting a run in the sevens
Why do you think it's important that World Rugby are taking this approach to include
the whole format of the game?
Rugby is such a global game in both fifteens and sevens.
And I think it's a no brainer really that they extend it to the sevens program.
And I was lucky enough to do a little bit of work with Shannon last year at the under
18s Australian Super W camp.
And she's a wonderful person and mentor and player, like huge credibility as a, as a player
in both fifteens and, and seven.
So it's enormous that she has now got this experience coaching in the sevens round, because
I just think she has so much to give back and sevens being an Olympic sport.
I think how good would it be to see a bunch of women coaching at the Olympic games?
I would, I would also love to see that.
What's next for you and do you have any big goals in your coaching career that you're
keen to tick off?
Yeah, definitely.
So I'm lucky enough, my mentor for this program.
So during this program, you get a mentor that sort of guides you.
And helps you along the different workshops that you do that are both online and in person.
And mine is Tim Sampson, who's the attack coach for rebels and working with rugby Vic.
Obviously it means that I'm in the same office with him.
So I've been able to do a lot of work with him, just the ad hoc sessions of having little
chats, but that's led me to helping the super W program as a skills coach.
And I've got goals of, I'd love to do that with the men's side.
So there's no female coaches in super rugby right now.
So I'd love to do that.
I'd love to, a huge goal would be to take that box off and work within the super rugby
franchises, hopefully be a head coach of super W program, then ultimately coach at the international
So those are my big, big goals that I have at the moment.
I'd back you in any day of the week.
I think you're, you're an incredible, you're an incredible player.
And I imagine an incredible coach and just a really, really good person.
And I'm really proud of you and all the work you're doing in this space.
So really stoked for you and looking forward to seeing you tick off some of those big goals.
I'm really, really excited to coach.
And I think having all those mentors and, and people that have come before me to, to
guide off, you sort of take a little bit from everyone and, and then create your own style.
And I do bring that care factor and I just want to create the brilliant humans.
Thank you so much for your time today.
Meds really loved having a chat to you.
Thanks for having me on.
Really appreciate it.
Let's take a look at what to watch.
We've got another epic weekend of Suncourt Super Netball coming up and our match of the
round sees the Maverick host the West Coast Fever at John Kane Arena on Saturday night
Get along to that game or you can watch live on KO on Fox Netball.
The second legs of the A-League semifinals are here on Saturday.
Sydney FC will host the Central Coast Mariners at Leichhardt Oval.
Then on Sunday, Melbourne City FC host the Newcastle Jets at Amy Park in Melbourne.
Both matches are live and free on 10 Play and Paramount+.
And it's big dance time for the Super Rugby W competition.
The Fijian Drua and New South Wales Waratahs will go head to head for the trophy on Sunday
afternoon at 2pm at Ballymore Stadium in Brisbane.
So if you're in Brisbane and you're a Waratah, come along.
There's a caveat there.
It will be an absolute crack of a game.
If you can't make it, it will be live on Stan's Sport.
And that's the wrap.
That is the wrap.
See you next week.
See you next week, Karine.