Welcome to The Wrap, a weekly podcast covering women's sports news.
Bez, what have we got around the grounds this week?
The Arsenal have won their first Champions League final in 18 years.
The Arsenal, that's what they call them.
The Kimogis Association has ruled players can wear shorts instead of skorts.
And Portia Woodman-Witcliffe becomes New Zealand's all-time leading try-scorer.
For the key story, we'll discuss a new Australian Institute of Sport project
designed to address the gap in women's sport research.
It aims to do so by developing an evidence gap map,
which will summarise research gaps that need increased focus.
I love a gap map.
I'm so here for that.
I wonder if they couldn't have...
I don't mind the...
It's not alliteration, but it's...
When there's two sounds, it sounds the same.
Yep, let's go with rhyme.
So, what about...
Talk about something else.
I thought there was a fancier word than rhyme, okay?
Oh my gosh, let's talk about something else.
We're giving you all the athlete episodes at the moment.
There's been heaps going on.
Last week's episode was Lydia O'Donnell, the co-founder of Femi,
an amazing app that's built for women,
because her experience was that she moved to Melbourne from New Zealand
and just found that all the run clubs were made for the men.
So, she wanted to do something about it.
And what's this Thursday, Bez?
I believe someone called Alona Ma.
Have you heard of her before?
Never heard of her.
I had to do a lot of research on her.
The Alona Ma app drops this Thursday, 6am.
Hit subscribe, get it in your ears, give it a listen.
She's a bloody legend.
My name's Chloe Dalton.
I'm joined every week on the show by my co-host, Bez.
We are recording on Gadigal land.
Let's take a look around the grounds.
Arsenal have upset FC Barcelona 1-0
to win their first UEFA Cup.
UEFA Women's Champions League title in 18 years.
That looked, the atmosphere looked electric.
I did not get up at 2am to watch live,
but I did watch the replay this morning.
Yeah, that place was hopping.
Producer Soph was over there.
I was quite jealous, actually.
I would have liked to hear that game.
It's, you know, iconic that she's also,
Producer Soph, supporting Arsenal.
Great result all round.
Both sides' exchange blows early in the first half,
but it was FC Barcelona who were taking the most shots on target.
But then in the 22nd minute,
Arsenal's Frida Manoom delivered a cross into a dangerous area
that resulted in an own goal from Irene Paredes.
But the goal was ruled out by VAR.
Thank God they had it.
With Manoom found to have received possession
in a slightly offside position.
Manoom then came close to another goal-scoring opportunity
before Barca's Bonmati found,
a cross from Caroline Graham-Hanson.
But our Aussie favourite, Caitlin Ford,
had tracked back and blocked a delivery to inspire Arsenal.
Pretty tense first 45.
They came out on the front foot, Barcelona,
in the second half and had five early chances,
but couldn't convert any of them.
It was one-way traffic until Arsenal made two pretty,
in hindsight, it's always hindsight,
but two really influential changes.
In the 67th minute,
Stina Blackstanius and Beth Mead both came on.
They linked up with 15 minutes,
remaining Mead slid a reverse pass through to Blackstanius,
who tucked it into the bottom left corner.
For a 1-0 win to the Arsenal, they held on.
It was so good to see them all celebrate after full-time.
And, you know, you have to say they're massive underdogs, so.
Even during the game, they were underdogs, right?
Yeah, that's football for you.
It absolutely is football.
And the fact that the final's not two legs,
I find that weird about the Champions League.
Yeah, that's a good point, actually.
Why is that when the semis are two legs?
Why is the final not?
Is that part of the tradition of it?
It's always been that way.
Yeah, I've never thought about that.
It's the big occasion, but yeah, that is interesting.
I've never thought about that.
Giving you thoughts.
Just what I need, more thoughts.
In a bit more football news.
Oh, heartbreak, actually.
In Asia, Melbourne City came heartbreakingly close
to winning the Asian Champions League final,
going down to Wuhan on penalties.
After a cagey start, the scores were locked nil all at halftime.
To the European Champions League, actually.
City came out firing in the second half
and dominated the early stages,
with Briley Henry and Holly McNamara both going close.
But the pressure finally paid off in the 76th minute
when a perfectly delivered set piece was met by a header
from Shelby McMahon to give City the lead.
Oh, the heartbreak's coming.
As the clock ticked past 90 minutes,
City looked to have sealed the win
when Briley Henry tucked home a second,
sparking wild celebrations.
But the heartbreak quickly followed as the VAR ruled out the goal
for a foul in the build-up.
And moments later, another VAR intervention
awarded Wuhan a penalty for handball.
Wang Shuang calmly converted to level the scores
in the 94th minute.
Extra time saw chances at both ends,
but with no breakthrough in 120 minutes,
it came down to penalties.
While City had opportunities to win the shootout,
they were ultimately edged out 5-4.
Well, they would have won like $1.3 million or something crazy.
Yeah, good money.
But they did get, even for getting here,
they got $500,000, $600,000, $700,000-ish.
We won't make up the difference if we're wrong.
However, yeah, again, interesting VAR intervening,
this time not positively.
I know, we always talk about wanting VAR.
It just has to, it's got to be a non-negotiable in this sport
where I just think with soccer football,
we love to call it,
the ball goes into the back of the net,
like, let's be honest,
like four or five times a match on average.
It's probably pretty generous.
It takes 30 seconds to have a quick look back at it.
That's very true.
And it's just so influential.
there's probably potentially $700,000 difference
between first and second in this.
That's worth putting a VAR on for.
Really rough end to their season.
Obviously getting rolled in the semifinal domestically
and then losing this final.
Well, because Rebecca Stott was named MVP of the final
and or MVP of the tournament maybe.
And she was up on stage looking pretty flat about the whole thing.
And rightly so, I'd say.
Tough, tough end.
But can't forget that they went through the whole season undefeated.
But gosh, they would have loved to win that.
I'm sure they would have.
In some Super Netball news,
the New South Wales Swifts remain undefeated
in the Super Netball competition
after defeating a second place Sunshine Coast Lightning 70-62.
They're still going.
They're on a roll.
Ring of turnovers gave the Swiss an early five-goal buffer,
helping them to a 17-13 lead at quarter time,
ending Lightning's perfect first quarter record for 2025.
But it was the visitors still in the lead 34-29 at the main break.
The Swiss dominated the third,
forcing the Lightning into errors in the pursuit of super shots,
taking commanding 13-point lead into the final break.
They got out to 18 goals in that fourth quarter.
The Lightning refused to give up, though.
They clawed back the deficit with six,
consecutive super shots.
That's so impressive.
The size of that ball went to the size of that hoop.
With no backboard.
There's not a lot of room for error at all.
They had an opportunity to close the gap to just four goals,
but the Swifts held their nerve and closed out the game 70-62.
On to more Swiss news,
I think I saw the post this morning.
Maddie Proud welcomed her little baby girl, Lily,
with partner Daniel Hughes.
Congratulations, Maddie.
Shout out to Swiss Superstar.
She was a season one athlete interview, wasn't she?
If you haven't listened to her, go search.
In a bit of rugby news,
the Wallaroos have suffered a heavy 45-7 defeat
to world number two Canada in the Pac-4 series.
It was a tough watch.
It was a tough watch.
They were in control from the beginning.
Our set piece did not fire.
There's no way around it.
Our set piece, our line-out, our scrum wasn't too bad
for some moments, but our line-out was not functioning
and they really made us pay.
And how many tries did they score off the back of Rowley Moors
Well, there was two from about the 22 mark,
which is quite deflating if you're in that forward pack
and you're just getting marched backwards over the line.
It's never fun from five metres out, from 22 out.
It's like someone's pulled your pants down and came out
Quick explainer for the non-rugby people,
what a rolling ball actually is off a line-out.
So line-out is a restart when the ball goes out.
All the tall kids jump up in the air, lifted very well by the big kids,
and secure the ball and basically form, I guess you'd call it,
a little moving scrum.
It's all about keeping the ball away from the opposition
but maintaining momentum.
So, yeah, they scored a number of those on the weekend.
6-0 at the break.
But there was a little highlight for us.
Desi Miller has been – she's been very good all season for you guys
at the Tars and she's been very good in Wallaroo's colours again.
Just her leg drive-through contact, we were talking about that
She's just strong.
She's super, super strong.
I was going to say super, super short.
She's not super, super short.
She's not super, super tall.
But, yeah, her low centre of gravity and the strength that she has
through her hips and her legs.
Just make her incredibly difficult to tackle.
If you recognise that name and you've seen that face before,
she actually was part of our –
Why did I recognise her?
Our recent merch launch for the Rising Tide merch,
which we've been overwhelmed by the orders flooding on through.
So, thank you so much for getting around it.
Link is in the show notes if you want to go have a purchase.
Thanks, Desi, for just being in our story.
Yeah, just tough way to end that Pac-4 series for the Wallaroos.
Tough way to end and I think given that –
there's a good chance we'll cross over with Canada
in the quarterfinals of the World Cup.
A lot of learnings to come out of that.
So, hopefully we can get it right in three months' time.
Taking a look at the New Zealand Blackburns v USA game,
it was pretty cool to see the hype.
I think there was – if we chatted about the Wallaroos v USA game
the weekend before, there was a lot of public discussion
about the lack of media coverage, the lack of –
hype around the fact that Alona Ma being one of the most
prolific athletes in the world at the moment.
Definitely one of – just so incredibly marketable.
And you don't even need her as such.
Like, you just put a picture up of her.
She's a known quantity now.
So, there was rightly so a lot of public commentary about that.
I felt like the USA Blackburns, maybe it's just our echo chamber
that we exist in.
I felt like there was a bit more coverage.
There was a bit more coverage and hype in the lead-up to that game.
There probably was.
And you're also talking about a country where rugby is number one
and God knows what's second.
The result kind of shocked me, though, how big the gap was.
We know how good the Blackburns are.
They put on a clinic.
They absolutely did.
So, they reclaimed the Pacific Four Championship, beating the USA 79-14.
Wingers Caitlin Vajacolo and Portia Woodman-Wickliffe
each scored a hat-trick.
But it was Woodman-Wickliffe who broke the record
for Blackburn's total tries with her 45th and 6th of the match.
The final nail in the coffin for the USA came in the form
of a seventh try for New Zealand's greatest ever female rugby player.
Oh, big call from producers, though.
Greatest ever female rugby player.
New Zealand's greatest.
She's pretty good.
And she said this in her interviews.
She does get to...
Take the glory off a lot of the hard work from the players inside her.
What players in particular, Chloe?
Just the general grouping of players inside of her that do all the work.
Starts with F and in.
I thought you were asking for who I'm picking as my greatest New Zealand rugby player of all time.
Would you like me to say the forwards?
No, she's definitely up there in that discussion for sure.
Yes, she benefits from some pretty slick work inside of her.
And powerful work inside of her.
But she finishes like no one else.
She's just so strong and fast and very balanced and always has been.
She's very hard to tackle.
I lost a few eyelashes trying to tackle Portia Woodman.
Sorry, I actually did.
I successfully tackled her.
It wasn't just trying to tackle her.
And I lost a few eyelashes.
I don't know if they've ever recovered.
One of my favourites, scrolling through all the amazing press about Portia after the game,
someone's autocast.
Captions had auto worded out Portia Woodman-Witcliffe into Portia as in the name of the car.
And then I think they'd left off her hyphenated married name.
So it was just Portia Woman.
I was like, she is a woman that's a Porsche.
She absolutely is.
She's an absolute race car.
Is there an H in Porsche?
I'm very excited about it.
In that, the Golden State Valkyries have defeated...
The Washington Mystics 76-74 to win their first game in franchise history.
Go the Valkyries.
Go the Purple Team.
After shooting three for 29 from three-point range in the first three quarters.
I love the perseverance.
How did they win the game?
The Valkyries shot four from eight in the final frame from long distance to take command of the game.
WNBL star, Veronica Burton, who played a season with the Bendigo Spirit last year,
she led the way for the Valkyries, scoring a career-high 22 points in the win with 14 of those coming in the fourth quarter.
Leading by one point with just over a minute remaining,
the Valkyries' Kayla Thornton hit a corner three while being fouled to extend the lead to five points
with 63 seconds left in the game.
Love that for the Valkyries.
I'm just honestly the biggest fangirl of WNBA.
I just love sports.
In a bit of camogie news,
Irish camogie players who objected to wearing skorts in the female-only sport have triumphed.
They can now wear shorts.
Why are we even talking about this?
Like, I'm so glad that it was finally sorted.
The whole concept of skorts even existing is very odd to me.
I reckon a skort is a concession, too.
We know this is impractical for you to wear a skirt while playing this sport.
So put some shorts underneath them or hide them, though,
because you still need to be recognised as a woman because you're wearing a skirt.
That is really well said.
That's probably the smartest thing I've said in at least three hours.
That was really good.
That is really good.
Maybe three weeks.
I feel like that's kind of the story done.
You just nailed that.
It's a patriarchal concession to the fact that we shouldn't be wearing skirts.
You are not wrong.
The sports ruling body on Thursday ended the obligation to wear skorts
and said players could choose to wear shorts.
So people can choose to still wear skorts, which I think is weird, but that's fine.
As long as there's a choice.
We're all about choice.
We know that the research actually says that choice is the most important thing.
A special Congress of the Camogie Association voted in a landslide,
98% of 133 delegates to change a dress rule that critics said was archaic
and deterred girls and women from taking up Ireland's female version
of the Gaelic game of hurling.
I'd like to make two comments here, actually.
Just around the comment sections of us posting this successful vote.
Americans, I love you if you're listening, but goodness me,
the amount of people that saw the word Congress and said,
why is Congress voting on skorts?
Read the article.
Read the words, people, please.
And then I kind of, my favorite ones were people being like,
I don't know, but I think they're the dads, brads and chads.
I was going to say, definitely a Chad in there.
What's the Irish version of Chad?
No, don't have it.
Let's take a look at the key story.
Let's take a look at the key story.
Let's take a look at the key story.
Australian researchers and sports scientists at the Australian Institute of Sport
have commenced a two-year project in an attempt to close the research gap
in women's sport.
At present, oh, this makes me furious every time I read about this stuff.
Yeah, every time it shocks me.
At present, just 6%.
Between five and seven.
Six percent of sports science and sports medicine research is female-specific.
How is it still that number?
Over the next two years, the project will examine every relevant piece of research that exists
and identify where the major gaps are that we need to focus on.
They'll do so by developing an evidence gap map, which rhymes, actually, as Bez would like to tell you,
which will summarise existing performance and health evidence,
assessing its quality and major research gaps that need increased focus.
AIS Chief Science Officer Paolo Minaspa said,
If we can advance the quality rather than the quantity of research in this space,
it could put female athlete research at the forefront of sports science research.
Australian athletes and coaches have contributed to the planning of the project,
asking for topics such as menstrual and gynecological health, illness and infection,
body composition, bone health and nutrition to be prioritised.
This gap also means often relying on evidence.
It hasn't considered differences or impacts resulting from sex and gender.
It can result in incorrect or delayed diagnosis and treatment for injuries and other health conditions
and limited ability for prevention.
I think that's one of the most important things is that kind of, obviously, treatments for injuries,
but prevention, I think that part of it, I feel like men's male sport has got to the point where now
it's almost like, to really dumb it down because I'm definitely not a sports scientist,
but it's almost like they kind of know everything that can happen to someone.
So, they've worked on the prehab part, the prevention part, whereas we're not even at that point.
Like, we're still trying to figure out why things happen to women.
Like the ACL research.
Like the ACL research.
Like, you know, all the different things that happen to women's bodies that don't happen to men's bodies.
So, like, we haven't even got to that point yet where we can actually manufacture some prevention strategies.
Yeah, it's very, very true.
Edith Cowan, University Pro Vice-Chancellor of Sport.
That's a long title.
Professor Sophie Nymphia said,
Right now, there's a lot of information flooding athletes and often it's not reliable or evidence-based.
It's our job to sift through existing research and ensure athletes, coaches and support staff can easily access quality information.
The findings are set to be published in late 2026.
I mean, I do love geography and maps, but this is probably the most excited I've ever been about a map, I reckon.
I love geography.
Let's take a look at what to watch.
Speaking of geography, Margaret River Pro, that is in Western Australia.
It's happening right now.
I was watching it this morning.
My mate, Katie Simmers and Molly Picklem both got through to the quarters while I was watching.
Make sure you listen to the episode.
So, yeah, as we said, it is continuing today.
Tomorrow is the last day of the window, so it will definitely run tomorrow.
You will find a winner tomorrow, Tuesday.
Sorry, stop saying tomorrow.
So, listen to this on the way into work and then get on the WSL app and Fox Sports and
watch a Margaret River Pro queen be crowned.
In athletics, the next event on the Diamond League calendar is going on this week in Rabat, Morocco.
You can catch all the action live and free on the Diamond League YouTube channel.
I saw Brie Rizzo is making her Diamond League debut.
Which kind of really shocked me.
Where's she been?
I don't know, but she's in fine form and I'm very excited to see how she goes.
The Tillys are back in action.
They're playing Argentina and Melbourne for a couple of friendly matches starting this Friday night.
The match kicks off at 8 p.m. AEST and Australian fans can watch the game on Network 10 and Paramount+.
It's 1 v 3 in the Super Netball as the undefeated New South Wales Swifts take on the reigning champions, the Adelaide Thunderbirds.
The match begins this Saturday at 7 p.m. AEST.
And the Tennys back.
I was watching a little bit this morning.
It was a men's match.
I do play tennis, sports as well.
A five-setter on centre court.
Ben Shelton, a.k.a. Mr. Trinity Rodman.
And everyone was like under blankets.
It was like, I think it was like 13 degrees at midnight.
Do the players ever do long sleeves in tennis if they're cold or they're hot enough because they're moving?
Ben had some compression garments on.
I'm sure if that's because he wants to be in the NBA or the WNBA.
I think he wants to be in the WNBA.
Anyway, it's back.
The tennis is back.
You can watch it all live on Stansport and the Nine Now app.
See you next week, friend.