This episode of Two Good Sports was recorded on gadigal Land. This land was never seated, always was always will be hi and welcome two Good Sports sports news told differently.
I'm Georgie Toney, I'm Nev.
And you may be able to tell, dear listener, but we have a little bit of an extra spring in our step because Nevo and I are in the same room.
We're in the same studio, same space, kicking off the week together. George, I have been waiting for this.
I'm so thrilled that we could actually be in the same bubble together. It's rare these days for us, which is sad and honestly it needs to be rectified.
We've already talked about the fact that I stalk you on your messages. George, where are you, whether you're back in Sydney, what's happening? Today's the day?
Today, I am here, I am here and as my gift to you, Nivo, I will allow you to decide good sport or bad sport.
You kick it off.
I'm going good sport, George. I know that shocking. And of course, however, on Saturday night we had the A Leagues Men's Grand Final. It was Central Coast Mariners up against Melburn victory. The Mariners going for and historic treble
in Australian sport. They won the AFC Cup, they'd won the premiership and on Saturday night, after a goal in the ninety first minute and then two goals in extra time in front of a record crowd on the Seni Coast, this little club with the smallest budget of all did this incredible thing.
They won.
They won the treble and look they could be the good sport yes, but no, no, no, Actually their fans George their fans and I'm you know, we don't promote pitch invasions. So their fans streamed onto the pitch afterwards. And that's the thing about these little boutique stadiums, right, and it's not tiny, it still holds over twenty thousand, but they literally like just walk down and let themselves in the gates, streamed onto pitch.
But see this, it gave me.
It was reminiscent of when Buddy kicked his thousandth gold Franklin, Yes, it was that.
So it wasn't one of those ones where you're like, who's.
This nadyet on the field? Exactly.
It was like, oh my gosh, yes, just this pure, pure celebration.
It was. I was in amongst it. Now. Floor managers were getting a little bit stressed, and I was like, look at these coasts. We are safe here. This is a happy place right now, there's a happy place to be. But what I loved was they celebrated with the players, they celebrated with each other, and then the ground announcer really politely said over the loudspeakers within the bowl, ladies and gentlemen, could you please return to your seats we'd
like to start the postmatch presentation. And they all went, oh, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, no worries, No worries, mate, They'll just trailed back off the pitch so that.
I'm so great, Which just goes to show I mean, because a lot of times soccer fans in particular cop a lot of flak for their behavior. But here is a prime example of when people just have such power for the team and they are able to, I guess, live that out in a way that everyone can.
Be happy about. Just it made the game. It's made the game having the Grand Final there.
It really did. And I think a good call from the league, who have copped plenty of criticism for numerous other calls throughout the season, but they went, do you know what, we could fit more in another stadium in Sydney and take those gate takings, or we could actually celebrate the connection between this club and that community and give the Central Coast the biggest night that it's ever
been seen on the Central Coast. Yeah, and that community gets the boost all round, and we get to celebrate what really is genuinely such a special connection between that club and their fans and what they've managed to achieve in the last couple of seasons, which is truly remarkable.
Well, Nevo, in honor to you and us being in the same location this week.
I also have a good sport. Oh I love Yes.
I'm actually slowly winning you over. In two weeks time, it'll be like good sport or good sporte? Do you like to che my good sport?
And actually, do you know what?
People may see this as a bad sport, depending on how you sit in the overall debate on the relevance of Barbie dolls in today's society, But my good sport is the Mary Fowler barbie doll that has been released.
This is not sponsored. Get on board if you'd like to though Motel, but.
Missus George's address if you'd like to send one.
I am so obsessed with this.
This doll has I mean Mary Fowler, one of our favorite Matilda's.
I mean she's still.
So young, like it's actually early twenties, so for her to just imagine having a Barbie doll like in your likeness, all like what and before you're even twenty five?
What the hell?
How does that initial phone call go? So?
So?
Mary? How a phone call from Mattel They want to make a barbie of you?
Yeah?
What? Yeah? Sorry? What you'a what? Now?
Yeah?
Great?
And that's got the little gloves. It's got the little Mary Fowler gloves, which I love. I also do hope that they're glued on. Can you imagine all of the missing gloves that just go away like that, you know, the parents have gifted this incredible tooint total child.
And then like where's Where's Mary's glove? Who knows?
And then we attacker of my own I can imagine the meltdown. Yeah, van happens without one missing glass, one missearching the house because the dog's probably eaten.
I know, I know. So also could be a great if they could be sold separately. That's how they get you. That's how those corporations.
Has like the ponytail, the Mary ponytail with the multiple little hair tires going down her ponytail, and I just think it's so great, it's so wonderful, and it is indicative of just how the Matildas continue to dominate this culture, but change the culture. I mean talking about the Matilda's. Someone who's not going to be in the team for a while. Is Zamka our captain courageous? And that, unfortunately
is because of her injured ACL. And we're seeing this more and more, especially when it comes to female athletes, and Nevo and I a damn well sick of it. So we're going to try and figure out what is happening and how we can fix it. We're getting the stethoscopes stay with us, so, dear listener, Nevo has pointed out that maybe I don't need a stethoscope when I am examining someone's ACL.
But you know what, I'm going to continue on.
Doctor Tunny.
Here we are, Nevo.
What we can be in agreeance with is that we hate to see when some of our most beloved athletes are cruelly ruled out with the ACL nevo When was it that?
Do you think? Are you like me?
Probably out because I'm naming us both doctors, But are you like me when you watch a game of anything across coats, when you're watching a game and you see someone go down and you're like, oh God, I hope it's not the ACL, Like, do you diagnose them straight away like I do?
One of the reasons we do that though, isn't it because so often acls are non contact injuries. Yes. So when you see that moment where athletes planted their foot, they've changed direction, they go down outside of a tackle, that's that moment where you go, no, not another one.
Yeah, it's like they've been shot, honestly, honestly and.
In this really innocuous looking moment or movement.
Yes, yes, And it's always just one that you just hold your breath because generally that's twelve months out of the game. Yeah, generally, like as soon as this happens in oh god, mid season, you're like, they're not playing finals. If the team was going to get to finals, whatever that is. That is a very extensive rehabilitation program as well, because it's all about trying to get lateral movement back into your knee, so when you're doing explosive sports like football, rugby, league, AFL NET.
This is a really really serious one.
But why it is of such concern, I would say to all Australians now, is we had the news most recently officially we knew it was going to happen, but it's official. Samkur has been ruled out of the Paris Olympics for the Matilda's with her blown acl.
Which when she went down in January was where our heads went pretty fast, it wasn't it. Oh my gosh, it'd be a minor miracle to see her back because we do see some athletes back and depending on the severity of the ACYL injury, we see some athletes back in nine months, but that's the absolute minimum, and George, we don't see them back anywhere near their best yes,
in nine months. In fact, it can be a couple of years before we see them back playing the kind of football that we saw them playing in the.
Past, because you think of the physical toll of that injury, but I have to think the older that I get the mental toll of trust your body again. We've just talked about how innocuous these injuries can be, so trusting your body and putting it to the back of your mind, being like no, no, no, I don't. I'm not going to do that again, because quite often people do.
Even I think, just George, how isolating that long term injuries are in their own right that rehabilitation period. So you go from being in a team sport, being in a team environment, to progress being very very slow to begin with, yeh, in terms of your recovery, a complete lack of mobility to begin with, difficulty having a shower by yourself to begin.
With, which I never really truly Again, this is just me, you know, growing up with sport, being ignorant to it. Right, you see one of your favorite players go down, and then you know, you kind of forget about it. You put it on the back burner until you see them come back again. But for that player, it's been a year of them hobbling around the crutches in a moonboot.
Yeah, in the gym by themselves, not knowing when they'll be able to kick a ball again.
Yeah, yeah, which I just think. I mean, come on, I stub my toe and I want to call the ambulance.
So being back to why we may have not made it as professional athletes, despite an incredible amount of skill, were so close, just missed by that one stubbed toe.
It was such a set that Nevo. It can be so debilit in.
Your water polo career, honestly.
But if it has felt like the conversation around ACL injuries, especially when it comes to women's professional sport, may have been getting louder or seeming to be more common, then there was actually some numbers which could be backing that up. Last year at the World Cup, thirty seven players missed that tournament with ACL related injuries. In the total in twenty twenty three, one hundred and sixty five ACL injuries.
In twenty twenty two, at least one hundred and fifty two players suffered from this type of injury, and Sam Kerr is one of fifty four players who have had an ACL injury this year. So those starts are as of April.
So what even just in our local league in the A leagues this season, George. When the season started we saw Nat Tobin, the captain of Sydney FC, go down in the first game of the season. The first half of the first game in front of a record crowd at Alliance Stadium, where there was so much excitement off the back of the World Cup, she went down and did her ACL in round one, And for the opening almost two months of the season, we lost our player every single week.
Which just is crazy, right, Like, why why is that happening?
Is it happening more frequently?
I think that is a really interesting question. And the great thing about those numbers that you've just read out, the only good thing about those numbers is that we now actually have some numbers. Yes, so data collection has actually begun in earnest, which is really good because you speak to the last generation of the and so many of those players had ACL injuries one if not more throughout their careers, and they talk about feeling like it was more a matter of when it will happen rather
than if so. Obviously, with more visibility of women's sport, more high profile athletes as being reported or more, we're hearing about it more, we're connecting with those athletes who we adore more and their time out of the game. But I think female footballers and female athletes will tell you that this has been an issue in women's sport
for generations. Yes, it's not new, but that data and the fact that we're tracking it and hopefully beginning to track it in much better ways, that is new, and that is important, and surely that's the path then to solving it.
We're already starting to interpret that new data, right And at the moment, it's thought that it's between two and six times more likely for an ACL injury to occur in women footballers versus male footballers, Yes, which is just an astounding, astounding statistic and something that hopefully you're right, Nevo, with more of this collection can be rectified some way.
Again, I'm getting my stethoscope. It's the old medical misogyny.
I think more and more stories come to life, which I mean about time about women's pain in particular, because a lot of the studies throughout all time when it comes to just collating data in a medical field and how to treat an assortment of injuries, illnesses, diseases, whatever it may be, all of those studies have come from male test subjects.
Right.
And I don't know about you, Nevo, but the male and female body is quite different, you know, seem to be. So we're still trying to rectify that in just across the medical field, let alone when it comes to high performance,
and we're so far we're starting so far behind. But I do think that at the moment, hopefully, what needs to be done, what needs to be looked at in terms of strength and conditioning, there has to be something there right There seems to be a lot of these injuries happening, whether that be just in determining how female athletes should train, how often they should train, how intense
they should train, what happens the best practice after their games. Again, because these are newer leagues or full time professionalism.
The number of games, Yes, our female players are playing in a week, lettern a season, let alone a two year period. That undoubtedly has increased astronomically.
Yes, And I don't know if we're prepared for it, And it seems to be at the moment at least we might be letting our athletes down in some way because for them to continue to have these crippling injuries.
Certainly, I think in terms of the research that's being done into why, and particularly with that focus, as you say, on female bodies, I was chatting, and obviously it's anecdotal, but I was chatting with a few of the A League women's players who had ACL injuries this year, and I asked them whether anyone in the aftermath of that had checked in on where they're at in their cycle, where they're at in their menstrual cycle when they had the injury, and no, no one had asked, No one
had taken down those details. And when we know that research in this space is so limited and so needed, it does blow my mind.
That maybe not even the right questions of being asked exactly exactly.
And maybe that is male physios or male doctors. Maybe it's not, but certainly when we know there's so many different factors that contribute to it, I'm like, why aren't we trying to get as much data from these athletes when it happens as we possibly can that then maybe over time we start to see some kind of pattern
to it. Maybe it is menstrual cycle related, and clubs like Sam Kurz Chelsea, yes, they already adjust their training load, even though we don't have enough data to say for sure that it is related, Yes to a players menstrual cycle, they already adjust their training load according to where their players are at each month, which is they're already taking precautions in that space, and isn't.
It wild that for me? I mean, that makes complete sense. But even me and I've covered you know, you and I have covered sport for god not to ages, but like twenty.
Years your age. It's just a bit. But in my head that still seems groundbreaking. Do you know what I mean?
That a club which is in charge of a women's football team is going to those lengths but it shouldn't.
Even be a length. That should be just standard practice.
Totally right. But I'm like, oh my gosh, how great of them, oh taken into a counter period and the impact it might have.
Whoa I mean you talk about me with my stub toe the week before my period. I'm no kind of sport can you imagine? Oh my god, trip is actually dialed. But honestly, but it's these kind of things, right that I think are representative of the cultural shift that still needs to happen. We talk about the rise of women's sport. I'm using my quotation marks because everyone knows by now
how much I hate that term. But we talk about the rise of women's sport and how great it is, but then they're still for every new and I am going to gender this male fan that comes along to women's sport. You start the conversation talking about someone's cycle in relation to how important that is in their aptitude and their capacity as an athlete, They're going to tune out. I don't want them to. But that's just like again, we're up against it basically.
And I think making those conversations more common is up step, right, Yes, that's a step that you can take.
Yes. So hence, while we are talking about the menstrual cycle.
On two good sports today, welcome, had a great start to your week for everyone.
They are of course also physical circumstances that have affected the rise of ACL injuries potentially. I mean it wasn't that long ago that our Matilda's women's footballers were playing on artificial turf.
Yeah, and certainly that pitch surface, how hard the surface that they're playing on, that has been shown to have an impact. It's why in Australia, where we know we have a lot of very firm pitches, you see so much watering of the pitches before a game to soften them up. Yeah.
I mean even when it comes just to football shoes, football boots, they are essentially just a smaller version, not taking into account that women may be groundbreaking have different kind of feet, And I think that's with a lot of equipment, right, Like I complain when I go to the gym and I think that the dumb bells are too they're dumb. The dumb bells are dumb because they're too hard to hold because they're not made for female hands.
My hands aren't big enough to actually wrap around them properly.
Look, it's starting to change, and there are actually some companies now designing women's boots for women based on women's bodies, which, hey, there's a market there.
It's crazy, it's not crazy to think about that.
But that v angle of hips to knees right for women compared to men, women are a little bit wider. And speaking to players, they talk about the fact that women tend to be a bit more cord dominant than men, so there's more load than when you twist and turn the cord turns one way, your hamstring turns you back. So taking into account those factors, you start to see why those numbers so heavily are so heavily weighted towards women having this ACL injury more than men not men
do too. We've seen a number of them in the AFL this season, but the numbers show that women women just dominate these stats in a way that we wish they didn't.
Yeah, and I think that the AFL dow you can go somewhere to explaining this as well, because I know that as that league gets more and more professional and even in its infancy, we were seeing these type of injuries and people were like, well, hang on, maybe. I mean, I've seen commentary where it's like the girls just don't know how to play properly, and it's saying, no, that has actually no impact when you do your.
Ac whoever that does not have a stethoscope, they don't.
Have a step yeah nan no, no, no, no, that's missing Yeah, they're missing that and brain cells. But but what some of my favorite research into this right now, because we're all about the research, rule about the data. We are scientists at heart, and NEVO is the impact that sports bras can have when it comes to this.
Type of interest.
And this is new, This is new, so we are only learning more and more about this really every single day. But basically there's new research out now that says that if you have a very good sports bra, you take it seriously, you treat it as though it is actually a piece of equipment, which obviously it is. Then that can help because if you are worried about jumping around everywhere and feeling really really self conscious about your bust.
You're adjusting the way you move.
Yes, yes, and therefore you are putting strain more on limbs and areas that it doesn't need to be, increasing the rate that you may actually blow your ACL, which is insane. I was talking to Queen Liz Lizelli's about this, who has done her ACL at least once during her
netball career. She it wasn't really a topic of conversation about how, of course, like something as simple as just feeling really supported and comfortable when you're on the court would make a massive difference to performance, but also a massive difference it turns out to your safety.
Yeah, isn't that wild? It is? And then when it becomes a safety issue, how much to clubs need to be engaged in both the research but also providing that safety equipment for their athletes to one perform at their best, but to have the best chance of staying out on the court out on the field longer.
Yeah. Yeah, And if this was something I stand by, if this was something that was happening. I know that we're seeing a lot of ACL, especially at the moment, a lot of long term injuries across codes, especially in the ENNERL and AFL right now. But if this was happening so frequently in the men's game, and it was something as simple as you know, getting your sports bra fitted correctly, yeah, different shoulder pads, different light shoulder pads needed, gents, Yeah,
they'd be in them next week. They'd call in NASA like do you know what I mean, They'd get it solved.
It, it'd be done.
We wouldn't be having this conversation. But that is maybe being me being a little bit too critical, because there is something called Project ACL, which is a new three year research initiative on ACL injury prevention that will apply its findings across women's football globally. So there is work being done in this space to try and limit this damage and stop the frequency of this such long term injuries.
And there's been a lot of talk about that from a FIFA angle, from a UAFER angle this season, and yeah, there's still so much difference in what we're doing in Australia, the data we collect here, the questions we ask here, what they're doing in New Zealand just across the ditch, the data they're collecting there, what they're doing in Europe. And so I think if we can consolidate.
Yes, no one should gate keep. Do not gate keep the data.
We want to share this, We want to share this research. We want to share this information. And even if at a club level the doctors and the physios at that particular club aren't asking the right questions, there should be a goddamn hotline. Yeah, these players can ring because they want to share this information. They want to they want to be a part of the solution. Yep.
And even just talking about like when it comes to your rehab, right, what helps, what doesn't help? Just a little light at the end of the tunnel. You're week one into a fifty two week comeback, Like, it's a debilitating injury physically and mentally, and it needs needs to be sorted out.
Even in terms of their return as well. George to sport because obviously it takes a while to get that faith back in your body, to get your speed back to where it was before. But you also often see calf or hammy injuries quite quickly in players' returns. And obviously sometimes that hamstring graft is used and you can create a bit of an imbalance, but you lose muscle mass in your calf as well, and that takes time.
So even that support system within the player's network themselves to talk about how that looks, the time that it takes when you actually felt like you had gotten back to that performance level that you were at before you did your ACL, support within that network at that time in recovery would be really great as well.
Remember when it was the Women's World Cup and Sam Koh had the most talked about calf on the planet and now, unfortunately for us, she has the most talked about me. But she will be back is the important thing to say. She will be back, and I'm going to say she's going to be better than ever, don't don't you disagreed?
Evo, I can't handle it right now.
See. I was trying to think, George, when we were talking about having this conversation about any positive like any upsides and despite that fact that, yeah, like often players talk about not feeling normal for at least eighteen months post injury, and it takes time your body getting used to those new biomechanics. But I think sometimes players say on reflection afterwards that it actually gives their bodies a period.
Of rest that they've never had.
That they've never had because they are playing a quantity of games and of minutes that they've never played before, So that enforced rest both mentally and physically. Maybe that's the long term, hopefully positive that after that rest you do act come back a better version of yourself, maybe as a human as well as as a footballer, and maybe your longevity in the game is increased as well, because at that period in your peak, in your prime, you've actually rested.
What I've taken away from that is that Sam is going to play until she's eighty, and when she returns to the football pitch in twenty twenty five, she's gonna be the most Sam care of all time.
I that's exactly what I meant.
Yeah, I think so you heard it here first, Nevo. Yes, it's time for a fun fancy.
That is the correct reaction for fun fact time.
Now, you, Nevo are, of course our football nostro damas you know everything about it. So I'm trying to stump you here. Oh, I mean, I guess you've heard of the Giant club Juventus.
You've as I have, continue, Did.
You know that the Italian Giant is known for their famous black and white stripes on their football shirts.
Yeah?
Yeah, but that they originally played in pink shirts with a black tie. Yah?
What yeah?
Yeah?
Huh like an actual black tie.
I mean, look, let me continue reading.
And because I've gone to like business work shirt and tie, That's where I'm at. That's where I'm at. Sorry, let's recap pink shirt, black black.
Pink shirt, pink shirt, black tie. In nineteen oh three, the club looked to replace those shirts because the pink color was fading after they were washing it.
They were washing I do you know what football shirts they washed a fair bit? Yeah, well you scrimping on that.
You got to do it. You got to factor it in.
So you'vens asked one of their English players, John Savage, at the time, if he knew anyone in England who could supply new football shirts for that team, And it just so happened that old mate John had a mate who was a Nots County supporter and they wore black and white stripes, so we shipped out a bunch of them to turn Inventus have won black and white ever since.
Hey, do you know what I love?
Though?
You still do see the pink pop up occasionally? Yeah, in there are way strips like so you still there's that ode to their history there? Which is is that?
Is that what it is Nevo? Or have they just put it in the wash?
Yeah? With red bed sheets the red towel on again.
Yeah, you say history, I say accident?
Do you know?
On the note? Can we give Joe Montemuro a little mention please? Former coach of Juventus women's side. He was in town this weekend coaching the A League Women's All Stars team. Of course he was, and he has one of those incredible tactical footballing brains that you just love sitting with him, hearing him dissect a game, describing what he is seeing and how it's playing out and why there is space there? Not just so there is space there? But why where did it come from? Why is that gap there?
It's not a fluky they meant that?
What?
Thank you so much, Neva.
So good to actually be here together.
I know I've loved every second of it. Hopefully you have as well listening along.
I'm really thankful and grateful that Neva and I have been able to solve the epidemic that is the ACL injury. You're welcome, You're welcome, You're welcome everyone who knows what we're going to be solved next week, but until then, thank you so much for listening to Two Good Sports.
It's been an iHeart production.
As always, follow us on Instagram at two Good Sports Podcast.
Until next week, be a good sport