Club Respect

In this episode we chat with Julia Walsh about the challenges for parents and coaches that often leads to sideline abuse and how clubs can invest in the coach-and-parent experience.

You can’t solve it if you can’t talk about it. And that's why Club Respect exists – to rebuild the respect for each other, that we need to have, if sport is going to thrive. And you’ll be hearing all about it through Smart Plays, Club Respect’s new podcast where we bring it out of the darkness and shine a light on the hot topics that nobody wants to talk about.

These steps are about building a culture that respects everyone, including LGBTQIA+ people. A club's focus on inclusion will benefit with celebration and pride. 

NAIDOC Week events are being held across the country to celebrate and recognise the history and are a great way for clubs to show their support and commitment. To celebrate NAIDOC Week with a local club, we’ve compiled a list of clubs celebrating across the country:

"We seem to have moved towards this dichotomy where it's acceptable for players and coaches and managers to make errors during the course of the game, but it's not acceptable for officials. Why is that?"

"I'm telling you it's real. I'm in this space. I've been in it for 22 years. It is a real problem. And I want everybody in this room to think about it and think about solutions."

A ‘Hooligans game’ it may appear to some, but despite its physicality and close-quarters gladiatorial combat, these ‘hooligans’ are incredibly respectful to referees. As a result, rugby union is played in a culture of respect for referees that is unmatched in contact sport throughout the world.

When Allies falter communities notice. We can all agree that kindness is cool and inclusion matters, but every now and then political issues come up and allies feel torn, particularly when rights appear to be in conflict. Transgender women’s inclusion in sport continues to be one issue allies struggle with and allies have struggled this week.

Our guest is the man behind 'The Referee Forum', the internet's biggest and best independent resource for referees. He's an ordained minister and his website's hashtags #AbuseUsLoseUs and #NoRefLeftBehind sum up his muscular global advocacy for match officials, which includes challenging online trolls. It's great to catch up with Ant Canavan who joins us from England.

The incident begged the question. How did a professional sport get to the stage where respect is so deeply and intrinsically embedded, that criticising an umpire is considered a shock that upends the sport?