Western Springs women players have gone through a lengthy mediation process with their own club. Photo / Photosport
Amid burpees, tearful phone calls and lengthy legal discussions, players from Western Springs Football Club’s premier women’s team got a result from their mediation with the club. Bonnie Jansen tells their story.
On Sunday night, gathered in a tight circle in the changing room at their home ground, the Western Springs women’s premier team are about to score a major goal in what could be their biggest clash of all.
Outside, a heavy mist hangs over the pitch at Seddon Fields as spectators eagerly flood the clubhouse balcony waiting for the highly anticipated Kate Sheppard Cup grudge match about to kick off on the club’s No 1 field. In the locker room downstairs, a document is passed around the home team – it needs 25 signatures, from 25 footballers, all seeking one thing: Equality.
Theirs is a cause Kate Sheppard could understand.
The women come out of the shed, walking on to the field and exchanging fist bumps with their lawyers along the way – knowing they might have just changed New Zealand club football forever. The document they have just signed acknowledges the end of a successful – and exhausting – period of mediation with their own club.
That night, Western Springs knocks out former champions Auckland United; off the field, they secure equal pay, equal opportunity and a change to their club’s constitution. It marks fulltime on a months-long battle with the club over gender equity.
Reflecting on the “roller coaster” of reaching settlement with the board, the players later tell the Herald they’re “proud” to be out the other side of a successful mediation, feeling they’ve “changed New Zealand football forever”.
“It’s never an easy fight to have to fight for something simply because you’re a woman,” one player says. “But on reflection and looking back, we’re all going to be stronger for it.”
The players’ dispute with their own club had bubbled away for months before it burst into public awareness when the Herald first reported the details on 13 May. One of the country’s top women’s football teams faced an exodus of senior players after lengthening disputes with the club about inequities between the treatment of men’s and women’s teams.
Since then, the women’s premier squad have sat through “hundreds” of hours of meetings. Some start to call their fight for equality “a second job”.
After reaching agreement on Sunday, Maia Jackman – a Western Springs and Football Ferns legend – acknowledges how far her club had come.
“It felt like a long time – but it’s actually a short time and they’ve come to the party on a lot of things.”
Today, the Herald can reveal what it was like on the inside during the mediation, and how players handled what they’re describing as a “massive emotional toll”.
Jackman sits down with the Herald, the day after signing the agreement with the club, and says all the women ever wanted was to be heard – particularly around why their coach, Ryan Faithfull, had been let go by the club.
“Equity stuff is really important, the equality stuff is really important,” Jackman said, but what they initially wanted from the board was to “feel valued.
“A lot of the media was around pay equity but, in fact, it’s feeling heard, having people sit down and listen and take on both what you’re saying and come back straight away with where they’re at [with it].”
Another player, Pip Meo – also a former Football Fern – tells the Herald: “It was never like it was us-versus-them. It was always like ‘we just want to understand’.
“We wanted clarity on why they make decisions, on the principles they make them on and how they make those decisions, and we just came in with that open approach.”
With Faithfull gone and talks with the club about to begin, Jackman, Meo and five others are nominated as representatives for the wider squad in a mediation process. Alongside the player representatives, two formidable female lawyers took on the case pro bono.
The seven players are chosen to represent the broad spectrum of players in the team – they are high school and university students, full-time workers, former Football Ferns and mums. Some aspects of the negotiations are strictly confidential – the seven representatives won’t even discuss them with other players. For the seven in the mediation, knowing they have the support and confidence of the squad is crucial.
Not knowing how the mediation will evolve and what’s on the other side, the team feel they need a safe space for training and meetings – and the Western Springs clubhouse isn’t it.
Several local clubs offer the players support, and soon they are holding meetings at Metro, based up the road in Mount Albert. It’s here they align as a big group, and set out what they hope to achieve. To let off steam and stay sharp, they train on Metro’s turf at Phyllis Street Reserve.
Knowing the course ahead will be rocky, the women adopt the motto of the US women’s national team: Hold fast, stay true.
Jackman and Meo had no idea the first day of mediation, in a meeting room in Parnell, would last 12 hours. As the time passes with tense discussions, some of the players have to step away from the negotiating table to make childcare arrangements – phoning friends, calling in favours – so they could keep fighting their battle.
The seven representatives have to take time away from their regular lives and their jobs – one skips a day of college. No expenses are covered. Representatives from the club are also there on their own time.
“It was so full on,” says Meo. “We were just trying to keep everyone sane. Things were pretty heavy.”
Ten hours into the talks, the athletic urge is kicking in for the players. As each side goes off to debate the case, one player organises a workout circuit in the empty mediation room. There are burpees in one corner, before a shuttle run to the next station for press-ups.
As the lawyers set about their work, and when the players get a break they pass time improvising rap tunes and drawing on whiteboards.
One player says: “We were just trying to keep the energy going and not get too tired. So that when we did have to make decisions and be switched on, we were, and we were there energy-wise.”
There are frequent runs to a nearby dairy for snacks to keep the energy up. Chocolate, nuts and crackers are the order of the day.
A low point for the players comes after a Friday evening league game on June 9. The women are blindsided after many of the senior players – including those involved in mediation – are left out of the game-day squad.
In the hours before the match, there are phone calls between players, management and opposition team Northern Rovers about the players wearing an alternate, black kit. The logo on Western Springs shirts – featuring a swan sitting over two large balls – has been labelled as inappropriate because of its phallic likeness. It’s one of the issues the players had initially raised with the club.
Jackman and Meo later say there were “too many cooks in the kitchen”, and the pair acknowledge the situation was awkward for Northern Rovers. Eventually, it was decided the Springs team would have to wear their normal kit.
“I think a lot of people were put in compromised positions, which shouldn’t have been like that,” says Jackman.
In the end, a team of juniors took the field. Jackman and the team’s lawyers were “pretty worried that everyone was going to split after that Friday”.
I did question my passion for football, and my love for the game.
The two lawyers who take the case pro bono are heavy hitters of the profession: Maria Clarke is a noted sports lawyer and Maria Dew KC specialises in employment law and professional misconduct. The players immediately form a strong bond with the pair, nicknaming them “M&M”. At her daughter’s first birthday party, Meo slips away for a Zoom call with one of the Marias. A 17-year-old player involved in mediation is so starstruck by the inspiring pair, she wants to study law.
“They always kept us together,” says Jackman.
The women know that without the experienced pair keeping the group together, they never would have reached a satisfactory outcome.
Jackman says there were “tears at training and phone calls with tears”.
“It was never a fun position to be in,” says another player. “There were many evenings, working incredibly late to try and resolve this. I did question my passion for football and my love for the game.”
On that misty Sunday night, Western Springs premier women play out of their skin – defeating the former Kate Sheppard Cup-winners Auckland United. Liz Savage bags one in the 20th minute, before an own goal right on halftime and a Lily Jervis 54th-minute strike from a set piece leaves no room for doubt. It’s their second win of the night.
One player says the team “really rallied around each other, supported each other, and came out of it more unified as a team”.
“Every person involved in this process stepped up and showed our strength and commitment to gaining not only equality at our club but systematic change for all girls and women in sport.
“It means everything to the team to have reached a successful outcome from mediation. Although the process was extremely hard and draining, this outcome will ensure current and future women’s players are compensated, resourced, and governed equally, which is everything we could’ve hoped for.
“Girls and women belong in sport and deserve every opportunity to achieve their dreams.”
Meo knows the experience has brought the women together: “I feel sorry for anyone who has to play us now.”
The champions have suffered nine losses in their last 12 matches.