Kim Ravaillion deserves more respect

Kim Ravaillion is an Australian Commonwealth Gold Medallist, a Netball World Cup Champion, has won two National Championships with the Queensland Firebirds, was a foundation player for the Collingwood Magpies and actually plays a globally recognised sport.

So, why on earth has this elite athlete been reduced to nothing more than “Adam Treloar’s ‘wife’ who plays some netball” by most of Australia’s mainstream sports media?

Firstly, she’s not his wife.

Secondly, she should never be defined by what anyone else, no less her partner, does.

It has been absolutely appalling to see Collingwood’s Men’s Football Club blame a woman, who is simply returning to work after giving birth to her first child, for their fallout with Adam Treloar.

Instead of admitting to wanting to reduce space in their salary cap by trading him, they’ve decided to announce to the world that he would be ‘distracted’ by his wife and child’s move back to the Queensland Firebirds in 2021.

Um, what?

Headline after headline, day after day, it is the same old line.

The media are pushing the agenda, constantly getting their facts wrong, all in pursuit of an exclusive story about a man.

My blood boiled when I saw someone who has inspired young girls to live out their dreams of playing professional sport as nothing but a ‘WAG’.

How many of these partners of athletes have had to sacrifice their own careers because that’s what is best for men’s football?

We are at a crisis point. We are watching history as women across netball, rugby league, rugby union, tennis, Aussie Rules and so many other sports set new pathways, mostly part-time or casually, for women.

But our mainstream media won’t treat them that way. Instead, they treat the codes as nothing more than ‘gimmicks’ to tick political boxes.

Time and time again I hear people say ‘oh, but they don’t rate on telly or people won’t buy a newspaper’.

How do you know? Where’s your evidence? Coverage is important.

People won’t invest in your league or sport if they don’t know about it – woman or man.

Instead of letting people find out if they want to consume the sport or not, paper’s bury women’s sports to the inside pages and TV stations barely give them a fair go.

And as part of this coverage debate, where’s the respect for netballers?

They are the best in the world at what they do but they are never acknowledged.

Time and time again, we see a story published about a netball player with the wrong photo.

How disrespectful.

Just a few weeks ago, in an article about Kim Ravaillion’s fiancé, a picture was used with the wrong woman.

The response I got on Twitter was that a ‘producer’ had messed it up.

How? Once again, Kim Ravaillion is an Australian Commonwealth Gold Medallist, a Netball World Cup Champion, has won two National Championships with the Queensland Firebirds, was a foundation player for the Collingwood Magpies and actually plays a globally recognised sport.

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