Elite sportswomen's survey: Initiative 'timely' says NI footballer Newborough
- Published
Rachel Newborough plays football for Northern Ireland and Charlton Athletic
Northern Ireland and Charlton Athletic footballer Rachel Newborough says the BBC's Elite British Sportswomen's survey is a "timely" initiative which will help shine a light on difficulties encountered by female athletes across virtually all sports.
The confidential survey was sent to 1,068 women in 39 different sports and received 537 responses.
The 23-year-old defender, a guest on this week's Sportsound Extra Time, is among a number of respondents who have spoken to the BBC about findings particularly relevant to them.
One standout statistic was the 60% of athletes who said their period had affected their performance or caused them to miss training or competition. Related to the same subject, 40% of respondents said they did not feel comfortable discussing their period with coaches.
Rachel had a particular concern over her own period in the early part of her career after suffering dizzy spells brought on by heading the football.
She was later told the contraceptive pill she was taking could be a cause of the unnerving episodes.
"I would just start getting a pounding headache. Anything with you head, they take quite seriously so I went and took head scans and things like that," Newborough told BBC Sport NI.
"The outcome was basically that these episodes could be linked with the contraceptive pill.
"The pill for everyone slightly increases your chances of having a stroke. And these episodes highly multiplied my chances of having strokes.
"I was basically given the ultimatum of either taking this different piece of medication and carry on taking the pill and playing football or I just couldn't head the ball which meant I couldn't play football."
Another option was to take a different contraceptive pill which would have interfered with her regular menstrual cycle which was something Rachel was "very uncomfortable with".
Fortunately after two years, the dizzy spells subsided but Newborough admits it was a "scary time" in her life.
Rachel Newborough (right) has earned 24 caps for Northern Ireland
Opts for limited social media involvement
Another survey finding which did not surprise the Northern Ireland defender was the 30% of respondents who said they had been trolled on social media.
Newborough has taken a deliberate decision to have a limited involvement with social media despite being mindful of the benefit that it can in terms of profile.
"I know a lot of women that I play with use social media as a platform to gain things like sponsorships.
"They get a lot of freebies from companies that want them to promote things, like boot deals, which can be huge because while the pay is rising in women's football, it's still not quite at the level we want it to be so all these small things help quite a lot.
"But for me personally, for you to get those things and be shown in that way, you have to put on, not an act, but maybe pretend to be this thing you are not.
"Male athletes can get very similar trolling. It's not just an individual issue for women. Bringing in a sexism element of it, I think we more attacked on the body image and the appearance side of it."
Newborough says she has encountered comments from people she has worked with in football and fans which while they made her feel uncomfortable, she felt unable to report.
"Perhaps when you were younger, you don't have the way to articulate how it makes you feel. There's no pathway of how to get help for it.
"There are things I never reported and still don't feel comfortable reporting because we haven't been told as sportswomen where to go with that information confidentially.
"You do feel involving individual people in instances could do something to jeopardise your position when you have given everything to be in the position that you are in."
Uncertainty brought on by Covid-19
Very much in the present for Rachel is the effect that coronavirus had on the women's season in England which was eventually abandoned in May.
For several months, the 23-year-old was unsure whether she would continuing with her part-time contract at Charlton but thankfully she re-signed for the club two weeks ago.
"Before then it was 'am I staying or moving on?'. You're trying to plan but it's not only your football, your other job too. I'm part-time. Your living arrangements and things like that. It is difficult.
"Some clubs in the Championship that had plans for moving players into full-time no longer have the funding to do that. For me, full-time may have been an option, it may not have been."
In terms of the international game, Newborough and her Northern Ireland team-mates are scheduled to play their next European qualifier in the Faroe Island next month but it remains to be seen whether that game will go ahead.
"It seems like the Faroe Islands weren't quite as badly impacted by Coronavirus so they have been training throughout when we have all been apart.
"We're hoping that game goes ahead but you're allowed to fly to some places but not to others. Is our fixture going to go ahead in September? It's difficult because it's all up in the air."