Time & local talent: WACA women chart their course

As the WACA men's group were developing their blueprint for success back in late 2019, on the women's side of the state's high performance program, a veteran administrator and a rookie coach were coming together with a view to crafting their own.

Rebecca Grundy, a former England international whose playing career was cut short by injury, had capitalised on the foundation laid by WACA chief executive Christina Matthews, and was continuing to foster the WA women's pathway system in her role as a development coach and talent specialist.

It was an area in which Western Australia had traditionally lagged behind most other states, and one that Matthews viewed as critical to achieving the organisation's goal of sustainable success.

"It's not as deep a well as Victoria and New South Wales," Grundy says of the state's talent pool. "Partly that's due to population, and partly (because) they've had academy-style setups for 10 or so years."

Nicole Bolton, who arrived at the WACA as a 15-year-old in 2004-05 before going on to build a decorated career, recalls the pre-Matthews era, and the changes the legendary player-turned-administrator wrought after she arrived in December 2011.

"We'd been under-performing and, to be honest, considered pretty much easybeats in the WNCL prior to Christina coming on," Bolton says. "We didn't even have a team song, because we never used to win any bloody games.

"We had some strong senior players in Zoë Goss, Avril Fahey and Angele Gray who were pioneers of women's cricket in WA, but they didn't have that leadership above them investing in the program.

"Getting Christina into the organisation was pivotal in that sense ... if it wasn't for her, we would never have been in a position to be successful. Having a CEO who is passionate about growing the women's game was so important, because your program is only as good as the resources and support that's put into it."

In the summer of 2012-13, the WACA appointed former Australia women's coach Steve Jenkin as their new women's head coach. It was a statement of serious intent, and that summer, Jenkin promptly guided the team to the finals for the first time in 13 years. Across the next few seasons, Matthews continued working diligently on bringing the state up to speed with regards to female player development. 

"We knew we were behind the likes of New South Wales and Victoria in terms of developing our younger talent, bringing through the 15, 16, 17-year-olds," she says. "But having worked in that space a lot previously, I also knew there were things we could do to improve that."

Image Id: 683ECAC188584C048CB1730FA886A6C2 Image Caption: CEO Christina Matthews has used her vast experience to help transform the WACA women's program // Getty

And so she began borrowing from the playbook she had helped to write in her female game development positions at both Cricket NSW and Cricket Australia. Soon the WACA was identifying talent from school programs, implementing learnings from the NSW regional system, creating a visible pathway via their U15s and U18s sides, and setting up an open-age academy to give 12-16 of the state's most promising female players access to elite facilities and coaching.

In 2017-18, two summers after Matthews' former national teammate and ex-Australia coach Lisa Keightley had taken the head coach role of both the Scorchers and WA, the state reached its first WNCL final in 18 years. Two summers later, they won the competition for the first time.

"Lisa was able to set up what a high-performance environment looks like," says Bolton. "With Christina's support, there was a long-term investment."

After the WACA lost Keightley to England midway through that winning 2019-20 season, former WA and Tasmania batter Michael Dighton stepped in as interim boss, with Grundy moving from player development into an assistant role.

Image Id: A14919A8BC134B438F655FBF42FBA008 Image Caption: Lisa Keightley was influential in shaping the WA women's program // Getty

Bolton, who played a lead hand through that successful campaign alongside fellow WA products Chloe Piparo, Megan Banting and Emma King, feels the WACA erred at season's end in not handing the full-time job to Dighton, who she says inspired the group to its maiden WNCL triumph. Instead, they announced in May 2020 that then 29-year-old Grundy would take the reins.

Articulate and thoughtful, the Englishwoman has benefited from not only learning at the heel of Keightley, but from having access to Matthews, Dighton, and later, another Australian women's great, Shelley Nitschke, who took the Scorchers head coach role ahead of the 2020-21 WBBL.

Yet her remit has been a challenging one: help transform a maiden WNCL title into sustainable success. For Grundy, that has meant striking a balance between the hunger and expectation for immediate results, and putting a plan in place that will yield dividends long term.

"Often in high-performance sport, the winning, and the winning now, drives a lot of decision making," she says. "From our perspective, we took that off the table a little bit – there was still the ambition to do that, but we needed to be planning for the next few years as well."

In the two seasons after that landmark title, WA collected consecutive wooden spoons. Last summer, they finished fifth. Aged just 29, off-spinner King retired after the 2020-21 season, wicketkeeper Banting was delisted, and a year later, a disillusioned Bolton called time on her superb career.

The 55-time Australia rep is full of praise for the way the WACA women's program improved throughout her career, and for Matthews particularly, but feels there was a failure to capitalise on that breakthrough WNCL title.

"I think the flow-on effect from us winning, and the changes that the WACA decided to make, probably hampered our opportunity to go on and really be a force to be reckoned with," she says. "It felt like two steps forward, and five steps back, which was disappointing."

Image Id: 2D9A29DCAFE445A4879CD68140D483B6 Image Caption: Bolton's decorated career established her as a legend of WA cricket // Getty

Head of high performance Kade Harvey, on the other hand, believes that – in much the same way men's head coach Voges was given support and time through a couple of challenging initial seasons – the wheel will turn with the right systems and personnel in place.

"We've had success in the girls, we've won both titles, but it hasn't felt like it's sustainable," he says. "It hasn't felt like it's got the same foundations as the boys, and that's what we're aspiring to; to get to where the men are from a performance point of view in the female game, while it's still evolving and growing.

"The same principles that we're holding true in the men's program, Becky is fully understanding of and aligned to. It's just a matter of being patient and executing it, and taking our time to get it right."

* * *

It has been a period of flux for a young women's group which, like its male counterpart, is building its foundations around three core values: be brave, team first, committed.

"'Be brave' is around pushing ourselves, and being open to being challenged in the training environment, and then being able to back our skills in the middle," Grundy says.

"'Team first' speaks for itself: every decision or action that we make comes from putting the team first, and making sure that we care for each other, and we celebrate each other's success.

"And then 'committed' is making sure we take accountability individually, having a shared responsibility in terms of achieving our goals, and finally, that we're all committed to developing individually and as a team.

"It's still an evolving process, but we're making some really good grounds in that, and from my perspective, it's a phenomenal culture from top down in terms of the inclusivity: the decisions that are made, based on people first, where everyone has a say in terms of the direction that we're going.

"There's some really strong and aligned leadership from Kade through to myself, and that channels down from Chris. A lot of your culture comes down to the people within your organisation, and when you have a Beth Mooney and a Lilly Mills wanting to come and be involved in this organisation 12 months of the year as opposed to six weeks, that speaks really highly of the people and the culture we've got here."

Image Id: C2E5C049CA884370B7B2874EBF354F60 Image Caption: (L-R) Mills, King and Mooney have all added considerably to the WA setup, on field and off // Getty

Matthews, meanwhile, points out that the continued development of the women's program is far more nuanced than simply looking across to the men's program, identifying the keys to their success, and replicating that.

"You can't just think because it works for the men it'll work for the women," she says. "But part of the process has been to understand what will work, and equally, there are things from the women's program we've been able to add successfully into the men's program."

Grundy, too, sees fundamental differences in this space, but opportunities as well.

"In ways we'd like to be really similar to them, and in other ways we're uniquely different as a female side," she says. "We're in a really good position to take key learnings from the men given how successful they are … Obviously though, we're in very different positions in terms of the boys having such a high number of (internationals) – they're a very experienced group that's been together for a long time, compared to our girls, where we're still relatively young, and for a lot of these players, they're still really (looking) to make an impact at the WBBL level."

* * *

In 2021, the Nitschke-coached Scorchers echoed the earlier success of their WA counterparts with a breakthrough WBBL title. Their triumph was built around the key interstate and international recruitments of Mooney, Marizanne Kapp and Sophie Devine (who had signed the previous season) and spin duo Alana King and Mills, who were immediately impactful. Crucially, the acquisitions of the experienced internationals were about more than runs and wickets in the immediacy.

"The obvious (things they bring) are their experience on the field in terms of performing in high-pressure situations, and knowing how to win, and they're able to share those insights on the field," Grundy says.

"But probably the biggest thing is how they approach their training, and the professional standards they hold themselves to. The group instantly lifts when they're around them. For a number of years, compared to other states, we haven't had that Australia representation that's been able to come back into our environment and lift the standards.

"(They're showing how to) train to maximise your chance to perform, how you deal with setbacks – stuff that's almost intangible, but extremely important with a young group of players. These girls can impart that type of knowledge.

"So it's about being really diligent with the type of people that we bring in, that they're going to contribute and add value and not just take."

Image Id: 12DFB046D6D5420AA73397B0FDA46834 Image Caption: Grundy is optimistic that local WA talent is emerging // Getty

WBBL success also offered the happy by-product of instilling a sense of individual and collective belief. Grundy has seen that in the mindset of her players; their confidence that they can perform and contribute to a winning team, and their sense of freedom in doing so. It has allowed the WBBL group to maintain a degree of consistency even while the WNCL side has faltered, with the Scorchers being the only side never to finish outside the top five in the competition's eight seasons.

The challenge now is to keep pace with the fast-evolving nature of T20 cricket, and when it comes to list management, ensuring they have the players capable of doing so.

"The game's shifting in terms of how it's being played," Grundy says. "We're seeing higher scores, we're seeing more power coming into the game, the bowlers requiring a high skill level to be able to bowl on good wickets with small boundaries.

"So from a skills perspective, we're looking at strike-rates and hitting boundaries, because we know that that's how we need to be able to play.

"Off the field, we put a lot of importance on players who are willing to have a crack, who put the team first, who push themselves and strive for the best in every area, and who are coachable and want to learn.

"(All those qualities) make a big difference when you're trying to bring a group of players together as a team."

* * *

Grundy says the pathways and academy system is three or four years into its five-year plan, at which point they hope to see more emerging Western Australian talent filtering through their ranks.

That talent, she explains, is crucial to nurture even when the likes of Devine, King and Mooney are performing their headline-grabbing feats in the WBBL.

"When we talk about that sustained success, we've been fairly inconsistent at WNCL level," she says. "That's where the investment into our younger WA-based players (come in), and similarly at WBBL level, if you look across some of the teams over the years, yes your internationals are important, but a lot of the time they cancel themselves out, and actually it's the strength of your domestic players that often wins you games.

"We've introduced the premier level at Under 14s and 17s. So these players are experiencing more competitive cricket earlier than what some of our more senior players would have.

"That's a really important piece in the puzzle, and we knew it was going to take time for that talent to rise to the top. We've seen that with Chloe Ainsworth and Charis Bekker getting picked for Australia for the Under 19 World Cup, and a couple of our Under 16s girls (Ines McKeon and Tegan Williamson) getting picked in the team of the tournament (at the National Championships in January)."

Image Id: F6C886C3996147928536870BCD76FF86 Image Caption: Charis Bekker (third from left) and Chloe Ainsworth (far right) with the Aussie U19s // Getty

The way Bolton sees it, the timing is good for the WACA to roll the dice on its best young local talent, which also includes 19-year-old 'keeper-batter Poppy Stockwell, 20-year-old left-arm swing bowler Georgia Wyllie (older sister of WA men's player Teague) and 22-year-old right-arm pacer Ashlee King.

That youth, she says, can be balanced out by experienced locals such as Piparo, Taneale Peschel and Piepa Cleary, together with longer-term imports such as Mathilda Carmichael and Amy Edgar, while NSW products Lisa Griffiths and Maddy Darke both arrived in the 2021 off-season.

"While you've still got a strong contingent of senior players, which we do have, you can actually invest in younger girls," Bolton says.

"Where you get stuck is when it's a clean slate and all you've got is young girls having to step up, and the expectations become harder to manage."

Australia star Mooney, 29, has spent almost half her life in high-performance systems and after three seasons with the Scorchers and now one with WA, she sees signs of an environment conducive to success.

There are minor observations such as the friendliness of the men's playing and coaching group or Matthews' willingness to turn up to games on a Sunday afternoon, to more significant ones.

"We'd see Christina and Kade at training," she says, "so because they've shown up there and they've had conversations with the staff and the players about what's working and what's not working, when they go to all the management meetings, they can make informed decisions about what the programs need or don't need.

"The second thing is, Christina has played, so she understands the nuances of the game, and the politics. It's rare that you get someone who understands cricket and business so well; usually it's one or the other, but she nails both.

"Kade is similar. I've spent a long time on the phone to him talking about the program: 'How do we make it better? How do we get the girls better?' They just want continual improvement."

Image Id: 9C0C2D6604E746B6870927B6649642CB Image Caption: Beth Mooney has been impressed by the likes of Matthews and Harvey since her arrival at the WACA // Getty

From Grundy's perspective, all of that is the final step in the journey. While there is no shortage of discussion around strategy and list management, with elite female cricketers trending much younger than their male counterparts, the WACA's sense of duty to developing their players as people first is even more apparent in the women's program.

"All the players (coming through) want to be professional athletes, and want to throw absolutely everything into that, and that's awesome," she says. "But it's also not reality; only a small percentage of these players will achieve that.

"That's really important for us to consider in terms of making sure we're still encouraging them to extend their education or to do work experience … It's a really tough thing to balance and it's going to be harder as the top level gets more professional, because all of a sudden you're going to have a 14-year-old girl thinking they can go and make half a million (dollars) in the WPL because Ash Gardner does it.

"So it's definitely a fine line. We want to develop talent, we want to be able to fast track those who are talented, but you've got to be careful not to make things too professional and serious too soon."

To help these young women navigate such a challenging environment, the WACA have employed player development manager Natalie Medhurst, who, as Grundy puts it, "is awesome in terms of understanding that desire, and what it takes at that level, but also has a role – as all of us do – in making sure these players are well-rounded in everything that they do."

Last year they echoed the men's program's 'Hussey Group' by introducing the 'Devine Group', which is a program for first-to-third year players that looks at developing skills beyond the field that can help them in both the sport as well as life.

"We look at a lot of intangible things," Grundy says. "What does it take to be a high-performing athlete? We talk about self-awareness, and values, and how to have difficult conversations. We look at sleep and nutrition.

"You don't want them to have to figure all of that out when they're thrown in the deep end, so it's really important that we're providing that support and education."

And so there is faith that the building blocks are in place. Last summer, two fifth-placed finishes in WBBL and WNCL hinted at promise and potential.

The personnel remained a blend of old and new, of locals and imports; Kiwi Maddy Green signed on for the Scorchers, 21-year-old former NSW 'keeper-batter Darke had a standout one-day season, while 17-year-old Ainsworth made her WA debut.

It is the last of those that has Grundy most excited for what might lie ahead.

"We're slowly starting to see that young local talent come to the forefront," she says.

"You put (pathways) in place knowing that you don't get an instant effect, but equally, you know it'll be worth its time in gold when it finally grows."