{"id":251,"date":"2023-02-19T13:26:06","date_gmt":"2023-02-19T13:26:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/computing.ashville.co.uk\/iaintest1\/?p=251"},"modified":"2023-02-23T09:15:26","modified_gmt":"2023-02-23T09:15:26","slug":"interview-tanya-arnold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/computing.ashville.co.uk\/iaintest1\/uncategorized\/interview-tanya-arnold\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview: Tanya Arnold"},"content":{"rendered":"

DA: In the time that you have been working in sport, how have attitudes to women changed?<\/strong><\/p>\n

So massively it is hard to describe it. There weren\u2019t women reporting on it, presenting it and certainly not commentating on it. Actually, I think as women started to come through much more with the presenting and with the reporting that rugby – both codes – sort of led the way. I\u2019ve been pitch-side for fourteen or fifteen years and you\u2019ve got Jill Douglas and Sonia Mclaughlan in union presenting, and that led the way in the male-dominated sports. I didn\u2019t think that in my broadcasting lifetime you\u2019d get a female commentator\u00a0 – I\u00a0 thought that was the boundary that might be too far, yet how wrong I was. That is the real growth area now \u2013 broadcasters desperately want more female commentators.<\/p>\n

Jacquie Oatley was the first \u2026 she very much opened the doors for other women to come through. [When she started] there was a real element of having to have the guts to do the job. She would be sent unbelievable stuff in the post \u2013 death threats, letters about particular questions she\u2019d asked in post-match interviews. She had male managers telling her that a women\u2019s place is in the kitchen, quite literally\u2026 My god it\u2019s changed. With social media there is still an element of this. \u2026 But today, being a female presenter is not an unusual thing and I could not have imagined this 20 years ago.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

AM: Do you ever get nervous before presenting?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Always. And if you\u2019re not nervous about something that\u2019s a bit bigger there\u2019s probably something wrong. I think even Mark Chapman probably gets nervous ahead of the finals he\u2019s covered. It\u2019s adrenaline. I was never a top sports person, so the closest I can be is being live at these sporting events and that adrenaline rush is addictive. Live TV has an addiction to it because you\u2019ve got adrenaline pumping through you. If I went on during that world cup and there was not a flicker, I probably wouldn\u2019t have been in a good place; I wouldn\u2019t have been doing the job right. Nerves are good, you just have to learn how to control them.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

DA: What advice would you give to girls wanting to pursue a career in sport?<\/strong><\/p>\n

You can do it now, that\u2019s the biggest thing. You can do it. You can play football, cricket, rugby union and rugby league. The things that I couldn\u2019t do. You can play it, you can commentate on it, you can report on it. Work hard\u2026 there will be an element of self-belief. I needed to learn, to persuade myself I could do the job before I\u2019d ever put my head above the parapet and tell somebody else I could do it. But, believe it. Enjoy it. Sport is fantastic and its good fun.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

AM: How did your job change during Covid?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It stopped. I had a period of \u2018this has stopped,\u2019 \u2018this isn\u2019t happening.\u2019 I\u2019d be rolled out to go \u2018Oh, another thing\u2019s gone.\u2019 There was no sport. But \u2013 I\u2019ve never been prouder to work for BBC Look North than in those opening weeks and months of Covid. We were a team of people who couldn\u2019t do what we usually did, couldn\u2019t tell the stories the way you normally tell them, so we found a whole new way of making television, a whole new way of reflecting what communities were doing, and I did news. I\u2019d be rolled out to do live stuff.<\/p>\n

Ultimately the Super League Show was one of the first sports programmes to come back, but we were still doing sport in totally empty stadia.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

DA: Following the rugby league world cup, do you think more people will watch the women\u2019s game?<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you look at women\u2019s football there was a real lag between the TV viewing audiences and the crowds. So its only this season, since winning the Euros in front of millions of people on telly, and a lot of people turning up to watch the group games, that you\u2019ve got people in to the grounds regularly [for the WSL]. So I think that rugby league will have that lag. Also rugby league is suffering from a lack of money which is not helping. We are in this period where we are \u2018reimagining\u2019 the game, but I don\u2019t know what the strategy is or if there is a strategy for the women\u2019s game. It\u2019s certainly stronger; there were three really strong teams this year and three below them so you will end up with at least six really solid teams eventually. I think the appetite is there and I think what [the women\u2019s game] does is it brings a younger crowd. The women\u2019s game brings families there a lot more and rugby league does have a problem with an ageing audience.<\/p>\n

I think they need to look and see what the strategy is. I hope they do this with the wheelchair game too\u2026 I hope people like you will push them and push that message. They\u2019ve got to get people through the gates. If you watch on TV and it lacks that \u2018uumph\u2019 of a crowd you\u2019re not going to be grabbed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Tanya Arnold – of BBC’s Look North and Super League shows – came to speak to the 6th Form, Daisy and Annie took the opportunity to find out more about women in sport, how to control nerves and more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":252,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/computing.ashville.co.uk\/iaintest1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/computing.ashville.co.uk\/iaintest1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/computing.ashville.co.uk\/iaintest1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/computing.ashville.co.uk\/iaintest1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/computing.ashville.co.uk\/iaintest1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/computing.ashville.co.uk\/iaintest1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":262,"href":"https:\/\/computing.ashville.co.uk\/iaintest1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions\/262"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/computing.ashville.co.uk\/iaintest1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/computing.ashville.co.uk\/iaintest1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/computing.ashville.co.uk\/iaintest1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/computing.ashville.co.uk\/iaintest1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}