Jacinda Barclay was our 'rockstar' but she deserved so much more | Rebecca Beeson

AFLW pre-season has rolled around again, appearing from the shadows of a long off-season cast by Covid-19 and the death of my teammate Jacinda Barclay.

Our team is sitting around the changeroom while members of the leadership group take it in turns to reflect on how we move forward from here. A few eyes dart around the room to gauge how others a feeling, some prefer to keep their eyes fixed on the floor. With the mention of her name some turn their heads to look at the untouched locker in the corner of the room. The locker belonging to Cinda.

We have been encouraged to speak about Cinda, to celebrate her life and laugh about the moments she drove us up the wall, then would say something incredibly funny and cheeky that made you giggle and think “oh that’s just our Cinda”.

What I’ve noticed in the weeks since Cinda’s death is that speaking about suicide and mental health is not something that human beings are very good at. I’ve watched on as we dance around the subject, our language softening to reflect the discomfort we feel within ourselves and others, unsure about the correct way to navigate the topic. But for all who knew Jacinda Barclay, you would know she preferred to live outside the lines of correctness.

Her ability to stand proudly in front of a room and speak her mind with no reservation and without a hint of care for what anyone else was thinking made it obvious to all that she wasn’t the type to dance around an issue.

Cinda went into a discussion full of vigour and with her heart firmly on her sleeve. If there was an elephant in the room, you would know about it. She would stare it in the eyes then project its presence from the rooftops. To sit in silence was not her way of doing things; until it came to her mental health.

As her teammate, I only knew of the seriousness of her struggle with mental health after her death. Cinda had very few people with whom she chose to share the extent of her mental health struggles, and asking how she was travelling was often met with “life is good, chicka”. She put on a brave face, showing much more interest in my life and my issues, rather than her own.

Did she feel weighed by the expectations on elite athletes to toughen up in the face of adversity and the “don’t be soft” narrative that plagues elite sport culture? Was there an element of shame she felt as a result of the stigma attached to mental health? Maybe she wasn’t equipped with the knowledge to understand what she was battling?

There will never be clear answers to these questions, and there are multiple factors that contribute to Cinda’s complex mental state.

Jacinda Barclay
Jacinda Barclay in full flow during a game against West Coast Eagles in February this year. Photograph: Mark Kolbe/Getty Images

Much has been reported in the media of Cinda’s wonderful achievements and her one-of-a-kind personality. However, what has not been spoken about was her struggles living as a female athlete.

Like Cinda, many AFLW players are stuck in limbo between community and professional sport. We are neither amateur athletes, with the freedom to live a seemingly normal life, nor we are fully professional athletes financially supported with a full-time salary. What often goes unseen by the spectator is the dedication and time commitment required to be elite. Gender doesn’t change this.

What female athletes must do to be at the top of our game is equal to that of our male counterparts, despite only being paid for 15 hours of training commitments a week under the current AFLW collective bargaining agreement. I will not gloss over the difficulty of juggling the lifestyle of an elite athlete, with our other career and commitments. Especially when considering the means for supporting ourselves financially is often reliant on the latter.

In 2019, a matter of weeks before the start of the season, Cinda flew out of Sydney to work on an oil rig in the middle of the Indian Ocean. She missed the crucial few weeks of preseason training in the lead up to the season and missed our round one match, not because she wanted to, but because she had to. AFLW media published a feature piece on Cinda’s remarkable working life, detailing how she worked three jobs to make ends meet and support her lifestyle as a female athlete. The question posed by the title of the piece: how do you train for the AFLW while working on an oil rig?

It is a question that asks you to consider the nonsensical lengths some players must go to play a game that does not financially support their lives.

Cinda was a star pitcher for the Australian national baseball team – playing in multiple World Cups – the best quarterback in the Legends Football League in the US and a key forward for the GWS Giants. If she had of been a man, she would have been one of the richest, most famous sport stars in the country. In the words of my coach, Alan McConnell, she would have been a “rockstar”. Cinda dedicated her life to sport, and despite all her athletic talent and charisma, she did not have the means to financially support herself in a meaningful way. At times she was unable to meet what is considered as normal weekly financial requirements.

To Cinda, pay parity was a sign of respect. She fought hard for better pay, better working conditions, more resources and greater acknowledgment of our struggles and successes. She was an embodiment of her own battles as an exceptional athlete who struggled in the confines of being merely semi-professional.

The ability to earn a living is a great source of angst for a number of AFLW players. In Cinda’s case, this financial stress contributed to her struggle with mental health. However, it went predominately unspoken. When considering social norms, a person heading into their 30s is expected to be laying the financial foundations for a comfortable life and have a secure and settled job – a norm that many AFLW players, like Cinda, do not fit into.

Although Cinda’s financial stress was not the sole cause of her mental health struggle, it forms a significant part of the story that she felt undervalued for what she had to offer to society.

Despite the pitfalls of her AFLW wage, Cinda loved her footy and she loved the Giants. She wanted us to know this. She took great pride in her team, often wearing Giants apparel as she went about her day-to-day activities. She dedicated her life to sport, to football and to the Giants. But in doing so, it left her financially insecure at the age of 29 and unable to support herself when she needed it the most. Her level of passion was not reciprocated with pay, and the daily battle for Cinda to put food on the table, pay rent or buy a plane ticket home to Western Australia to see her family was real.

This is the heartbreaking truth of one of the most talented female athletes in this country. A true reflection of Cinda’s incredible passion for sport but a poignant reminder of how far elite female competitions, such as the AFLW, still have to go.

Indeed, Cinda was a rockstar, who wanted more for herself, her teammates and all the girls who will follow her footsteps into the AFLW in the future.

So although football is just a game, it’s important to recognise how much this game meant to her. AFLW players don’t have it easy, but what we do is important and we should receive monetary respect from the game we dedicate our lives to – a message Jacinda Barclay fiercely championed.

source: theguardian.com