Women’s sport in Saudi Arabia. Given the misogynistic traditions of Saudi society, enshrined by repressive laws, this must surely be the most truncated chapter in the story of the world.

But it does have two curious entries.

The first is the apparent popularity within Saudi Arabia, of American-style women’s professional wrestling. What is the basis for its appeal? I don’t rightly know. It must surely be different from the perspectives of the two distinct audiences in the Saudi television-watching and event-going demographic.

For women, perhaps it’s the sight of powerful women doing anything on their own; for the men, it probably is mere titillation. Pro wrestling among male contestants came to Saudi Arabia in 2014. By 2017, Saudi women were allowed to be at events as spectators – but only if accompanied by a male guardian.

And in 2019, the first women’s bout, between Natalya and Alexa Bliss was scheduled, but withdrawn at the last minute as a bridge too far. This was corrected in October when a match between Natalya and Lacey Evans did take place at the Saudi Crown Jewel event. This was a first for that benighted kingdom.

The women’s usual garish wrestling outfits – leather-studded bikinis, leopard print sequinned catsuits and the like – had to be toned down for the Saudi event. They both wore T shirts and long leggings.

Both Natalya and Lacey Evans are regulars on the American women’s pro wrestling circuit. Natalya is said to be the first ever third-generation female professional wrestler, and is part of a partnership aptly named the Divas of Doom. Lacey Evans, real name Macey Estrella-Kadlec, was raised in tough times by non-functional parents. She joined the marines, where she was introduced to wrestling, and later ran a construction company. She became a pro wrestler in 2014, and won a women’s Heavyweight title along the way. At the fight in Saudi Arabia, she lost to Natalya, but the two women embraced afterwards to seal the historic moment. This was in defiance to ‘kayfabe’, the arcane pro wrestling convention of etiquette of making at all seem real when it’s not, really.

Anyway, they went down a treat in Saudi Arabia. Since then, Bayley and Naomi have also fought in well-publicised events in that Arab nation. Put that in your odder-oddities file in your trivia banks.

And now, just last week it was announced in Saudi Arabia that the nation will allow and invest in a female soccer league.

The first women’s soccer club was founded in Jedda in 2006, but had to train in secret and away from the sight of men. There was no one else to play, either. In 2008, the government expressly banned the formation of a FIFA-associated national women’s team. In 2011, people in the country were saying, cautiously, that women’s soccer would be a way to combat growing obesity rates. Some schools experimented with giving girls the option of sport. In 2015, women playing sport themselves were denounced by prominent clerics as “steps of the devil.” In 2018, women were permitted to enter stadiums and watch men play.

But, there’s no denying a vital human interest. Things things slowly grew, and by now there are ten women’s soccer teams in Saudi Arabia. The proposed new women’s soccer league will play in the capital Riyadh and two other cities. The league comes about as the brainchild of Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, who is responsible for some of the reforms in recent years of this ultra-strict society. Just last year, he first allowed Saudi women to travel overseas without a male guardian, and stopped segregation in restaurants.

But hey, they’ve still got a long way to go. Maybe women’s soccer will go some way to helping women’s rights in that cruel country. But I wonder at the symbolism and effect of women’s pro wrestling as a cultural import. How much can a charade change reality on the ground? I’d say soccer has a better chance.

Whatever the repercussions of the wrestlers’ efforts, I wish the women in Saudi Arabia chasing the round ball, playing the beautiful game, and those watching those chasing, all the best of luck in their campaign for emancipation.

It may surprise you to learn that the first cricket team from Australia to tour England was made up entirely of Aboriginal players.

This happened in 1868, and is a surprising story from start to finish. An English cricket team had toured Australia earlier, in 1861-62, and this had led to the formation of a number of cricket clubs across the country. On stations out in the country, it then became common for Aboriginal stockmen to play against the white fellas on the farm. On the Pine Hill station in Victoria, the Aboriginal players showed great skill at the new game.

So a team from there was sent to play a match at the Melbourne Cricket Club on Boxing Day 1867. The team then toured New South Wales, under the management of a (white) bloke who turned out to be a conman and who scarpered with the money and left them stranded in Sydney.

Another entrepreneur stepped in and arranged things to get the team back to Victoria and then to tour England. Charles Lawrence, an English cricketer who had stayed on in Australia would be their coach. The team had to be smuggled aboard a ship, the Parramatta, to escape the Board for the Protection of Aborigines, which controlled the movement of black people in the country.

Three months later they arrived in England. They played 47 two-day cricket matches against English teams, winning 14, drawing 19, and losing 14. It was a hectic schedule, with 100 days of cricket played in 150 days abroad.

The first match, at London against Surrey attracted 20,000 spectators. The players were given Anglicised names to allow the easier naming of them by the locals. So Bullchanach became Harry Bullocky. Others were Boninbarngeet (Tiger), Unaarrimin (Johhny Mullagh, the star of the team), Brimbunyah (Tommy Red Cap), Grougarrong (Jimmy Mosquito), Zellanach (Johnny Cuzens), Jungunjinanuke (Dick-a-Dick. He didn’t like this name), Lytejerbillijun (Jim Crow), Arrahmunjarrimun (Peter), Ballrinjarrimin (Sundown), Bripumyarrimin (King Cole), Murrumgunarriman (Twopenny) and Pripumuarraman (Charley Dumas).

The Aboriginal players also entertained the crowds with exhibitions of athletic prowess at the end of each match: distance throwing of cricket balls, a 100 yards backwards sprint, boomerang and spear-throwing demonstrations.

But it wasn’t all fun. The health of the Aboriginal men suffered. Two were sent home with serious illnesses, and Bripumyarrimin (King Cole) died from tuberculosis while on tour.

The newspapers of England reacted in various ways to the tour. The Times called a match against aristocracy “a travestie upon cricketing at Lords,” while the Sheffield Telegraph said the tour was “the event of the century.” The Reynolds News said this marked “a new epoch in the history of cricket.” Not quite. It would be another 120 years before another Aboriginal team toured England, and 130 years before a player of Aboriginal descent would be selected to play for Australia (Jason Gillespie).

The ‘First Eleven’ returned to Australia “without fanfare,” writes Jan Stadling in the book More Than a Game, and “the men resumed their status as non-citizens. To add insult upon injury, the players were not paid, nor did they receive the bonuses that had been promised.”

Yes, this is all true. What are we to make of this? That the tales of history can be as unexpected as those of the present; for history is made of moments that once were present tense, and have now become recorded.

So, history can become as unpredictable and surprising as it likes to be. History is as vital and as oddball at the stuff that surrounds us now. History is today, but just a bit later.

The first thing I do when travelling, and arriving in a new town, is to find and peruse the local paper. I like to see what the local issues are, and compare them with those we cover in Gulf News.

There are the usual, predictable and regular things covered – the goings on in the amateur thespian group for example, or the trials of local politics, or the exploits of sports teams. The police report is always telling as a pointer to that town’s relative safety.

And so it was with special interest I read the latest copy of Penguin News – though this time my travel was only virtual. For Penguin News is the weekly newspaper of the Falkland Islands, and I was only there courtesy of my computer and the interwebby thing.

The headlines of Penguin News are surely different to your ordinary local rag. Imagine if a Waiheke or New Zealand sports team faced severe pressure on tour to compete under a different name. Unthinkable! Yet this is exactly what is reported in the latest issue of Penguin News. A team of badminton players from the Falklands was recently at the Pan Am championships in Brazil. There they faced “bullying” (as the Penguin News had it) in the form of the Argentina delegation insisting that the Falklanders play under the name Isla Malvinas, the Spanish name for the islands – or be forced out of the tournament.

This is obviously a hold-over of the bad blood between the British inhabitants of the islands, and the Argentinians, still evident after the 1982 Falklands War and the humiliating defeat of the Argentinian invading force.

Penguin News reported; “The President of Pan Am Sports flew in to Salvador to help deal with the situation. The BWF (Badminton World Federation) and Badminton Pan Am were described as ‘standing strong’ with the Falklands.” But still, in the words of the Falklands’ team manager ““Things are still very tense and there’s a bit of a worry for the team’s safety.”

Another recent headline also referenced the invasion: '82 ammo explodes as fire crews battle gorse blaze. Volunteer firefighters faced an additional hazard as 50mm rounds exploded as the fire traced over what was the site of an Argentinian gun emplacement during the war. Fortunately, none of the firefighters was injured in the unexpected barrage. Indeed, in 2019 there were still places on the islands with active minefields left over from the war, and deemed too risky to clear.

But under international law, the UK has a responsibility to clear those minefields, and so a team of 100 expert Zimbabweans (!) has been working on this unenviable task.

Penguin News was started in 1979, and in the early days was merely a photocopied few sheets. The founding editor, Graham Bound, still writes a column for the paper, 40 years on. During the occupation by Argentinian forces, Penguin News wasn’t allowed to be published.

At first, Penguin News was a monthly, but after the war, in what the editor called a “news-rich environment”, became a weekly paper, coming out each Friday. Struggling financially, the paper was taken over in 1988 by Seamount, an industrial fishing corporation, which as part of its consent to fish in the region was also compelled to invest in the Falklands community in other ways. But the Seamount company collapsed, and Penguin News is now subsidised by the Falklands local government via a media trust.

Lisa Watson, the current editor, is a sixth-generation Falkland Islander. How’s that for the in-depth local angle? She did go to university in Wales, however. Her parents run a sheep and beef farm some 20km out of Stanley, the main town. Anyway, apart from the continuing threat to the islands from Argentina, which still maintains the islands should be part of its territory, a lot of local news covers two mainstays – farming and the local passion for soccer.

So in the meantime, local news for the 3,300 Falkland Islanders is mostly of a peaceful nature. And we hope the badminton team gets to play after all.

Women’s sport in Saudi Arabia. Given the misogynistic traditions of Saudi society, enshrined by repressive laws, this must surely be the most truncated chapter in the story of the world.

But it does have two curious entries.

The first is the apparent popularity within Saudi Arabia, of American-style women’s professional wrestling. What is the basis for its appeal? I don’t rightly know. It must surely be different from the perspectives of the two distinct audiences in the Saudi television-watching and event-going demographic. For women, perhaps it’s the sight of powerful women doing anything on their own; for the men, it probably is mere titillation.

Pro wrestling among male contestants came to Saudi Arabia in 2014. By 2017, Saudi women were allowed to be at events as spectators – but only if accompanied by a male guardian.

And in 2019, the first women’s bout, between Natalya and Alexa Bliss was scheduled, but withdrawn at the last minute as a bridge too far. This was corrected in October when a match between Natalya and Lacey Evans did take place at the Saudi Crown Jewel event. This was a first for that benighted kingdom.

The women’s usual garish wrestling outfits – leather-studded bikinis, leopard print sequinned catsuits and the like – had to be toned down for the Saudi event. They both wore T shirts and long leggings.

Both Natalya and Lacey Evans are regulars on the American women’s pro wrestling circuit. Natalya is said to be the first ever third-generation female professional wrestler, and is part of a partnership aptly named the Divas of Doom. Lacey Evans, real name Macey Estrella-Kadlec, was raised in tough times by non-functional parents. She joined the marines, where she was introduced to wrestling, and later ran a construction company. She became a pro wrestler in 2014, and won a women’s Heavyweight title along the way.

At the fight in Saudi Arabia, she lost to Natalya, but the two women embraced afterwards to seal the historic moment. This was in defiance to ‘kayfabe’, the arcane pro wrestling convention of etiquette of making at all seem real when it’s not, really.

Anyway, they went down a treat in Saudi Arabia. Since then, Bayley and Naomi have also fought in well-publicised events in that Arab nation. Put that in your odder-oddities file in your trivia banks.

And now, just last week it was announced in Saudi Arabia that the nation will allow and invest in a female soccer league. The first women’s soccer club was founded in Jedda in 2006, but had to train in secret and away from the sight of men. There was no one else to play, either. In 2008, the government expressly banned the formation of a FIFA-associated national women’s team.

In 2011, people in the country were saying, cautiously, that women’s soccer would be a way to combat growing obesity rates. Some schools experimented with giving girls the option of sport.

In 2015, women playing sport themselves were denounced by prominent clerics as “steps of the devil.” In 2018, women were permitted to enter stadiums and watch men play.

But, there’s no denying a vital human interest. Things things slowly grew, and by now there are ten women’s soccer teams in Saudi Arabia.

The proposed new women’s soccer league will play in the capital Riyadh and two other cities. The league comes about as the brainchild of Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, who is responsible for some of the reforms in recent years of this ultra-strict society. Just last year, he first allowed Saudi women to travel overseas without a male guardian, and stopped segregation in restaurants. But hey, they’ve still got a long way to go.

Maybe women’s soccer will go some way to helping women’s rights in that cruel country. But I wonder at the symbolism and effect of women’s pro wrestling as a cultural import. How much can a charade change reality on the ground? I’d say soccer has a better chance.

But whatever the repercussions of the wrestlers’ efforts, I wish the women in Saudi Arabia chasing the round ball, playing the beautiful game, and those watching those chasing, all the best of luck in their campaign for emancipation.