Jo Barrett to become first female play-by-play broadcast commentator, background, history

Jo Barrett still remembers the phone call that started her commentary rise.

Although she didn’t even think it was real.

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“I thought it was a prank call,” she laughed, speaking to foxsports.com.au earlier in the week.

Barrett, who works as a secondary teacher at Nudgee College, was with 60 teenage boys at a Year 12 retreat in the Gold Coast hinterland.

A future career in broadcast wasn’t anything Barrett had given much thought to. Not because she didn’t think she was capable of it. It just simply didn’t exist at that point.

“It wasn’t an option in my playing days,” she said.

“The women’s game wasn’t covered and it wasn’t broadcasted. We were only watching the men’s game on TV.

“So I didn’t consciously think that’s where I want to be, and that’s what I want to do.”

But that changed when she received that phone call. It was back in 2015, two years after the Jillaroos had won the World Cup and Barrett finished up playing.

“That moment put us in the spotlight a bit more within the sport,” Barrett recalled.

So, when the Jillaroos were scheduled to play the Kiwi Ferns in a Test match at Suncorp Stadium in 2015, Channel Nine decided to record the game and do a delayed broadcast.

It has been over 10 years so Barrett doesn’t remember all the details. She thinks Ben Dobbin might have called it. She definitely knows Darren Lockyer was in commentary.

She still remembers looking at him right before kick-off, when it felt like her “first day at Earth” while he reached down and started eating a sandwich and having a drink.

“I just couldn’t believe he could be so relaxed,” Barrett added.

She, meanwhile, was wondering how she had even got there. And on two days’ notice, mind you.

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“I got a phone call from I think it was Tahnee Norris, it might have been Vonnie (Sampson). I was on a school camp in the mountains, and they said, ‘We need someone to commentate the women’s game for Channel Nine’, and I thought it was a prank call,” Barrett said.

“I said, there’s no way I’m going to be a sports commentator in two days’ time.”

But she was. They needed someone who knew all the players and given she had only recently played with most of them, it was Barrett who got the call.

The Jillaroos ended up winning the game 22-14 on the back of a hat-trick to debutant Mahalia Murphy. Barrett doesn’t remember much of the call itself. Not that she even wants to.

“I’ve not heard the game played back since I think I’d be mortified if I listened,” she laughed.

“But we recorded it and then it was played on a Sunday morning at some weird time and it got more views than an AFL game that weekend.

“So that gave broadcasters the confidence that, ‘Oh hang on, people will watch women’s rugby league’. So the next year when they did it again, they asked me.”

So began Barrett’s now over decade-long career in the media and so naturally when the NRLW started, she also became a fixture in the commentary box.

She made history as part of the commentary team for the first women’s State of Origin game at North Sydney Oval in 2018.

Now, on Saturday afternoon, she prepares to make history again as she becomes the first female play-by-play broadcast commentator in NRLW history during Fox League’s coverage of the game between the Cowboys and Titans.

It is an extra special moment for Barrett given good friend Karyn Murphy will be in the Gold Coast coaching box for the game.

“I was going to ask if she’s allowed to be biased,” Murphy laughed, speaking to foxsports.com.au this week.

“It’s so cool that she makes it in this particular game and she obviously has worked at our club and still is very close to us all and will always be a part of our club.

“We’ve all got so much respect for her and all love her and I know the players and us all will be stoked too that she’s on our game and to be a part of something really exciting.”

Murphy still remembers a young Barrett, who grew up in the country town of Warwick, jumping in a car with her parents and driving “three or more hours one way and back” not even knowing how many minutes she would get on the field.

She also remembers the days they spent playing against each other, when Barrett suited up for the Toowoomba Fillies and Murphy captained Ipswich Brothers, and how they later teamed up all those years later for Queensland.

For Murphy, it was only natural Barrett of all people would transition into a career in commentary after footy.

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“The biggest thing with her is if there was ever anything to MC or speaking roles, she was certainly our go-to person that we’d turn to… she is very good at it and natural at what she does,” Murphy said.

Barrett puts her comfort behind the microphone down to her background as a teacher, but also as someone with a keen interest in both the sports and performing arts.

“There’s probably been that natural affinity to be part of some sort of performing arts while I was also doing sport which suits teaching because up you’re talking every day to a tough crowd that want to criticise you so I think that’s probably hardened me a bit to what’s required under pressure,” she said.

“In teaching you’ve got to get a message across under pressure, sometimes without warning, and that transfers nicely to broadcast.”

In many ways, Saturday’s historic call is a full circle moment for Barrett, who remembers being interviewed way back in 2008 by Fox League’s Yvonne Sampson.

“She was working as the Sunshine Coast sports reporter, and I found it really easy to talk to her because I knew her away from the game and the camera and I remember liking that as a player,” Barrett said.

“I remember thinking, ‘Oh, that was a really enjoyable moment, and it was really exciting to see snippets of the Jillaroos on the local news.

“Ever since I had the opportunity to be part of it from this perspective, I’ve always enjoyed it. I’ve always gotten a lot out of it, and probably in more recent years it’s been a bit of a quietly held aspiration of mine to challenge myself to be a play-by-play caller.”

So, now that it is here — how does Barrett feel?

“Really good,” she said.

“Obviously a bit nervous, but look I’m looking forward to it. It very much feels like the lead-up to a rep footy debut.”

For Barrett, it can be hard at times in the “frantic” world that is rugby league to pause and reflect on just how far both she and the game as a whole has come since the NRLW’s inaugural season in 2018.

“I think change doesn’t have to be quick to be long term, and I see all the time men who might have traditionally felt uncomfortable with women in the game at any facet, increasingly learn to love the women’s game, and to be honest, even if they criticise it — well, they’re watching it long enough to have an opinion,” she said.

“I could be absolutely given a terrible time by people on the weekend that they don’t like what I did. But if they turned on the TV and watched women playing rugby league, I’m happy with that. I think that’s progress.”

That delayed broadcast at Suncorp Stadium back in 2015 was definitely progress. Even if Barrett was “so far” off being a lead caller at the time, she could recognise this was a “really important moment” — not for her but for the game itself.

“Even though people weren’t watching and the grandstand wasn’t full, I just thought I can’t believe we’re here now,” she added.

And sometimes, it doesn’t even have to be as big a moment as that.

Sometimes it is a simple phone call or email asking for her availability for the next season.

“That is an absolutely nothing moment in the everyday. But it’s this reality check that you’re going to do a job that is now normalised, you’re going to be flown down to Sydney or wherever you’re going, and you’re going to call on a broadcast, a national women’s rugby league comp,” Barrett said.

“So you kind of go, ‘Wow’, even eight to 10 years ago, I would have thought, ‘Oh, that just won’t happen’, for so many reasons. So it’s often in those little moments.”

Like even when she was teaching during her playing days and once entered the classroom with a black eye and a grade-eight student in the front row asked how she got it.

“I was playing football on the weekend,” Barrett replied.

“Girls don’t play football, miss,” was his response.

“Now I’m in a space where boys come in, the senior boys, the first XV rugby players at Nudgee want to ask me about what do I think about Ali Brigginshaw and the Broncos, or did I see the women’s grand final?” Barrett added.

“So there’s just this opening of acceptance, and it was this little thing I did quietly in my life outside of work on a weekend in a little pocket of the world where just a few fans of women’s rugby league were involved in bringing the game forward.

“Now it’s on quite a public stage.”

And it isn’t just Barrett and former players who are making a name for themselves in the media. Even current Sharks captain Tiana Penitani-Gray has emerged as a fast-rising superstar both on the sideline and in the studio, where she provides expert analysis and strong opinions like her NRL counterparts.

“It’s so good to see that it’s just a really normal and realistic pathway for a female athlete to have those opportunities,” Barrett said.

“I think it’s great for the game to not be pigeonholed either because we love it in the men’s game. We love seeing those stars transfer over and we want their opinions and she’s not just the token female giving a positive one liner.

“Tiana, every time I see her on TV, I just think she goes from strength to strength.”

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