St George Illawarra coach Jamie Soward was non-plussed by the perceived "disrespect" his new-look side endured prior to the NRLW season-opener, but the 2010 premiership-winner was left livid after his post-game press conference following his side's 32-16 loss to the Knights in Newcastle went unattended on Saturday.
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It was a tough afternoon for the Dragons, though Soward did find a silver lining in Teagan Barry's emergence as a genuine NRLW No. 1 with two solo tries in an otherwise forgettable outing on the team front.
There were positives for the coach, but the true insult came post-match when Soward arrived for the press conference with no travelling media in attendance. Newcastle coach Ronnie Griffiths was briefly interviewed by local media, but Soward was left waiting for a press conference that never came.
He took to Twitter to bemoan the fact in the aftermath, with an NRL intervention ultimately seeing Fox Sports conduct a brief interview with Soward.
It comes amid a player boycott of game-day media obligations as the RLPA and NRL remain at loggerheads over a lapsed CBA. The boycott blunted exposure of the opening day of the NRLW season, with Tuesday's planned season launch also scrapped amid the boycott
While post-game press conferences ordinarily feature coach and captain, with all players subsequently available for post-game interviews, the boycott put all players off limits to the media.
Soward later explained the situation to the NCA Newswire.
"I waited around for an hour and no one asked for me," Soward said.
"We talk about people wanting to cover the girls, but there was no one there to cover it. It's not about me, it's about the girls. They had no launch and they've had no exposure.
"We're talking about the biggest competition for girls in Australia that's on mainstream TV and there's no promotion around it. Our fans deserve to know why we didn't win, what we're going to work on and all that kind of stuff, and they want to hear from the players who are the stars of the game.
"We can't now (because of the media boycott) and we can't anyway because there was no one here to ask. I was actually quite happy.
"Newcastle is a premiership side who has played together before, whereas we had 11 club debutants and two 18-year-olds who haven't played NRLW before. We just need to be more resilient in defence, and we'll fix that."
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Mitch Jennings
Sports writer. Sport is my passion, rugby league my first love.
Sports writer. Sport is my passion, rugby league my first love.
