‘You’re insane’: The Australian working with Saudi Arabia’s first women’s national team

The Maldives do not normally play host to historic football moments. Aside from the occasional regional triumph – historic locally but less so in a broader context, the idyllic and luxurious holiday destination is better known for its turquoise blue waters and overwater lagoons than for anything to do with football.

But at the Galolhu Football Stadium, a haven of green in the otherwise densely built capital of Male, history was made over the past week as the Saudi Arabian women’s national team took its first formative steps into the international arena with a series of friendlies against Seychelles and the Maldives, winning both games 2-0.

And amongst all the action was a 48-year-old from Albury-Wodonga, doing her bit to help develop a generation of female players who perhaps thought this day would never come. She has the sunburn to show for it.

“I was with my colleague at the airport yesterday,” Donna Newberry, the team’s video analyst, says just hours after arriving back in London. “And we were both kind of trying to process exactly what had happened in the last couple of months.

“I never thought I’d find myself in this kind of position to do a project like this. It’s almost like a reset in terms of why I work in football, why I believe in women’s sports and why I believe in women’s football as well.”

A chance meeting on the sidelines of a Uefa Women’s Champions League clash in Győr in northwest Hungary with respected veteran coach Monika Staab, who was announced as Saudi Arabia’s inaugural head coach five months later, set the wheels in motion.

“We got chatting and I said to her that I would be finishing up at Wolfsburg at the end of the season,” Newberry says. “And then she gave me her contact and said ‘look, at some