Emillia Hawkins
Emillia Hawkins is a freelance women’s football writer at the Guardian whose work is defined by live, rolling coverage that connects women’s football, the wider matchday schedule and reader interaction. She specialises in minute-by-minute blogs and focused analysis pieces that keep pace with busy domestic and international calendars while maintaining a clear emphasis on the women’s game. Her coverage stands out for the way it threads multiple fixtures, competitions and storylines into a single, coherent narrative across a weekend.
Matchday live
Hawkins is a key presence on the Guardian’s Matchday live football blogs, regularly leading long-form rolling coverage across packed fixtures lists. Her matchday blogs span cup semi-finals, promotion races and top-flight crunch games, as seen in pieces such as the FA Cup semi-final buildup combined with “crunch games at both ends of the Premier League” and coverage of Coventry being “on verge of promotion” alongside wider Premier League action.
She handles multi-threaded days that mix major cup competitions and league storylines, including blogs that tie together Champions League reaction, Arsenal’s setback, transfer news such as Liverpool targeting Andoni Iraola, and buildup to the Women’s FA Cup final. Weekend previews and schedules position her as a regular live-blog host, noting her role in guiding readers through days that combine football with other major sporting events while still keeping football at the centre. Across these blogs she maintains a steady stream of updates, context and reader emails, shaping a distinctive voice in the Guardian’s live coverage of the sport.
WSL talking points and roundups
Alongside live blogs, Hawkins writes focused analysis pieces on the Women’s Super League that distil key themes from each round of matches. Her WSL talking points column picks out managerial pressure, tactical trends and attacking wastefulness, exemplified by coverage of Eva Olid “weathering” a difficult start at Manchester United and repeated scrutiny of Arsenal’s profligacy in front of goal. In companion roundup pieces she reports on standout scorelines and performance patterns, such as Arsenal “rue misses” in a draw against Crystal Palace and Manchester City’s emphatic win over Aston Villa. These articles show a consistent interest in how small details in finishing, defensive structure and coaching decisions accumulate over a season in the women’s top flight.
The WSL work marks her as a reporter whose primary lens is women’s football, bringing match-report precision to league-wide synthesis.
Women’s Super League and beyond – live reports
Hawkins also files dedicated live reports from individual fixtures, particularly in the Women’s Super League. Her coverage of matches such as Manchester City 1-0 Liverpool in the WSL is structured around key events, goal descriptions and momentum swings, giving readers an immediate sense of how the game unfolds minute by minute.
She mirrors that approach in men’s domestic football, including live blogs on Premier League contests such as Manchester City v Bournemouth, where the report foregrounds late goals, comebacks and turning points through a detailed key-events framework.
Her live work extends down the pyramid, with reporting on fixtures like Bolton Wanderers 4-1 Stockport County in the League One play-off final, capturing promotion deciders with the same real-time tempo she brings to the top divisions. International tournaments feature in her remit as well, with buildup and news blogs covering Women’s Euro 2025 ties such as England v Netherlands and France v Wales, blending team news, tournament context and live updates. Taken together, these assignments show a reporter comfortable switching between women’s and men’s games, domestic leagues and international competitions, while keeping the live match experience at the core of her coverage.
Guardian sport weekend blogs
Beyond single-match coverage, Hawkins contributes to broader Guardian sport weekend blogs that knit together football with other major events on the sporting calendar.
She is scheduled as a host and co-host on multi-sport live strands that feature Premier League fixtures, international football, domestic cup ties and parallel coverage of events such as the F1 finale, the Ashes, the French Open and the London Marathon. These programmes position her as one of the voices steering readers through long, multi-event windows, with football providing the backbone for a wider look at the weekend in sport. Within these blogs she combines transfer updates, match previews, “washup” from major draws and results, and links out to on-the-ground reporting from colleagues, giving readers a continuous thread through a busy schedule.
Her recurring role on these strands underlines a specialism in orchestrating live, cross-competition coverage rather than filing isolated match reports.
Across this body of work, Hawkins occupies a distinctive space on the Guardian sports desk as a freelance women’s football writer whose primary mode is live, rolling coverage anchored in the women’s game but spanning the full breadth of the football calendar. Her mix of WSL analysis, detailed live match blogs and multi-sport weekend strands offers an unusually integrated view of football’s day-to-day rhythms, from league narratives to knockout drama and international tournaments. The emphasis on women’s football, combined with regular assignments on men’s domestic and international fixtures, gives her coverage a broad but clearly defined focus that sets her apart from more generalist match reporters.
4 more sports journalists.
Aaron Timms
Aaron Timms is a sports writer at The Guardian who treats sport as a way to interrogate power structures, media ecosystems and cultural currents rather than to file match reports or transfer gossip. He focuses on sports media, ownership and era‑defining stars, tracking how broadcasting, business and masculinity shape what fans see and feel. His work ranges across football, basketball, US sports media and cricket, with recurring attention to US television networks, commentators, podcasts and the “sports bros” manosphere, and to governance, regulation and money in elite football. He writes about figures such as Kylian Mbappé and Victor Wembanyama as markers of new epochs in sport. Timms has also written for The Sydney Morning Herald, Salon, The Daily Beast, The New York Times and The New York Review of Books.
Adrian Proszenko
Adrian Proszenko is distinct for treating rugby league as a year-round ecosystem, with hard-news reporting on the NRL and the off-field decisions that shape it. He is a senior rugby league reporter for The Age, covering the NRL, State of Origin and elite club competitions. His beat spans player movement, governance and the business of the sport, with frequent reporting on squad changes, injuries, judiciary outcomes, selection calls, contracts, salary cap pressure and club politics. He also covers expansion discussions, franchise bids, venue decisions, broadcast and scheduling issues, and industrial disputes. His work relies on sourced detail from coaches, agents, club officials, administrators and players, and he uses reported news, direct quotes and specific facts to explain how decisions are made and what they mean.
Andrew Wu
Andrew Wu is a sports journalist at The Age whose AFL work uses game nights, especially for big clubs, to test how well teams are built, focusing on structure, depth and pressure rather than just the score. He writes where individual star performances meet system-wide problems, asking why a side can fail even when its marquee players deliver. His match analysis treats each game as evidence in a larger case about a club’s direction, with clear, direct reporting built from player roles, match‑ups and key passages that reveal mentality and adaptability. Wu covers major codes, particularly AFL and cricket, bringing a cross‑code view of how teams manage form, fatigue and selection over long seasons. He is drawn to list balance, system integrity and whether clubs and national sides can turn talent into reliable performance with stakes beyond a single match.
Andrew van Leeuwen
Andrew van Leeuwen covers top-level motorsport with a focus on how rules, governance and competitive dynamics shape what happens on track. He writes for Speedcafe about Supercars and international series, treating officiating and regulation as core competitive factors rather than background noise. His reporting follows how race control and judicial processes influence Supercars outcomes, unpacking stewards’ calls, penalties, protests and appeals and linking them to points, grids and race results. He also runs the week-to-week Supercars beat, tracking race weekends, team form, strategy, technical changes, balance of performance shifts and the driver market. Team principals and drivers feature heavily in his coverage of car development, engineering changes and intra-team dynamics. He consistently explains Gen3 regulations, parity debates, format and calendar changes, and covers major global series through the lens of governance, commercial shifts and high-level regulatory change.