In today’s increasingly commercialised and competitive sporting environment it’s easy to allow creeping cynicism regarding corporate social responsibility to cloud genuinely well-intentioned initiatives.
In reality, Football Federation Australia’s Indigenous Football Week lies somewhere in between; without concrete on-going commitments the goodwill of such gestures can easily dissipate, but to regard such an event as mere tokenism is to grossly underestimate its importance for those thousands of kilometres from the corridors of power.
In Borroloola, a community of less than a thousand people roughly 1,100km south-east from Darwin, the news that the Socceroos have donated $90,000 from their match fee against Jordan, and that FFA have thrown in an additional $20,000 as part of an initiative to raise over $200,000 for remote or disadvantaged Indigenous kids, means a world of difference.
For the John Moriarty Football foundation, founded by the first Indigenous player to be selected to represent Australia, this is terrific news, and a testament to individual champions of the cause both within JMF, but also FFA, Professional Footballers Australia and the Socceroos playing group.
JMF currently runs 800 training sessions and matches in Borroloola as well as two other remote Aboriginal communities over the course of the year, and develops local coaches as part of a broader program encompassing nutrition, mentoring and wellbeing for over 300 children aged two to 16. A significant influx of finances therefore could see operations expanded and replicated in additional communities.
Shadeene Evans, one such beneficiary of the program, whose story attracted front-page coverage over the weekend, is a wonderful example. Introduced to football in Borroloola at the age of nine, Shadeene presently attends Sydney’s Westfield Sports High, a breeding ground for some of Australia’s brightest and best footballers.
As John Moriarty explains, “She’s just turned 14, and is under the auspices of the Matildas coach, Alen Stajcic, and she is going ahead in leaps and bounds; not only with her football, but with her education. She’s a great role model for kids from the community.”
As advocates for women’s football are wont to say, “you can’t be what you can’t see”. The tyranny of isolation, a lack of resources or support and the absence of local role models could very well have prevented a youngster such as Evans from ever leaving her community to pursue football professionally.
It’s a story reminiscent of the pioneering Aboriginal leader Charlie Perkins, who recounts in his autobiography, A Bastard Like Me, how a chance visit to Oxford University whilst playing for one of England’s leading amateur clubs of the era, Bishop Auckland, ingrained in his consciousness a burning desire to educate himself and attend university. Perkins subsequently became the first Aborigine to complete tertiary education and became the seminal figure of the 1965 Freedom Rides movement and push for Aboriginal civil rights.
That Australia still has to remind itself that one of the country’s greatest Indigenous activists first found self-development and self-expression through football is just one of many failures to commemorate and celebrate its rich Indigenous history.
Australian football historian, Ian Syson, charts precisely this history in his essay for Leopold Method, A Lack of Dreaming Tracks: Why Blackfellas Don’t Play Soccer. Syson details how Harry Williams, the Aboriginal Socceroo who played at the 1974 Fifa World Cup, did so entirely oblivious to the trailblazing achievements of Charlie Perkins and fellow Port Thistle stars Moriarty and Gordon Briscoe, at home and abroad in England during the previous decade.
Rather than being inspired by these leaders, Williams was merely “exposed to soccer by a friend across the street at six years of age”. A culture within the predominantly migrant football community of relative inclusion (or conversely, more entrenched racism within the “whiter” communities of other codes) meant that Williams stayed with football, resisting overtures from mates to “stop playing that sissy game and come play rugby league”.
But as Syson points out it’s not a story shared by greats of both Australian rules football and rugby league such as Adam Goodes or Preston Campbell. Both were initially gifted players with a round ball before an “absence of options” saw them shift codes, with Goodes remarkably admitting to have not even played AFL until he was 13.
It’s not by chance that the AFL presently boasts of nearly 70 Aboriginal players within its top tier competition; it’s not by chance that the NRL can claim one-in-eight professional players have Indigenous ancestry despite making up just one-in-30 of the broader Australian population. This is the result of long-term investment in community development programs and clearly articulated player pathways.
That Australian football is very much playing catch up is a point not lost on Indigenous Football Week ambassador and former Socceroo Jade North. “It’s great for the FFA, the PFA to work as one in helping these communities that are spread all across Australia,” he says. “We have to rival the other codes. The AFL have got great programs, the NRL have got fantastic programs set in place, and we’re relatively new.”
But while young Indigenous boys in remote communities have superstars like Johnathan Thurston, Greg Inglis or Lance Franklin to look up to, there are few more prominent Indigenous sportswomen than the two Matildas, Kyah Simon and Lydia Williams.
As North highlights, “With the women, the participation is going through the roof at the moment, with them qualifying for the Olympics, going to the World Cup, it’s a sleeping giant. And with [Simon and Williams] doing what they do, representing Indigenous people, it’s a wonderful achievement.”
Take as a snapshot the Matildas’ remarkable World Cup last-16 victory against Brazil – one of the greatest, if not the greatest result achieved by an Australian football team on the international stage.
Against a star-studded South American side, boasting five-times world player of the year, Marta, striker Christiane and veteran playmaker Formiga, it was goalkeeper Williams who miraculously tipped over a stinging first-half drive from the latter to keep the Matildas in the game, before striker Simon then calmly stroked home the winner in the 80th minute.
In their respective journeys, in the case of Williams from the deserts of Western Australia to Canberra’s AIS, both act as inspirations for the next generation; just as Cathy Freedman did for both, in the absence of prominent Indigenous football role models.
It’s no coincidence that Shadeene Evans’ favourite player is Simon, just as her Aboriginal high school team-mate Jada Whyman, a goalkeeper on the books with Western Sydney Wanderers, dreams of one day emulating her hero Williams.
Whereas football lags badly behind rugby league and Australian rules football as the sport of choice for Aboriginal teenage boys, until the AFL’s women’s league kicks off in 2017, the other codes cannot boast of highly-visible, highly-talented female role models for young Indigenous girls.
The Matildas’ international reputation has never been more illustrious; and as they chase Australia’s first medal in football at the forthcoming Rio Olympics, and a first final-four appearance at the 2019 World Cup, their notoriety will only rise. FFA and supporters of Australian football have a golden window to capitalise on this historic moment and to lock in the legacy of its Indigenous champions. Rather than stories such as Evans’ being a once-in-a-generation aberrance, the opportunity is now to secure pathways for talented young kids like those from Borroloola into professional football, and make this an ongoing reality.
FFA CEO David Gallop knows that this week’s announcement of Indigenous Football Week is just the very beginning of this process. He told Guardian Australia: “This is an important flagship week for the program, but we will continue to assist where we can for the other 51 weeks of the year. It’s an area where it’s probably recognised that the other codes have been active for a long time; this is football’s chance to up the commitment.”
Whether the fundraiser for John Moriarty Football can become an annual event; whether next year A-League clubs will participate in an Indigenous round with special commemorative jerseys; whether club scholarships for talented young Aboriginal players can be instituted; or whether even one day, as North Queensland Fury first attempted in 2009, an Indigenous marquee can become a feature of the A-League rules; all of this will be the testing of whether Australian football has developed the institutional will to pledge systematic support to talented Indigenous players.
For John Moriarty, the first steps are a positive but necessary development.
“We hope [Indigenous Football Week] will expand from next year. If we can get our story out to the rural communities, and other parts of Australia, it will show that this game can embrace such kids, with such talent, and give them the opportunity to take their lives forward.”
FFA have set a target to raise $200,000 for JMF as part of Indigenous Football Week. Supporters can visit the John Moriarty Football website (jmf.org.au) to donate, and can encourage family and friends to do the same by uploading and sharing a photo or video of their feet, barefoot, with a ball, or juggling or playing, to Facebook and Instagram using the hashtags #BarefootJMF and #GameChanger. SMS donations can be made by texting GOAL to 0455 021 021.
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