Footy Fans: Here’s Yr 4-Min Explainer On The Indigenous Game Marngrook How It Influenced AFL

Each year the AFL Grand Final packs out the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) for a sporting spectacle like no other. So how exactly did AFL become the game it is today? To answer that, let’s discuss the history a First Nations’ game commonly known as “Marngrook”. Play on! Sure, there are nods to First Nations’ culture in modern Aussie Rules like annual Dreamtime at the ‘G game and the Indigenous jumpers designs

Doug Nicholls

What does Marngrook mean?

Deadly StoryReconciliation Manningham

What were the rules of Marngrook?

SBS

Was AFL influenced by Marngrook?

reckon this high markingTanya Hosch

“Marngrook, a high-marking game played in Victoria’s western districts, pre-European settlement, undoubtedly influenced what we now understand as the modern AFL football code,” Hosch said as per the ABC.

“(Marngrook) is Australia’s only Indigenous football game — a game born from the ancient traditions of our country.”

Jim Poulterinterview with the ABCThomas Willshistorians believe that Wills’ experiences playing Marngrook

Why is there debate over the connection between Marngrook and AFL?

Greg de MooreA National Game ABCRoy HayAboriginal People and Australian Football in the Nineteenth CenturyMr Hay saida history of not being considered “accurate”Old El Paso taco ad girlJohnny ConnollyJenny HockingABC

“We’ve later found connections between Johnny Connolly and the area in which Tom Wills actually lived,” Hocking said.

“The most important thing is it situates the game in its local version in the Grampians region at the same time as Tom Wills. There’s now no doubt about that.”

Regardless of whether Wills chose to disclose that Marngrook inspired his AFL rules, we now know Wills existed at the same time and place as the First Nations people playing the game. This info was only accessed by utilising oral primary sources that otherwise might’ve been lost or discredited had they not been transcribed in an accessible format deemed “legitimate” to settler historians.

So as Oprah would say, “what is the truth?”

Robbie “Bones” McGhie punched a dartexact

The post Footy Fans: Here’s Yr 4-Min Explainer On The Indigenous Game Marngrook & How It Influenced AFL appeared first on PEDESTRIAN.TV .