World Footy News

A group of us were chatting online after training this week about each player’s multicultural heritage. The club is Pyramid Power in Cairns – my team – and we are a club already renowned for having a 92% indigenous playing list. Most of our players are aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander by heritage. When you have that kind of background there mustn’t be much else in terms of diverse backgrounds.

Wrong!

A closer look unveiled Swedish, Italian, Spanish, Irish, English, Welsh, Scottish, Sierra Leone, Malaysian, Indian, Chinese, Samoan, South Sea Islander (by description, but uncertain of which islands) and Papua New Guinean. And these diverse origins didn’t come from the 8% of non-indigenous players. Such is the cultural diversity amongst indigenous and non-indigenous Australians – multiculturalism lives across all humanity.

The 2016 Toyota AFL Multicultural Round celebrates that exact diversity. Whether by the stricter definition of the AFL which considers mainly the birthplace of players and parents, or the wider interpretation of whole family lineage, the cultural diversity in our game is astounding. Not only that, the diversity has grown the game.

It is an interesting exercise to look at an Essendon reserve grade team player list from 1938, only because I happen to have one. The names featured include: Coates, Drummond, Dibbs, Munro, Roberts, Ellis, McGain, Wallace, McDermid, Goulden, Slater, Buckley, Patterson, Merrett, McLay, Brodie, Welch, Allister, Smith, Beckett, Cooley, White.

That list is as close to a good, old fashioned Anglo-Saxon/Anglo-Celtic name collection as you could find anywhere with one or two exceptions.

Fast-Forward to a random list from the Masala Football Club in Noble Park in Melbourne’s south-eastern suburbs. This partial list is from 2015 – near enough to 75 years later. It shows the remarkable multicultural growth with just the first nine names: Alex Adamopoulos (Greece), Bradley Parker (England), David Crkvenac (Croatia), David Inge Iii (PNG), Declan Lee (Ireland), Dylan Shanks (England), Feda Alidad (Turkey), Furkan Erkal (Pakistan), Jarred Aoun(Lebanon). In fact, when the club started in 2013 their list was comprised of around 70% of players from a huge variety of cultural and national backgrounds which included Fiji, Zimbabwe, Vietnam, Italy, Serbia, UAE, Kuwait, Afghanistan, NZ, Italy and Estonia.

The comparison provides a unique snapshot (or two) of how Australian society has changed in the sense of cultural diversity, and how that is mirrored in the uptake of Australian Rules football across our country.

In a small way our reserve grade list at Pyramid Power makes a similar statement. It is a statement that should be recognised and celebrated, as is the point with the Multicultural Round in progress right now.

Humanity is diverse, and sporting clubs act as a microcosm of society by mirroring that diversity, no matter what the sport. If sport can claim one thing it is that it brings people together. This is why the Multicultural Round is so important as it brings together people associated with Australian Rules football at all levels. The round is showcased by the activities surrounding the nine AFL matches played, but the round is also very much for the people at grass roots level as well – the junior leagues and the senior leagues, the metropolitan and country teams, the men’s and women’s teams, the Masters leagues, the professional, semi-professional, amateur and social.

Wherever the game brings people together it brings together the cultural, ethnic and social diversity which sustains the game past, present and future.

It is funny how we see our club in Gordonvale, south of Cairns, as being culturally diverse by focusing on the paradigm of indigenous/non-indigenous. Yet it takes the Multicultural Round for us to look a little closer and see that our diversity is even greater than that, as is the case with all clubs everywhere.

That’s what this weekend is celebrating, and we are proud to celebrate it. We hope that you are also.

Just for fun, this weekend run a survey at your club of the cultural and ethnic backgrounds of the players that pull on your jumper. You might be surprised at the results as you look a little closer.




Picture: Masala Football Club (Source - Masala FC)