Force for good: how Indigenous Australians have enriched football

JOHN HARMS: My name is John Harms. I’m the new director at Manning Clark House. I’d firstly like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we meet today. Welcome on behalf of Manning Clark House and the National Museum of Australia. This is a joint effort, and hopefully it’s the first of many that I’m involved in over the years to come. Manning Clark House, for those of you who don’t know what it is, is Manning and Dymphna Clark’s former residence where Manning Clark wrote his six volumes of history and many other words. When I first went to the house a few months ago, I went up the steps to his famous study, and there sitting on his desk is a mug full of his pens, quills and pencils – and it’s a mug with the crest of the Carlton Football Club on the side of it, because Manning Clark was a mad Carlton fan. I wish that he’d have remained a Geelong fan like his father, because then I would have had a lot more time for him. His father was a Geelong fan who died just before the Geelong premiership of 1951, I think.

Football has been important in the Clark family, and if anyone knows Sebastian Clark, he is a mad Carlton fan – ‘mad’ probably being the operative word. But like Manning Clark, I love football and I’m really interested in its social significance. So in so much as this is about football and sport today, it’s also about the social impact of football, because football offers a lens through which we can observe Australian culture. And it’s a very useful lens. So too is race a very important and useful lens to look at issues by, especially at the moment.

Some of you will have seen Serena Williams foot-faulting the other morning. Well, that has sparked an enormous controversy in the United States. One of the things that I did when I went looking at the YouTube example of it, the first YouTube I came up against was a Finnish version of it, which was very hard to understand, but I then googled a little further and came up with an American sporting site; one of these classic US type blogs which is there to encourage discussion about events that happen in sport. Some of it is, ‘I think the Chargers are better than the whoevers,’ but a lot of it is really interesting to look at because you get an idea of what people are thinking about social issues through sport. It was really interesting to see the Serena Williams discussion on this particular site called ‘Blitz’, which quickly degenerated into an argument about race because, of course, racial politics in the United States – enormous. Some of it was quite intelligent; some if it was really awful. In fact, I’m going to mention an awful one. One poster wrote the letters N-P-I-P-G-P-G-P-E-P-R-P, and his post then said, ‘Take out the Ps’ and you’re left with the word ‘nigger’, and that was the only thing that he wrote. That’s the sort of thing we also are up against – that sort of attitude. On the other side of the coin there was a lot of racial comment, or it was interpreted in a racial sense. So the lens that people were using on this particular site was the lens of race.

The lens of race is very important when considering football of all codes in Australia. And that’s what we’re going to try and find out today: how important it is, why it’s important and what that lens shows us. I wrote a book about Steve Renouf [The Pearl: Steve Renouf’s Story]. Steve Renouf played for Murgon, for Wondai – these are towns in southern Queensland – and he then played for the Broncos [Brisbane’s rugby league team]; he played for Queensland; he played for Australia – a magnificent footballer. For those of you who are more Australian football oriented, I described him as ‘the Andrew McLeod of rugby league’. He’s famous for quite a few moments, but there is one moment in 1992 grand final, which is often replayed when St George are playing the Broncos, and Steve is having a pretty ordinary game. But right near at the end he picks up the football, he takes off down the touchline and he’s chased the entire length of the field by another Indigenous player called Ricky Walford. It’s just a fantastic moment in Australian sport. It’s an iconic moment where you’ve got two Indigenous Australians with the focus of millions of people on them at that particular moment – a very important image. My book is about rugby league, but it’s also about a man trying to understand his own identity, trying to come to terms with what, as he said to me, ‘it means to be a blackfella once you’ve finished playing football.’

Recently I was taken to the centre of Australia by a photographer called Dave Callow, who is just a fantastic bloke. My Friday night was in Melbourne having a few too many reds, I got the plane to Sydney at six the next morning, then flew to Uluru and then got in a four-wheel drive and for ten hours we drove until the sun came down. Then we camped and we wound up there at a little place called Wanarn. There was an Aboriginal football carnival on at Wanarn. Teams had come from Kintore, Tjurkala, Warburton – all these communities – and played on a red dusty oval about 240 metres long by 170 metres wide on this massive oval. Dave took some photos. I thought we would try to create a bit of flavour by showing you some of these photos. [slideshow]

So the kids would play in the morning. And after they’d played the blokes would play. Those of you who’ve visited those communities will know the significance of football. I think that’s a magnificent photo. I’ll let the experts talk a little bit more about the significance of the game, but there’s a real sense of community at this carnival. It was a great privilege to be there.

There’s a soccer ball [photo shown]. What’s that doing there? It’s interesting that Football Australia, the soccer people in Australia, have made the statement that they’re hoping within the next decade or so 15 per cent of players in Australian soccer will be of Indigenous heritage. The boys from Kintore won, they jumped back in the Toyota and off they went 12 hours north. So I thought we’d set a bit of the tone there. When I was at Wanarn, the coach of Tjurkala came up to me and he said, ‘Hey bloke, you got Paul Roos’ [Australian Rules football coach] number?’ And I said, ‘Well, I can get Paul Roos’ number for you.’ He says, ‘I’ve got a few things I want to tell him about how to coach.’ [laughter]

We’re going to have an informal day today with tremendous speakers who’ve agreed to join us today and be part of it. By the way, Phil Egan couldn’t make it today. A family issue in Melbourne came up and he couldn’t come. We’ll be in two segments: the first one will go until quarter till 11 and then we’ll have a break. Then we will come back and have the second session.

Our speakers are Dr Sean Gorman, now research fellow at Curtin University, who wrote a book called Brotherboys about the Krakouer brothers. I won’t give too much away. Che Cockatoo-Collins who played for Port Adelaide, then Essendon and Port Adelaide and has since done many terrific things in Indigenous affairs, worked in schools in education at Rostrevor College. He has been an advisor to [South Australian premier] Mike Rann and now is an advisor to the Santos company. And Dr David Headon, who I’m sure is pretty well known to you here in Canberra. He’s a cultural historian. He has done a lot of writing of his own and edited some fine projects. We’ll be hearing from three of the lads today.

If you have a question during the course, rather than just leaving questions all the way to the end, let’s try and informalise it a bit. If you can catch my eye whilst I’m sitting there and would like to ask a question – we also have a microphone that Adam has got there – we’ll run it more like that show on SBS or something like that. You know what I mean.

Whilst I was writing the book on Steve Renouf, on the other side of the country in south-west Western Australia and in Perth, Sean Gorman was writing his book on the Krakouers. Now we didn’t know this. Sean’s book came out, my book came out, and we met at the football on the terrace at Kardinia Park in Geelong. We had so much to talk about. Because even though we were 5000 kilometres apart, the issues were so similar and the experiences were so similar, which was really interesting. To give us some of the historical background in part to this issue of Indigenous football, I invite Sean Gorman. [applause]

DR SEAN GORMAN: Thank you, John. I too would like to acknowledge the traditional owners on whose land we gathered today. Just as some background to me and the project on the Krakouers: my family came from a small town called Mount Barker, which is in south-west of Western Australia in the heart of what is Noongar country – the south west is where all the Noongar peoples are from – which extends just to the bottom of Geraldton or Dongara and goes to the other side of Esperance. There’s a phenomenological line of where the marbaran or the Christmas tree stops germinating. You know there that once you start to punch out into the goldfields and further north, that that is the Noongar line. Once you start going further out, you know you’re going into Yamatji or Wongai country. The Krakouers are very much from the south-west of Western Australia which makes them Noongars. It’s exactly where my family came from. My grandmother Molly taught all the Krakouer family, Jimmy and Phil, in high school where she was a remedial maths and English teacher.

One day she told Jimmy off, and he picked up a duster and threw it at her, and it hit her in the side of the head. She was a very small lady and she made Jimmy stand outside. As he was going outside she said, ‘You’ll never amount to anything, Jimmy Krakouer,’ and I suppose she got it half right because Jimmy did amount to something and it was football, with Phillip obviously, which enabled him to show his significant talents alongside that of his brother. There are a number of reasons why they were significant, and I will talk about those with the PowerPoint.

I will show some footage initially, then I will show you a PowerPoint to give you some sense of who the Krakouers were for those of you who are too young and perhaps for those of you whose memories have got a bit clouded over them with time. So bear with me. What I want to show now, hopefully, is some footage from their very first season with North Melbourne which was in 1982. [trouble with showing footage]

Here we go – take two. This ostensibly is one-third of a PowerPoint presentation that I have given to five AFL clubs. I initially showed it at the Aboriginal All Stars Camp in Darwin at the start of this year. On the left is obviously a copy of the book which started its life as a PhD. I spent the best part of four and a half years talking to everyone from the family in Mount Barker, the North Mount Barker Footy Club members, the boot starters down there, coaches, old teachers and everyone right through to Ron Barassi and John Kennedy. If you know your football well, you know those are fairly big names. That, on the 30th of May, was adapted for theatre for a play called ‘Krakouer!’

Now, the reason I show this is not to pump my own tyres up. The reason I show this is because as a whitefella, as a wajala, as a gubba, as a guttia, as a migloo – and some of you would know exactly what areas of Australia they would be in terms of making that reference – as a whitefella, walking into a blackfella family and getting permission is not an easy thing to do. The reason it’s not an easy thing to do is because it comes with a history. Yes? And some of those things we’ll talk about in a minute.

So, the reason I show this, is to show that I’m immensely proud of the work that I’ve been able to do with the Krakouers. Because it is based upon a mutual trust and understanding, which has come about through long, long conversations, and building up trust over time. And once you have that as a starting point, there are many, many things that can happen which are great.

I never, ever, ever thought I would be able to produce a book. And now I’m onto my second book. It’s because of the permission that the Krakouers gave me and enabled me to do, that I’ve been able to do those things, which is a great thing. That, I suppose, plays itself out in broader terms in a macro level, not just on a micro level from my work with Jimmy and Phil and the Krakouer family, but it can also work in a bigger way. Precisely what Che is doing with Santos and advising them is ostensibly building up trust through dialogue and engagement with people who have, over time through history, have not had such great relations. Yes?

I love this photograph and there’s a reason I love it. It’s because it tells a story. 1982 when the Krakouers first came to the VFL [Victorian Football League], as it was before it was the AFL [Australian Football League], there had never been two players, two Indigenous players, play on any one team, with one team, up until that point. With the Krakouers coming to North Melbourne in 1982, this starts to change.

The reason why the Krakouers were so important to North Melbourne is because they were a unit within a team. By that I mean, and I haven’t followed much rugby so I can’t make the comparisons in terms of those, but Jimmy was a tough in and under rover, a foot at the pack, front-and-centre type of player. Whereas Phillip was sort of a will-o’-the-wisp player, wingman come half-forward player, who could work into space and generally be on the end of a handball that would come from Jimmy, who had gone in, got the ball and knew where Phillip would be.

A lot of people within the media at the time did not know how to engage with this. Talking to my good friend Martin Flanagan, who writes for the Age and John’s good friend also, some of you, many of you probably know who I’m talking about, he said: ‘With the coming of the Krakouers to the VFL of 1982, it was unprecedented.’ And the reason why it was unprecedented was because, he said, ‘It was like someone bowling backwards in cricket.’

No, we had not seen this type of style of football before nor have we seen it since. The ways that the Melbourne media would engage with this as though it’s simply magic, Krakouer magic. Talking to Steve Hawke who wrote the great book on [Graham] ‘Polly’ Farmer, he says, ‘When the Krakouers start to play at Claremont’, which is the footage you just saw then in the WAFL [West Australian Football League] ‘this is one of the first times this type of discussion or type of language started to be used in the West Australian news media.’

Okay. With the coming of the Krakouers there is this change in the ways in which reporters, sports reporters, start to manifest itself within the media. Jimmy had not had an easy life up unto that point. Jimmy had been removed from his home and school on a number of occasions for fighting. And I don’t mean just a little bit of a punch-up in the playground. I mean serious assaults, where he would be abused at school generally, or he would be threatened in some way and the ways that he would deal with it was through his fist.

He wasn’t interested – Jimmy Krakouer was not interested in some philosophical discussion about the names that you had called him. If you called him whatever, he would react and he would react physically. Shorty Daniels, who played with the Western Bulldogs, said, ‘Jimmy would seek retribution out with his fists.’ Jimmy when there was travelling boxing troops to Mount Barker in the south-west, he would willingly jump into that ring and fight.

There were many reasons for that. But basically, Jimmy had issues with his identity. And he was angry, I suppose in many ways about how his family and his Noongar community had been treated over time. And we’ll get to that in a minute.

Jimmy had also been incarcerated at the age of 16 in an adult prison for rape. A year and a half later he spent another six months in jail. Three weeks after he got his driver’s licence, he was done for killing a man on the stop-go sign just on the five mile outside of Mount Barker heading towards Albany.

Obviously, many of you would know also that when Jimmy retired in 1995, he was done for trafficking methamphetamine across the Nullabor [Plain] and was sentenced to 16 years. He served about eight and a half years and got out.

Phillip, by comparison, lived a fairly pedestrian life. Worked for Australia Post, was, like Jimmy, a solid family man. Jimmy was a solid family man, but very different in the ways that they would deal with the abuse that they would cop. If Phillip ever copped any kind of vilification, there’s also in the book, and I’m sorry I didn’t bring one today, but there’s also a great line in the book by Phillip that whenever he would be vilified, he would say, ‘Yes, I might be black, but doesn’t this red ball look really good in my black hands,’ as he would run off and kick another goal.

MAN IN AUDIENCE: Can I just ask, did that happen often? Were they vilified often?

DR SEAN GORMAN: Yes, they were. And, it’s interesting, when you talk to – [a lectern is brought to the stage] Thank you, very good, excellent. No, you’re right. I normally like to have one as a bit of a safety net so I can sort of lean on it a bit. So thank you. I’m right. Yes, they did. But throughout the course, I interviewed 120-odd people for the book. And it’s interesting, when you’ve got – and I’m not trying to be ageist here, but when you speak to those old-school, hardcore WAFL and VFL players, they would deny that it ever happened. You talk to the blackfellas and they say, ‘Yes, it happened often.’ So, somewhere in the middle you’ve got to try and deal with it.

Other players, someone like ‘Polly’ Farmer – I’ve interviewed ‘Polly’ Farmer on a number of occasions, and the way Polly would react to it is he’d say, ‘Well, I haven’t got a problem. I’m black. I’m a bull,’ he’d say. He’d always say that the person who had the problem wasn’t him; it was the person who addressed him. And he would simply go out harder as a means to beat his opponent. Yes?

MAN: The racism with Steve Renouf, who came from the town Murgon, was such that … Well, I asked him about it, and he’d say, ‘Yes, we were abused, and we copped a lot of flack.’ And I said, ‘How did that make you feel?’ and he said, ‘Oh, well that was just the way it was.’ So there was this deep acceptance in an Indigenous person himself, and that’s the insidious nature of the racism at that place at that time.

DR SEAN GORMAN: Absolutely. And I talk, with the holistic PowerPoint that I show, I’m more interested in institutionalised racism than actual vilification. And the reason why is because that costs people their lives. Calling someone a name is terrible, it’s abhorrent, but it might not cost someone their life. And the reasons I say that in terms of institutionalised racism is the issue where Mr Ward, a fellow from the back of Warburton – some of you now have seen the Four Corners [current affairs television show] episode a few weeks ago, a few months ago, about how he died. He was simply thrown into a paddy wagon [police van] in the middle of summer, given a bottle of Coke and a frozen pie, driven five and a half hours down to Kalgoorlie [in Western Australia], and died due to dehydration and having third-degree burns on his torso.

MAN: In the back of a van.

DR SEAN GORMAN: In the back of a van, like a dog. No one has been prosecuted for that. That is not a black and white issue; that is a human rights issue that should make us absolutely furious. It makes me furious. The other issue was with a black by the name of Louis Johnson who came down and was adopted into a very well-to-do white family in Western Australia. Louis on his 19th birthday went out, and as you do when you’re 19, you go out and have a few drinks with your mates. He was walking home one night, the night of his 19th. He lay down on the side of the road, just off the actual road itself.

A group of young white youth were driving around the leafy streets of Coreen. They saw him there, pummelled him, all hopped out and pummelled him, and someone had the bright idea to pull him onto the road and run him over a few times, and then drove off.

A cyclist saw him a couple of hours later, rang up the ambulance; the paramedics arrived, assessed him, could smell alcohol on his breath, assumed that he’d been petrol sniffing, also, and simply took him home. He died that morning due to the internal haemorrhaging in his body.

That makes me really angry, because that assumes that someone’s life or wellbeing is perhaps … it’s not necessary to carry out the proper checks and balances that you and I would simply take for granted. I’m more interested in institutionalised racism than vilification.

So in terms of Andrew’s career – that’s the son, Jimmy’s eldest boy on the right there – he played 101 games with Richmond. He is also in jail now for assault; up until that point Andrew had not seen so much as a parking ticket. So there are many, many stories that I could tease out of that, but due to time restraints I cannot go into that.

In order to understand the Krakouers and where they have come from, you can’t just say ‘Okay, well, they have come from Mt. Barker’, which is 350 k’s [kilometers] south of Perth. You need to understand where they have come from socially, politically and culturally. Yes? This is the Mount Barker Reserve just outside of Mount Barker, obviously in the 1960s [shows photograph]. What you see in front of you is the new and improved version of the accommodation they had on the reserve. The reserves were gazetted to be just outside of town; they were done by the Main Roads Boards, which were very powerful institutions because they could determine where things went, literally. And so the reserve was just outside of town. In the ’50s and the ’60s if you were caught outside of curfew in town – perhaps you were in town trying to get a feed for your family or a lost child – you would be put in the back of a paddy wagon and taken to town lockup and put in jail for the night, no questions asked.

The Krakouers remember growing up on the reserves. The Krakouers were lucky in one regard, because where these reserves were next to was generally the town tip or the sanitary depot. Which would lend itself to disease and a whole range of other problems that would arise due to being in those places. Where the Krakouers were was next to the rail line and the sale yards.

There was no running water; there was no electricity. Phillip’s got all the good lines because Jimmy hardly talks, Jimmy is a very quiet man. Phillip is the jokester, he is the raconteur of the family. Phillip’s got this great line – he would say, ‘Yes, if the cows didn’t keep you awake at night, the sheep would keep you awake, and if the sheep didn’t keep you awake, the train rattling past at one, three and five in the morning would wake you up.’ That’s the way he dealt with it, okay.

Ironically, the place that they called this, the local Noongar community, they called this place Hollywood, which is a lovely little irony, in the ways they dealt with those things. It’s a nice little montage [indicates photograph]; at the top we have got the North Mount Barker Footy Club, you can see in the third row, the third from the right, is Jimmy. It’s interesting Jimmy is standing in a classic pose where he’s got his thumbs and his biceps pushing them out, but his eyes are looking like that, they are looking somewhere else. They are looking to a future whereas everyone else is looking forward.

Phillip is down in the front of the row there. I joked with Phillip about that, I said, ‘You are looking over at the pie warmer, aren’t you?’ He said, ‘Yes I was, actually.’ To the right here, the Krakouers when they first made state football together, when state football actually meant something and obviously down to the left there, the qualifications in terms of what Krakouer magic means. And then Spooner, the Spooner cartoon when they first came to have this mental telepathy in the ways they would engage.

When I talked to Jimmy, I said ‘Tell me about the magic, Jimmy’ and he said, ‘What are you talking about, bro’ [brother]?’ And I said, ‘Well, you know, how would you be able to find one another? You would have ten blokes around you and you would get the ball out and you’d handball off and plop it in Phillip’s hands and he would run off, how would that happen?’ He said, ‘We had the ball from the time we were three years old, when we could walk, and we’d go down to the park, we’d be constantly handballing and kicking, doing all these sorts of things; it was just confidence.’

There is another great story within the book where – like, I suppose in a Bradman-esque [Don Bradman, legendary Australian cricketer] kind of way, where Bradman would be up against the water tank with a stump and a golf ball,– Jimmy and Phillip would practice their handball when old Eric would come back after a hard day of shearing and he would sit down and have his tea, and Jimmy and Phil would be over the kitchen table, over the dinner table trying to get close to old Eric’s nose, and that’s how they practiced.

So there are all these wonderful stories within the family and around the town of Mount Barker about the ways of the Krakouers and their style of play. However, when they did hit the big league, Leonidas – many of you know who he is, a very famous Koori artist. And this shows the paradox, the irony of being a high profile Indigenous footballer in the ’80s in the VFL.

Phil Krakouer kicks a goal. ‘Grouse, amazing, magic’ – there’s that word again. Yes? Phil Krakouer misses a goal. ‘Stupid, black, dumb coon, useless boont, animal.’ Okay? Now, I suppose, once again, that shows you the knife’s edge that they were on. When Jimmy or Phil played well, how they were respected and how they were engaged with by the people in the crowd. And when that didn’t come about the ways that they wanted it to, what would eventuate?

And these sorts of things today are also abhorrent to us, but the reason for that is because of the ways that the AFL have come in with their Rule 30, their racial and religious vilification laws. And the ways that these sorts of things these days don’t go on, or they don’t go on as much as they used to.

And the thing I’ve found is when someone says something stupid at the football these days, three or four people around them will tell them to pull their heads in, yes? Whereas that would not have happened ten, 20 years ago. I think it’s a great thing that the AFL have been able to do.

Just a last couple [shows photographs]. This is a very important document, and there’s a reason why this is a very important document. This is back in 1987, the VFL were responding to an 11 per cent drop in attendances and gate receipts. And there were reasons for this. There was decentralisation of clubs, talks of club mergers. The VFL as a suburban competition was going where there was talk of this national competition – the AFL, yes? And people weren’t liking it.

What do you normally do when you don’t like something? You vote with your feet, don’t you? You walk away. This is what was happening. The VFL at the time absolutely crapped themselves and said, ‘What are we going to do? Ah, yes, we’ll make some advertising.’

And the reason why this is a really important document is not necessarily because of the little slogan up there of ‘Take the family to see some Aboriginal art tomorrow.’ It’s actually the ways Jim and Phil are framed. You’ve got that social kinship responsibility of the older one protecting his younger brother from potential harm, yes? Philip is waiting for that ball to pump up into his arm so he can run off and go kick another goal on that deadly left foot of his.

However, the reason why this is important on another level, on a historical level, is because this is actually an inversion of the realities that Aboriginal people face more broadly within Australia. In this shot the Krakouers, or black people, Indigenous Australians, are the playmakers. They’re the ones in control. In reality, it’s the inverse. That’s why this is important, because it enables us to view the time differently. Really important.

It’s also the first time, also going back to Steve Hawke, it’s also the first time that I know of in the research that I’ve done where two Indigenous Australians have actually been the centrepiece of the showcase of a national push from an advertising perspective. And that is it. I believe that’s that.

JOHN HARMS: I’ll ask Sean a couple of questions, or we might even throw it open to a couple of questions. The Krakouers, though, Sean, they weren’t the first, were they? Who were some of the other Indigenous players, say, going back to the ’30s who were publicly visible and had an effect?

DR SEAN GORMAN: Pastor Doug Nicholls – well, Joe Johnson is recognised as the very first Aboriginal player to play senior level. There’s some discussion that there actually might be another fellow by the name of Albert ‘Pompey’ Austin who played two or three games with Geelong [football club] back in the 1870s, but that was before the VFA came in, so on and so forth, so there’s  a bit of conjecture about that. Pastor Doug is probably the big one. And the reasons for that, Pastor Doug Nicholls’s story is an amazing story for a whole range of reasons. Pastor Doug goes down to Carlton in the ’30s, the height of the Depression, is living next door to a creek line, goes down to Carlton to get a gig, get a guernsey, and the trainers refused to touch him and they refused to give him a guernsey because of the fact that he may actually smell up the guernsey and they didn’t want to have to launder it.

Many of us through that shame and the ways that he was treated would have simply walked away from that game and gone and played on a more amateur level. He sucks it up. He goes down to Fitzroy [football club], knows no one, places his Gladstone bag down; in walks Haydn Bunton Sr.

Haydn Bunton Sr., by today’s standard, is probably like Gary Ablett times five. I’ll qualify that by saying he wins three Brownlow medals, goes to Western Australia, wins three Sandovers. He’s a super-superstar. He walks in, he sees Pastor Doug standing there, he places his Gladstone bag next to Pastor Doug’s, and the statement is therefore made that ‘this man is my equal.’

Norm McDonald was also in the ’50s, played for Essendon [football club], captain of Essendon for a couple of games, I believe, which was kind of unprecedented at the time. ‘Polly’ Farmer, obviously, the Big Cat, amazing, amazing footballer; introduces those long, raking handballs to break up the game well before the 1970 grand final when it becomes de rigueur. There’s a whole range of players, but they can probably be seen, or I would argue they need to be seen, as pioneers within their own rights. Yes? Because you don’t have the cohorts that you have today, that we see today, in terms of those things.

MAN IN AUDIENCE: Sean, can I ask, so it’s really the appearance of the Krakouers that leads to this notion of a black style in football? Is that the key, namely in terms of what even people within Australian football, or indeed without – is that the key moment in terms of the style?

DR SEAN GORMAN: I’m reluctant to say that because it looks like I’m pumping up the Krakouers because I’ve worked with them, and I don’t want to give that impression. But this is the first time that the media start engaging with it differently. This is when the public, who don’t follow North Melbourne, start to go to the games. I’ve recently just come back from Melbourne, and I’ve had so many conversations with total strangers, once they know who I am and what it is that I’ve done, who have said: ‘Yes, I was a Hawthorne supporter and I went along to a Sunday match to watch North Melbourne play whomever. I didn’t even go for those sides, and the reason I went is because of the Krakouers. I wanted to see them.’ And if they didn’t want to see the way they played, they wanted to see Jimmy react. They wanted to see that. Yes?

So, it’s the first time we see a large-scale engagement on another level, which enables that conversation to start, which takes off. So then you start seeing Nicky Winmar, Nicky Winmar pointing at himself; Shazig’s teammate Michael Long and all these sorts of things. You start to see the engagement; the discussions that we have on the national level start to change.

MAN: If I could just quickly say, if you look at the [rugby] league or union, that I’m more familiar with, it’s the equivalent – the only equivalent we have, even though you can talk about individual players, is the Ellas [brothers Mark, Glen and Gary Ella] in [rugby] union. It’s clear where you’re talking about a particular style and a particular impact through a particular kind of play, and in their case, of course, running as three, which they used to say was unstoppable.

DR SEAN GORMAN: Absolutely. And then I’ve had once again a lot of discussions about the Ellas and the Krakouers and those sorts of things and the comparisons we can make.

JOHN HARMS: What we might do is sort the DVD out for after the break, but in the meantime, now would be a good time to introduce Che because Che is the next generation of players following the Krakouers. But before we do, are there any questions of Sean Gorman that you might like to ask? Anyone at this stage? Yes?

MAN IN AUDIENCE: Yes, Sean, how did North Melbourne treat the Krakouers? And how were they received at the North Melbourne football club? Did North have sensitivity to them? They were the first brothers.

DR SEAN GORMAN: It’s a good question. At the time, North – and having spoken a lot and built up a relationship with Ron Joseph, who recruited them to North Melbourne – they really had no idea at the time what they were doing in terms of welfare and wellbeing, and no club really did. Even talking to someone like Malcolm Blight – when Malcolm Blight came over from Adelaide, they couldn’t actually get basic things like accommodation sorted out for someone like him. Yes? But when the Krakouers came, I think they basically had a hole they needed to fill in terms of their midfield, their following division and their forward line make-up, and they fitted that brief to the tee. But in saying that, whenever there were issues with Jimmy and Phil, whether it was accommodation or whatever it may have been, they were on to it really quickly in North Melbourne, and they really were a pioneer in terms of those things.

But a lot of clubs at the time, in terms of recruitment, actually had policies. I’ve got lots of anecdotal evidence of this, lots, where actual clubs would not want to recruit cohorts of blackfellas because they didn’t want too many of them in their side. Now, that, by today’s standards, seems a bit odd, because you think ‘My God, how would Port Adelaide go? How would Essendon go? How would Fremantle go?’ It’s a sensibility; it’s a mindset; it’s a worldview that you have to change.

I suppose the Krakouers did that through their playing. With the Krakouers at North Melbourne, playing together in the same side at the same time, they won 64 per cent of their games. Sixty-four per cent – that’s huge, and that’s the reason why John Kennedy would get really frustrated with Jimmy if he did react, because he wanted him in the scene, and being that consummate team manager, John Kennedy … Those would be the issues, but Jimmy wasn’t going to back down and therefore, that’s why he did what he did. But yes, 64 per cent is – that’s gold. That’s money in the bank, man.

CHE COCKATOO-COLLINS: To answer the question from my perspective, my uncle in the early ’80s was recruited by North Melbourne, and I’m starting already, so … We grew up in Cairns [in northern Queensland] the family’s from Cape York, I’m Mapoon, and Dad’s from Cherbourg, which is Steve Renouf’s country as well. But, we grew up outside of Cairns, and then Uncle Rob played football. My uncle Michael was the pioneer in our family, so every time we go back home, obviously, Uncle Michael says, ‘Well, you gonna give me some royalties for starting us off?’ [laughter] But, to answer that question, I remember Jim flying up – and you’re right, he doesn’t say a lot. He came up with Ron Joseph, who I still think is a player manager –

DR SEAN GORMAN: He’s a director at North Melbourne, but he’s heavily involved on North Melbourne on many levels.

CHE COCKATOO-COLLINS: I remember Ron, and Laurie Dwyer. Laurie’s son ended up playing with North in the late ’80s, early ’90s, I think. And I just remember Ron. The character just stood out, because all these little black kids were around Ron, and he must have children of his own, because he did this one trick where you’re smoking a cigarette and then he flips it around. He ended up doing it and burnt his tongue. [laughter] And he goes [spitting noise] and all these little black kids, they’re laughing …

DR SEAN GORMAN: They’re laughing at him.

CHE COCKATOO-COLLINS: Yes, so. I remember Ron well after, too, so – while I was playing with Essendon, he and Dennis Pagan at the time wanted me to come over. Never did, of course, but we always remember that time and he still remembers that one time when he come up. So, the linkage is very important, and I think my uncle Rob, who ended up going down south and living in Moonee Ponds [in Victoria], would not go without Uncle Rodney, his older brother. Uncle Rodney never ended up playing for North Melbourne, but what he did, he played for Brunswick but was there to support Uncle Rob. And unfortunately, Uncle Rob just had this major injury that just prevented him from playing seniors. And every time I run into Dennis, he says two things. One of those, ‘If you were to come over, son, you would’ve won two premierships’. I say, ‘Yes, okay, Dennis’. [laughter] And the other is, ‘Your Uncle Robert is the best player never to play seniors’, and that makes me feel very proud.

JOHN HARMS: That issue of separation that you’re talking about with your uncle – in the Renouf case, the big question for Steve was, ‘Can I actually leave my country? Can I leave my family at Murgon [in Queensland]?’ And he described it as the tearing of flesh. Brisbane’s only two and a half to three hours away, and yet in his mind, it was a world away. He just wanted to be a good player in Murgon. He didn’t have to go and show off down in Brisbane, no, but Brisbane wanted him so much because of what he could do with the ball. Maybe now is a good time for you to take it away, Che. Do you want the lectern, or from there, whatever you like?

CHE COCKATOO-COLLINS: Yes, I’ll have to open up these notes. You’ve done me in, Sean.

DR SEAN GORMAN: Why’s that?

CHE COCKATOO-COLLINS: You’ve got a PowerPoint. [laughter]

DR SEAN GORMAN: But you’ve got a 60,000 year oral tradition to draw on. [laughter]

CHE COCKATOO-COLLINS: Very good. What I wanted to cover before I went into a little bit about what I’ve done and about life before football, is to focus on the language and linguistics surrounding Aboriginal people in AFL. And what you’ll find is, it’s a representation of what’s done in the wider society. All right. So you’ll get people, you’ll get commentators using language like, ‘Oh, this is magic.’ So almost in a mythical sense. Which really irritates us players, because what it does is saying to everyone else that somehow this is done a lot easier, and so we don’t work as hard.

These are the subtle messages that are sent by using language like that. So one of the tasks that we need to do, or challenges that face us at the moment, is reframing the language surrounding Aboriginal players. What you’ll find in the wider community, as well as the reflection – when I say reflection of the wider community, you will see in language all over that Aboriginal culture is almost mythical.

And so you’ll come see some Aboriginal art, and rarely is there recognition of a current living culture. And this should irritate all Aboriginal people. But as I was speaking last night, Aboriginal people are not actually one group. There are over 200 different dialects. And for people who probably can’t comprehend that, it’s more like going to Europe. And so you’ve got lots of different languages, and you’ve got dialects that you’re able to link in between, but distinctively different people in different areas.

What we’ve come to – What colonisation had brought with it were western views of that. So now we use state borders. And these have detrimental effects on things like the environment. So you’ll see the River Murray living in South Australia, coming from Queensland. Certainly don’t understand. We get the real bad effects of state legislation, particularly in the River Murray sense. So that’s another thing we have to challenge ourselves with.

What John’s asked me to talk about really is about myself, so you get a better perspective of what – I haven’t called you doctor yet, but Doctor Sean. I grew up in – I was born in Brisbane, grew up in Red Hill, right next to Bronco [Brisbane’s rugby league team] land. So I am a very mad Broncos fan from way back. Moved to Cairns, the family moved to Cairns before I was five really, and [they] wanted to bring us up in a nice area, comfortable, so kids could run around. So we grew up outside of Cairns, in a northern beach.

Through that time you get – a lot of the demographics or the differentials in races is huge from anywhere else. I mean Cairns, North Queensland, you feel comfortable being an Aboriginal person, because you’ve got a lot of other black faces around you. So you’ve got a lot of people that you have many things in common with.

So we grew up on a beach, started playing football. My father was an extremely good rugby league player in North Queensland, from Cherbourg. He’s big, six foot four, centre, sort of like Eric Roth in his time but played more of a playmaker’s role. He always wanted me to play for the Broncos, and I always wanted to play for the Broncos too. But that never happened because – I’ll give you a story.

He was umpire, or a referee as they call it in rugby league, at my very last game of rugby league when I was 12 or 13 and this one kid bit me, so I turned around and I got retribution with my fist and I just hit the kid back, which was a bad thing to do in any case, but what Dad did was send both of us off for the rest of the match. And I told Dad on the way home, I was sooking [sulking] all the way and he said, ‘Are you all right, son?’ I said, ‘I am never playing this game again’, and I never did!

So – but he is fine with that because these days he thinks that the Super League really ruined everything for his rugby league and he has only just started coming back watching the game. But that’s where my mother’s influence – she always took me to games. Dad was pretty big in the Aboriginal health sector so he worked all the time, so Mum, Granny and Granddad took me to my games every week, every Sunday morning. I remember playing four games one day, I loved football that much and there was nothing else for me, nothing else existed in the world except the Carlton Football Club and football and AFL.

MAN IN AUDIENCE: Who were your idols then?

CHE COCKATOO-COLLINS: At that time, I liked Kenny Hunter. That was in the early ’80s. Exposure to the AFL was really minimal in Cairns and that’s all we got. We only got Richmond, Carlton and maybe some Collingwood, but then again our jumper was Carlton. So all I saw was navy blue, navy blue and white. And that was true for a very long time until I played against them and that certainly changed everything. [laughter] But for those rugby league fans out there, it is like they are the Manly of the AFL. I think they own the AFL. And I still have a soft place for them. But that’s where – it was a family outing, so the grandparents, Mum and Dad and the younger brothers, cousins, we all played together for City United Football Club. It was just a day out, a picnic. Kids were very tired after. So playing four games – not too bad; went to sleep fairly early. I think I was a hyperactive kid as a youngster, so I burnt out by the age of 28. That’s why I talk so slowly these days. [laughter]

Parents split up; the family split up in ’89. It was hugely traumatic for me at that time because I was 13, 14, going into that age where young people either choose – and life is about choices and making the right choice. Always thought 13, 14, 15 is that time where a young boy can either go this way or go the right way. Moving to Adelaide at that time, I simply didn’t want to go. I was going to stay with a next-door neighbor, but ended up following Mum and the twin boys and Jasmine to Adelaide. Probably, well certainly, the best move that I’ve ever made. So we did things very, very difficult. But what kept us going all the way was that Mum made the right choices for family. It was always ‘what’s right for family’ at every stage.

What happened, we grew up in Port Adelaide zone – Port Adelaide, the working class suburb – and just went to a local footy club and just asked for a game. Bloke wanted to put me in ruck. I said no [laughs], not a ruckman, but I played fullback, and that’s the end of that. Port Adelaide’s got many amateur, junior clubs around its zone where a lot of history of great Port Adelaide players have come through. The dynamics have changed since the [Adelaide] Crows and particularly the Port inception into the AFL, so that landscape has changed forever, because the SANFL [South Australian National Football League] is now know as the second best competition outside the AFL, but for many, many years the SANFL, VFL and the WAFL were very, very level.

They used to have a competition, the Premiers competition, where the Premiers for each state or each football-sanctioned body played against each other at the end of the year, and Port won a few of those and they found out – their aspirations were to be involved at the highest level, and for those who know the politics of the Crows and Port, and I see a couple in the room, this is why Port Adelaide did not like the Adelaide Crows.

So last weekend was a terrific day. [laughter] I cried as much as watching the Obama speech. [laughter] But they are the politics that I take with me; but the next generation, they won’t. Hopefully they won’t take those politics with them.

So we moved to Adelaide, played at a local football club.

JOHN HARMS: So what year was that, Che, that you first went to Port Adelaide, to play at Port Adelaide?

CHE COCKATOO-COLLINS: That was ’89.

JOHN HARMS: So how were you accepted in the club? Was there an awareness of your heritage, and was that something that came up?

CHE COCKATOO-COLLINS: That’s a terrific question. Port Adelaide has had a very long and strong history with Aboriginal people, particularly from the west coast of South Australia, so Ceduna, Port Lincoln – the bigger ones come from Port Lincoln, even though they say that they come from Darwin; mother comes from Darwin, father comes from Port Lincoln. They’re probably just wanting more land. [laughter]

MAN IN AUDIENCE: Can I just ask – when did Port Adelaide start to give attention to that? How much, before you, were they attending to that and thinking about it and actually intentionally trying to bring blackfellas from the various parts of the west and north to the club?

CHE COCKATOO-COLLINS: There’s probably no secret to it other than you have to earn your spot, okay? So what it did was separate – so a lot of Aboriginal players did miss out because they didn’t – I remember Under-17s preseason, and I was only 16 at the time, you do ten 100s, ten 200s, all the way up. So what it did that first day, 200 boys just wanting to play for Port Adelaide, it just separated them straight away. So the mechanism that was in place sifted out a lot of people who may not have desperately wanted to play AFL footy or football for Port Adelaide, so that’s why you get good players coming through all the time, because of that system that’s already existing.

So that’s why it seems – look, it certainly is the inherent cultural right of Aboriginal people to be in control of certain things like a health system, but in this situation, Aboriginal people just did what was in place to – like any other player, to work really hard to get a spot on the team.

JOHN HARMS: Was there stereotyping? Because Steve Renouf would say that when he was a young, capable footballer, he’d go off to represent in footy and they’d say, ‘You’re a blackfella, you’re a winger.’ Because that’s where the blackfellas play, and that was the assumption that was made. That’s been challenged enormously in recent times over the last decade. Were you subject to that sort of stereotyping?

CHE COCKATOO-COLLINS: Well, I was a wingman, but I loved playing wing because that’s a position that I just wanted to play. John Cahill taught me his way of playing it, and that’s the way I’ve always played. But in saying that, funny when I moved to Essendon, I was put in the forward pocket immediately, and it just, it had never sat well with me. But for the five years I was there, except for a couple of games, and one game in particular I played in the centre, and that was in the midfield, and that was Anzac Day, the first Anzac Day match, and that was my aspiration to play a significant role in the team. So, yes, stereotyping does play a big part and still does play a big part in – well, the ideology plays a big part in a career of an Aboriginal AFL player. Because, you know, people just for some reason don’t see people as being accountable, all of these things. That’s a result of what their upbringing is. So I think that the best advice that I could give to the kids in the room is, you guys have to know yourself first before you can, so you’re able to challenge common assumptions made by other people towards your mob, towards our mob.

JOHN HARMS: When you went to Essendon, was the Essendon Football Club more conscious of these sorts of issues than Port Adelaide was? What was Essendon like?

CHE COCKATOO-COLLINS: I think it was a work in progress. I mean, Michael – who would have known Michael’s impact on –

MAN: This is Michael Long.

CHE COCKATOO-COLLINS: Yes, sorry. – on Australia, let alone the Essendon Football Club. His impact is more significant after, post-career, rather than when he played. But players just want to play, and so they’re task orientated and really don’t want to worry about what lies universally, at a universal level, so all they want to do is, okay, I’m taught to get the ball, I’m taught to shepherd, I’m taught to work at a game plan and I’ll stick with it because they are my mates, and you get this camaraderie that’s infectious. And that’s what I think Aboriginal people bring to a football club. It’s not just the player. We were talking last night; what people bring with them is a more holistic approach in regard to families. And families win premierships, okay. You will see most clubs, most premierships are won by teams that have a really good feeling amongst each other and work to what we call – lot of viewers hear the term ‘game plan’. But the game plan is really a format that the coaches say, ‘Well, here you go. Let’s work with it.’

What works, and what has always worked in Aboriginal society is, okay, the clubs will says,’Players, you are the team’ and we have what we call an MOU or an agreement in place where we say, ‘These are the standards that we are going to live by.’ And most families have them, and you say, well, how do we want to be seen as a football club? And so, Josh Carr for Port Adelaide might say, ‘Well, I want to be known as a tough team, I want to be respected.’

So, okay, that’s fine. Well, let’s now analyse, what does tough mean? Does tough mean retribution with your fist? No, it means hard at the ball. And when it’s your term to go back, you go back, but you need help.

So, for instance, you watch the footage after; if someone goes back and pulls out, they will be asked the question and they’ll go through the team rules: ‘Well, this is what we agreed to. You said we wanted to be tough. This does not set our values; this is not part of our values.’ And then analyse the footage properly; the person behind, his other teammate, should have called him back, and that would have been in the rules anyway. But it’s a work in progress. It’s how families evolve. It’s how families stay strong, and that’s what has come into football in the last five to ten years.

MAN IN AUDIENCE: Che, on that note, was [the] Burgoyne brothers instrumental in contributing to Port Adelaide’s premiership win?

CHE COCKATOO-COLLINS: Yes, well, Port Adelaide is – again, from its inception, a lot of players have played together in the Under-15s and up, and for those who didn’t play together they would have played for South Adelaide or Glenelg or some other [Adelaide] team. So you’ll get [Michael] Wilson, [Warren] Tredrea, [Shane] Bond, [Gavin] Wanganeen, myself – we all played Under-15s together for Port Adelaide, and the other players played for the other teams in the SANFL. To get that – and you’ll never get it again – that’s what I think wins premierships because it’s just something that can’t be measured. It’s your relationship with someone and knowing them the way that the Krakouers played.

JOHN HARMS: Che, we need to go to a break in a minute, and we’ll get you to come back afterwards, but just before we go to the break, a nice point to finish might be, you mentioned Michael Long and the impact that he had. Just give us a few minutes on what you think that impact has been. What has Michael Long done in a social sense? And how did he do it?

CHE COCKATOO-COLLINS: Michael Long simply asked the question and challenged the norms of society. And to hear what you said before, Sean, that is terrific. I’ve never been on the outer before, hearing somebody say some bad language, but for people around to say, ‘Hey, pull your head in,’ that’s the type of change Michael Long has made.

JOHN HARMS: So how has he done that? What did he actually do?

CHE COCKATOO-COLLINS: For one man to put himself in that light for the nation to see is so courageous. So what Michael did was almost sacrifice his career so that now the Buddy Franklins and even the other players from different cultural backgrounds are able to play on a level playing field. We wouldn’t put up with it at work, and for all of these young men, this is their work. The type of change that Michael has made – well, it can be measured, but I think that’ll be a story in itself. So I don’t know whether you’re doing a thesis on that. [laughter]

DR SEAN GORMAN: I’ll just make a very, very quick point in terms of that. It’s one thing to say you’re professional; it’s another thing to actually be professional 100 per cent of the time. To vilify someone is not being professional. The MCG [Melbourne Cricket Ground], therefore, and all the other stadiums that play AFL across the country, now cease being just spaces where a game is played but become a workplace, and that’s the reason why it’s very important. The other reason why it’s very important … I had the great thrill of actually being in the Essendon club this year doing the same PowerPoint presentation, the longer version there, and I said: ‘How would it have been if we didn’t have that Rule 30 in, that racial/religious vilification laws, when those planes went in on September 11? How would that have been for someone like Bachar Houli?’

And I had Bachar Houli sitting – I could have touched him. I said: ‘How would that have been for your family, Bachar?’ And he said: ‘We wouldn’t have been able to go. I wouldn’t have been able to play.’ Yes? So that’s the reason why it’s important because it’s for everyone, not just for blackfellas.

JOHN HARMS: But this is a key element, isn’t it, his visibility, the fact that here is….

WOMAN IN AUDIENCE: [inaudible]

MAN IN AUDIENCE: But, Che, can I ask, was the Michael Long impact – for someone not utterly integrated into Australian football, and I fit into that category, the Michael Long cultural, social impact has been enormous. Did that need the Nicky Winmar extraordinary moment? How important was that? Has that been overstated? Or was that moment a critical moment in what’s occurred in the last ten years?

JOHN HARMS: Just before you answer, just to explain the Nicky Winmar moment, it was at Victoria Park.

MAN: They know it, surely. Okay, sorry.

JOHN HARMS: Nicky Windmar had been taunted by the Collingwood mob during the course of the afternoon, and at the end of the game he lifted his St Kilda jumper up and pointed to his black skin.

DR SEAN GORMAN: Round 4, 1993, two years before the vilification law came in.

MAN: If you want to see a picture of it, it was tiny but it was in John’s article in the Canberra Times the other day. But it was just a tiny little picture of it, but yes, go on ahead.

CHE COCKATOO-COLLINS: I think it came to a head that day, there was Nicky – what a superb player especially in ’93, he just dominated and could win a game off his own boot – but what it did was, at that stage the Collingwood crowd had gained a reputation of not being the most friendly. [laughter]

But the move away from Victoria Park had a lot to do with that. The parochial fortress, I think the intervention from [Eddie] McGuire and his crew after the [Alan] McAllister reign – talking about the Collingwood presidents – really changed something, and their values changed and there are a lot more Aboriginal players on the team. And that’s not the measurement, but the measurement is now, how do we see Collingwood? Do we see them as that crowd that racially vilify everyone, that no longer exists, at least not in my opinion anyway, so that changes can be made? I think it was at a time, the prime minister at the time, [Paul] Keating, brought up the topic or the issue of reconciliation. It was the early ’90s and this is how the landscape of Australia was changing.

JOHN HARMS: We’ll hear more from Che after the break. We’ll hear about what he’s been doing since his footy career’s finished. So, if we take a break now and reconvene here about a quarter past eleven …

[break]

… remind me too, because we’re recording this, when we’re asking questions or making a comment, if you could remind me to make sure we get the microphone to you, otherwise it doesn’t get recorded. It’s not just for an audio thing so we can hear everyone, it’s actually so it can be recorded, as well. We’re going to start with Sean and we’ll talk to Che a little bit more, and then we’ll bring Dave in. So, Sean, take us through some of this Krakouer footage.

DR SEAN GORMAN: I’ve got probably about the best part of 45 minutes here, but I’ll show just a few little snippets of the – this [indicates screen] is the second game that they played in Melbourne, when the bloodstained Angels, South Melbourne, had come down from Sydney; they had moved up to Sydney, but this is their first game back. Arden Street [football field]; the story that Eddie McGuire told me – and so obviously it’s true; he was a junior statistician for the Herald Sun at the time – and when the Krakouers, that was probably about seven minutes into the first quarter, they kicked seven goals between them within the space of about five minutes, and a hush fell over the ground. And the reason why is that people didn’t actually know how to react. I’ll just show a bit of that, and hopefully, we’ll get to see them.