April 24, 2004
The Age, Melbourne
It will be a long time coming – perhaps half a century – but some of Australian football’s dreamers see the possibility of a tri-nations tournament involving South Africa. So they have set about sowing the seeds, reports Michael Bleby from Johannesburg.
In the dry and dusty town of Mafikeng, 250 kilometres west of Johannesburg, a bunch of Australian football fanatics from Melbourne are trying to transplant their love of the game to rugby-mad South Africa. Today, their dream of one day seeing a national league, and even a high-level international competition, takes its next step with the first provincial, or state-level games.
The ambitious project is the brainchild of Brian Dixon, former Melbourne premiership player and Victoria’s sports minister from 1973-82. Founder of the “Life. Be in it” campaign, Dixon has long promoted recreation and healthy living.
In 2001 he brought together a Cape Town-based organisation that develops sport in poor communities, the Melbourne-based Australian Volunteers International and the AFL to support a program that is boosting fitness and sowing an interest in the game among youngsters in post-apartheid South Africa.
There is a need for such a program. In Mafikeng and the surrounding North West province, where poverty is high and the literacy rate is just 57 per cent, education resources do not stretch as far as physical education in many schools.
Dixon has been trying to raise the international profile of “the greatest game in the world” since the early 1960s, when he played in demonstration games in New Zealand and the US. As well as providing much-needed sports teaching, he believes the project presents a great chance to spread the word about Australian football.
“It’s the exposure of a great game to six billion, rather than 20 million, people,” Dixon said. “If Australian rules is going to compete with all the other professional sports, then it’s got to have an international focus. If it doesn’t, then in 100 years, it’s going to be defunct.”
It is still early days, but what the teams lack in skill in today’s inaugural games, they will make up for in enthusiasm. “They’ve been looking forward to this day,” said trainer Steve Harrison. “It’s the first inter-provincial we’ve had in South Africa and they can say that they’ve represented their province. It’s a good incentive to play well.”
It has been Harrison’s job to pull together the matches, between North West and Gauteng provinces. As executive officer of Footy South Africa, the local game’s fledgling association, the 26-year-old, who is also from Melbourne, has been working since September to train coaches and players and to develop a following for the game.
The players competing today will come from townships outside rural Mafikeng, from the ranks of university students in Pretoria and from coloured communities outside Johannesburg. The standard will be similar to Australian high school level and the players will be pooling jumpers, but enthusiasm is high. “Our chances are quite good,” said Mtutuzeli Hlomela, the 23-year-old coach of the Gauteng team. “The one thing we don’t have is much experience. There are guys that only started this week.”
Australian football is not new to South Africa. Australian gold miners organised a league when they were not hunting the precious metal as early as the 1890s. Off-duty soldiers played it during the Boer War. But this time around, a couple of aid organisations, the AFL and a local sporting academy are combining forces to promote physical fitness.
It’s going to take time to boost the standard of the local game. A tri-nations-style Autralian footrball competition including South Africa is still 50 years away, Dixon reckons. If the game is going to take root here, it will need coaching for children of all ages, up to senior level.
Organisers hope to create a coaching accreditation program with the Mafikeng-based North West Academy of Sport later this year, with funding coming from the AFL, Tattersalls and the South African Lotto, as well as from the sports academy. Harrison’s home club, the Melbourne High School Old Boys’ club, which plays in the Victorian amateur league, will also be hosting a South African player for a year.
“In the next five years, it’s not unrealistic to think of 10,000 young people playing Australian rules football,” Dixon said Australian football offers more than fitness. It is a new sport in a new country, says Mtutuzeli, or “Tutu” as everyone calls him. “Soccer is predominantly black,” Tutu said. “Rugby is predominantly white. This sport will offer a chance to both black and white. That’s one goal – to get the sport as multiracial as possible.”
For the South Africans, there is another immediate goal. In August 2005, the next Australian Rules International Cup will be played in Melbourne. South Africa’s players want to improve on their 2002 performance, when they came 11th out of 11 teams. “We played New Zealand in our first game and they walloped us,” said Tutu, who spent 1998 in Adelaide, training with Sturt’s under-19 reserves.
The game is growing in popularity. Neo Nage, a 22-year-old IT student in Pretoria, started playing “Aussie” by accident two years ago, when he thought he was going to learn American football, with helmets and padding. “I tried it anyway, and now I like Aussie more than American!” he said, laughing.
Last year he set up a team on campus. He was also one of the South African players in 2002 who look forward to a better performance next year. “We came last, now the last will be first!” Nage said. “I want to get New Zealand. I want us to get a good position so we can be recognised by Australia as far as Aussie is concerned.”
