The Game by Dennis Cometti

Author:Dennis Cometti
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SPO015000, book
ISBN: 9781743431160
Publisher: Allen & Unwin Pty Ltd
Published: 2012-10-22T04:00:00+00:00

OUT OF AFRICA, INTO THE TEAM

Peter Hanlon

WHEN MAJAK DAWFIRST PLAYED Australian football, the friends from school who had encouraged him to have a go made the first team, while he was shunted down the grades. “I thought to myself, ‘I’m pathetic, I’m not good at this.’”

What worried him most was the prospect of walking this foreign path alone. “I thought I wasn’t going to make any friends in the under-14Ds, but I didn’t know how football works—you make friends wherever you go, wherever you play footy.”

Just four years on from those first, tentative steps in the game, Majak Daw finds himself in the TAC Cup goal square, playing full-forward for the Western Jets. He is realistic about his prospects—“It hasn’t come across to me that, ‘I’ll get drafted!’ or anything like that. I’ll just keep playing footy, and when the opportunity comes, take it.”

Yet his progression shows what is possible, and what is surely on the horizon—the appearance of an African name on an AFL list. And then another, and another, and another.

“Five to 10 years there will be an African at the MCG,” says Ahmed Dini, a 22-year-old Somalian refugee working as a youth advocate in the Flemington area.

“Inside the next five years,” says Kim Kershaw, formerly of Richmond and Hawthorn, latterly coach of Flemington juniors, and of Team Africa in last year’s International Cup. “These kids are very, very talented.”

“Three, four years,” says Daw. He is content that it might not be him, but knows many more will follow—kids who have played the game longer, learnt more, and are ready to shine.

Nick Hatzoglou endorses the shorter time-frame, and it’s a day the head of the AFL’s multicultural arm will rejoice in. Almost as much as April 13, 2005, when he started in a pioneering post at league headquarters. The son of Greek migrants, his pride at taking the game he grew up loving to a vast new audience is immense.

Football hasn’t always been so ready to embrace, but like Daw’s fledgling career, things are improving fast. Says the league’s game development manager, David Matthews: “The next major investment the AFL will make in development will be in multiculturalism.”

Six clubs now employ multicultural officers and, last year, 1300 AFL staffers and volunteers undertook training to increase cross-cultural awareness, and leave them better armed to interact, extend a welcoming hand, and use football as a means of helping newcomers to belong. People like Majak Daw, the face of footy in fast forward.

Daw was born 18 years ago in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, the third of what has become nine children. The family moved to Egypt for three years, and arrived in Melbourne in 2003. His upbringing was different to anything his new friends could know, “but I had a better childhood than others, those who experienced war”, he says.

His native tongue is Majak, like his name, but he had little English. He attended a language centre, and one day a tutor and his wife took him to the MCG as Collingwood played Fremantle.

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