Melbourne’s Warlpiri warrior
Martin Flanagan | , The Age, February 3, 2009
Liam Jurrah
His tribal lands in Central Australia are a world away from the MCG and English is not his first language.
There hasn’t been a story like Liam Jurrah in the AFL before. The closest story is that of Tiwi David Kantilla, who crossed the continent in 1961, played in a South Adelaide premiership, represented South Australia and was named posthumously in the Indigenous Team of the Century.
Liam Jurrah is from Yuendumu, 300 kilometres north-west of Alice Springs. I went there for a football carnival in 1987.
That was the year the grand final got aborted mid-way through the fi rst quarter since the word went through the crowd that the kadatji man was moving among them.
No one knows who the kadatji man is, only that he brings the possibility of death to those who have transgressed what Aboriginal people call the Law. That year, the Pitjinjatjara were initiating their young men in the dreaming paths and where the dreaming paths crossed desert roads, it was the roads that closed.
Liam Jungarrayi Jurrah is an initiated Warlpiri man. He stands in the Law. At 20, he is also a mentor to young men in the community as part of the Jaru Pirrjirdi (Strong Voices) group. “He lives with that same grace you see on the football fi eld,” says Yuendumu counsellor Brett Japaljarri Badger. He’s known Liam since his teens.
Liam’s father, Leo Japaljarri Jurrah, is a Yuendumu football legend. In Yuendumu, they say Leo Jurrah is the best footballer to have come out of remote Central Australia.
They say Leo was a better player than Liam is. There’s even a view that Liam is doing his father’s business in coming to Melbourne, pursuing the opportunity his father never got.
One salient fact about the Yuendumu football team is that it has no best and fairest. ”It’s been hard for Liam to adjust to the fact that whitefellas keep piling individual awards on him,” says Badger. “It’s not how people think about the game in Yuendumu.”
Yuendumu was the place I was first told about the connection between Aboriginal football and Aboriginal men’s dancing. It’s also where I saw one punch thrown in a game result in two clans facing one another on the ground, weapons in hand. ”Liam knows football intimately,” says Badger. “It’s part of his culture and he knows it like the Law. Football is now the format by which the warrior men of the tribe express themselves. “When Liam tells young men to eat better food or not sniff petrol or treat their wives more kindly, it has more weight than if someone like Nathan Buckley said it.”
Melbourne took Liam as their No. 1 pick in the preseason draft. That means he was numbered about 90 in the national draft system overall.
Collingwood — particularly a coterie called the Industrial Magpies — has a lot to do with where Liam Jurrah is today. The Industrial Magpies, about whom a student of sports history will one day surely write a thesis, have forged a link between the Yuendumu Magpies and the Collingwood Magpies. One part of this was bringing three young Warlpiri men to Melbourne in 2007, one of whom was Liam Jurrah. I interviewed them. What had they noticed about Melbourne, I asked. Not as much sky down here, they replied. They pointed to the buildings blocking out the horizon. I showed them the scarred tree at the MCG, the big one on the skyline midway between the stadium and Punt Road. When they went back to Yuendumu they did an interview in Warlpiri for the community media organisation. A member of the Industrial Magpies sent me a translation. In it, one of them had mentioned the tree. “We saw that old tree in Melbourne . . . Yapa (Aboriginal people) from all over got dreaming, it is still there. But we still living our dreaming.”
In Melbourne, Liam lives with Bruce and Ria Hearn Mackinnon. To say that Bruce Hearn Mackinnon has mixed feelings about Liam ending up at Melbourne is an understatement. He is, after all, a Collingwood supporter. But his commitment to Jurrah transcends club loyalties. “He’s a terrific bloke,” he says. Brett Badger says Jurrah is shy “even by Yuendumu standards”. Hearn Mackinnon says: “He’s very quiet but that’s his nature. You ask him a question and he’ll give you an answer an hour later, two hours later, maybe a day later, but that’s because he’s been thinking about it. He’s a very gentle person everywhere except on the football field.” Brett Badger says Liam is unchanged by his time in the city. “When he rings home, the conversation is all about family or people we worked with and how they’re doing.”
Liam played four games for Collingwood in the VFL last year, then went home because a close friend was dying. With help from the Industrial Magpies, Liam then returned to Melbourne with his friend, who wanted to see Collingwood play before he died. Collingwood didn’t pursue Liam through the national draft and his AFL story might have ended there had it not been for former Collingwood player Rupert Betheras. It is hardly sufficient to describe Rupert as out there. A former graffiti artist who came to AFL football by a circuitous route, he arrived at Collingwood in 1999 with an immense ambition and, in the opinion of some, no great talent. The same has been said about his art, in which he favours naked self-expression over aesthetic values. As a footballer, he proved his worth in the 2002 grand final and his exhibition last year at Alcaston gallery was the work of an artist who is seriously on his way. Other people’s opinions have never deterred Rupert. After finishing with Collingwood in 2004, in addition to doing other things such as going to Brazil and writing an essay comparing AFL football to native initiation rites, Rupert worked in Alice Springs with the Clontarf Academy and saw a young footballer from the Tanami desert called Liam Jurrah. Rupert believed he had seen Australian football’s next frontier — young desert footballers “who play like Adam Goodes”. When Liam Jurrah was not taken by Collingwood, Rupert nominated him online for the pre-season draft. Without Liam’s signature, the application could not proceed. When Rupert somehow got a piece of paper with Liam’s signature on it, the AFL accepted the nomination. Melbourne, having followed Liam’s progress, decided to take a chance on him.
According to Bruce Hearn McKinnon, the Demons have been “great”. “Chris Connolly (Melbourne’s general manager of football) came around to see us. He wanted to know all about Liam and Yuendumu. He said Melbourne would have to send some players up there.”
Melbourne coach Dean Bailey says Liam is another pre-season away from challenging for senior selection. Bailey pats his chest to indicate they’ve got to get more upper body strength into him.
Maybe it says something about Liam’s leap — Bailey says he has what basketballers call “hang time” — that different people list Liam as having different heights. Hearn Mackinnon insists he’s only 189 centimetres (some reports say 193 centimetres). “He was only 73 kilos when he fi rst came down here,” says Hearn Mackinnon. “We’ve got him up to 81 kilos now.”
Liam’s manager, Nigel Carmody, played with Liam at Collingwood last year. How good is he, I ask. “He’s got the potential to do anything really.” Carmody says Liam’s skills close to the ground are of the same exquisite level as other indigenous players but he combines it with a vertical leap and marking ability. ”He could become a player who’s extremely hard to match-up on.” Carmody says Liam’s first two VFL games were as good a debut as he saw in 11 years in the VFL.
Not everyone in the football world believes Liam Jurrah can make it. The cultural span he has to cross is huge. English is not his fi rst language (he speaks four Aboriginal languages). When he first went to Collingwood’s Lexus Centre, it was also his first time in a gym. The treadmill startled him. The world shifted beneath his feet. And he had to be cajoled out of a car when the team went for its routine early morning dip in Port Phillip Bay. ”He may have seen the ocean before,” says Hearn Mackinnon, “but he certainly hadn’t been in it.”
But Brett Badger says a commitment has been made, not only by Liam, but by the Warlpiri elders, to Liam’s AFL career.
“The whole community understands that Liam’s in Melbourne on Warlpiri business, and that’s where his obligation lies. No one will be pressuring him to return.” Clearly, Liam will need to have the right people around him, but he hasn’t done badly in that regard so far.
Melbourne has six indigenous players and a captain, James McDonald, who is deeply in tune with his club and where it’s going.
McDonald, who has spent time in the Northern Territory with Aboriginal teammate Aaron Davey, enjoyed hearing the story of how I asked to interview Liam. At the appointed moment, not one but three Melbourne footballers — Aaron Davey, Liam and Tiwi islander Austin Wonaeamirri — stood before me like kids summoned to the headmaster’s office. They weren’t having Liam go through his first press interview alone. I asked Liam how it was going. “Good,” he said. That was more or less the interview. And so a man of history comes to the club of history in its 151st year.
Source: The Age / Realfooty.com.au
This is something that we are going to be starting up to be run outside of the swimming pool every Saturday. All families and friends are welcome to partake in the fun and games! There will be swimming races, face-painting, soccer, auskick and much much more! A sausage sizzle lunch will be on hand for all those hungry, happy kids.
I used to be petrol sniffer and l went to Mt Theo. I went for five month to Mt Theo. I had good fun at Mt Theo went hunting, talk story. Hookicreek and Peggy was looking after us at Mt Theo. Then l came back to Yuendumu and started work in youth program. I work youth program with Jaru Pirrjirdi for two years and it help make me really strong. I put pool table, auskick, disco, basketball, excursions and bush trips for all the little kids in the community. They always asking me to work and put something for them like disco or football. One time we went on Jaru Pirrjirdi trip to Lajamanu to see dancers and it was really good. Mt Theo and Jaru Pirrjidi helped make me strong.
I’ve been working for Jaru Pirrjirdi for one year. First l was putting football, pool table and helping out youth program with Japaljarri. I play football for Yuendumu Magpies and we won three premierships in a row 2003, 2004, 2005. When l played in the first grand final l was only 17. I played with these people who were experienced in football and they teach me how to play good football. Some of the people l have played with have passed away and they were young. It made me sad and made me wanna help my community so we didn’t lose any more young people. I got really good memories of those people.
I’ve been working with Jaru Pirrjirdi for long time now. I used to make all them kids busy with pool table, football, disco and going swimming. And going on bush trips with Jaru Pirrjirdi mob.
I used to sniff petrol. I went to Mt Theo for three months. Rex was looking after me at Mt Theo and sometime (Johnny) Hooker Creek too. We played around at Mt Theo, talked story. And we went around to water hole and it was really nice and green there. Like a jungle. And we came back to Mt Theo and we was playing softball and football. I went back to Yuendumu but there was trouble there when someone in my family got burnt. I was sad and l sniffed again and l went back to Mt Theo with Yakajeri. And my grandfather sent a toyata to pick me up for Easter and l stopped started to stop sniffing.
Vicky Sims story
I’ve been working for Jaru Pirrjirdi for two years with people like Larissa, Andrea, Cherylin, MG, Shaun, P.D., Stephanie, Lorraine, Shaggy and P.O. I have worked youth program for long time especially in school holidays. We went swimming, camping out bush, doing painting projects, softball, basketball, disco, girls pool table to keep all the kids busy and happy. We went on trip to Lajamanu with big mob of people from Yuendumu like those tutors. We saw people dancing at Lajamanu old way and new way together. We went to Wave Hill which was long way. There was lots of animals around like kangaroo, cows, bush turkey and four emus. Sometimes me and MG help taking rations to Mt Theo for all the petrol sniffers out there. And we sit down there and talk story with all those people. We talk to them about stopping petrol sniffing and take them looking at that country. We tell them to stop sniffing and come and work with Jaru Pirrjirdi mob. Those petrol sniffers listen to us.
