The Sports Factor

In Australia's northern tropics they're not thinking about the beginning of another Aussie Rules season, they're getting ready for the Grand Final. So forget 'September football', in Darwin it's mid-March when the NTFL finals fever breaks out.

Transcript

This transcript was typed from a recording of the program. The ABC cannot guarantee its complete accuracy because of the possibility of mishearing and occasional difficulty in identifying speakers.

Mick O'Regan: Hello, and welcome to The Sports Factor.

We're off to the northern frontier of the AFL code, where it keeps growing; in fact as people may know, last night the AFL Commission gave the thumbs-up to yet another team on the Gold Coast in the next few years.

And later in the program, we'll be considering a big, new, glossy book on the 150th anniversary of the Australian game of football.

But first this week, we're interested in how the game is played in the Top End, where the grounds are red, the ball is yellow, and most of the players are black.

This weekend marks the high point of footy in the Northern Territory with two Grand Finals, one in the Darwin-based competition and the other on the Tiwi Islands.

Commentator: Stand by, Tiwi Islands football Grand Final; Tuyu versus Tapalinga, a ball up in the middle, Tuyu with the first tap, but it was knocked on a little further that time...

Ted Egan: The day of the Tiwi Grand Final, which is always the day after the Darwin Grand Final, is the biggest traffic day for Darwin Airport of any year, because hundreds of people go over there on charter aircraft, it's only a half-hour flight of course, and the charter flights just run like Melbourne trams across the ocean, and land at Nguiu and one lot get off and they come back and pick up the next. And it's a great day, and they are very hospitable and vehement barrackers for their teams, and the women especially, 'Go for it, boy!' and they're all standing up and roaring and...

Woman: Absolutely fantastic. I don't think the crowds in Darwin have seen this style of football for a long time.

Woman: Fantastic!

Woman: This has certainly brought the crowd back to NT football and it is just fantastic. Makes me proud.

Man: When you're weak, when you think you can't kick the goal or you can't make the tackle, you think back, 'What would this mob do?'

Man: It's in our blood, and the first thing these kids do when they start walking, is they want to kick a football, they want to be like their Dad, they want to be like their grandfathers. It's what brought us together, the squad game, made us stop fighting each other.

Damian Hale: You know I suppose it's similar to watching Brazil play soccer or the West Indies play a 20/20 game. It's fast, furious, action, it makes for a very exciting product.

Mick O'Regan: And he should know. That's Damian Hale, the new federal member for the Northern Territory seat of Solomon, who's had a long career as both a player and a coach in Top End Aussie Rules.

Now this weekend is the Big One for footy fans in Darwin and the Tiwi Islands. It's Grand Final time. In fact for the Tiwi Islanders, the past 12 months have been quite historic on the football front, because apart from their local competition, they also had a team in the Northern Territory Football League, the Tiwi Bombers, who like their more famous namesake down in Essendon, wear the famous black and red.

Now as we'll hear in a moment, the inclusion of the Tiwi Bombers has had an impact beyond the goal square. But first, Andrew Farley, the NTFL commercial operations manager, explains how the team came about.

Andrew Farley: Look it's been a really interesting and exciting story over the last 12 or so months for us at AFLNT. I mean it started in late 2006 basically with a seven-week trial of the Tiwi Islands team in the NTFL, they won six of those seven games, so it was very successful, we got enormous focus by the community and attendance at the games, and things like that. And they played a mini Grand Final against Southern Districts, which was actually the one team that beat them in the trial and actually beat them quite well.

So what it enabled us to do, was some fantastic corporate support from a number of organisations and government, and we raised a significant sum in a very short period of time to actually, if you like, bridge the moat that exists between Darwin and the Tiwi Islands, and it's about a 10-minute flight to get here, that's always been a barrier, and that money and corporate support enables us to bridge that moat and fly the team in for those seven trial games and that mini Final.

Mick O'Regan: Who came up with the idea of bringing a team from the Tiwi Islands into the Northern Territory Football League competition?

Andrew Farley: Look, it's been about a 30-year dream in the Tiwi Islands, Mick. It's been something that they've always wanted to happen and for whatever reason it just hasn't worked out that way. I mean the response to that on the Tiwi Islands was amazing. We were fortunate that ABC-TV covered those trial games, and the take-up on the Tiwi Islands and the support and the following, it's been absolutely fantastic.

I guess the key selling point for us was the chance to make a difference on the Tiwi Islands. I mean football's a very strong social vehicle, and that's the way we position it in the fundraising, is to indicate to people that if they got on board and assisted, then it wasn't just about football, it was actually about the people in the Tiwi Islands, and making a difference there, and that's really the basis that people came on board, was to support in that way from probably a philanthropic sense, as opposed to a purely commercial perspective.

Mick O'Regan: And the fact that the team has done so well, that actually got through to the semi finals in their debut season in the competition, was that a surprise or were people anticipating that a Tiwi Island team would do well?

Andrew Farley: Look I think there was always an expectation that they'd do well and probably a hope that they'd do well from the public's point of view and certainly the League's point of view as well, that it's a great result for any team to get to the finals in their first year, so we're just rapt that they managed. The key point of it as well is it's managed to lift the League; our attendances have been up over the season, and the Tiwi Bombers, we have the first full-time general manager in the NTFL, which is great.

So it's set a benchmark for other clubs to aspire to, and we've seen other clubs now looking at increasing their staffing base on top of their volunteers, which is great to lift the standard of our League, and the off-field administration.

Mick O'Regan: So that the players who have become stars with the Tiwi Bombers, have they had a role in basically taking back messages about public health or harm reduction or living better lifestyles back to their communities?

Andrew Farley: That's certainly been a big part of it. I mean one of the initial partners was the NT government, who basically had a message on the back of the jumpers in the trial, 'Tiwi for Life', and it was all about addressing those suicide rates and sending back those healthy messages. There's still a lot of work to do there in terms of converting that at a grassroots level, and everything else, but it's certainly created an inspiration for kids to aspire to, after coming to that team. There's a very strong feeling over there that people want to go on and do that, so it's a bit of a diversionary tactic as well, I think, from some of the problems that exist.

Mick O'Regan: Andrew Farley, from the Northern Territory Football League.

The impact of football on the social problems which exist on the Tiwi Islands has been studied by Dr Gary Robinson, co-director of Charles Darwin University's School for Social and Policy Research. Through a series of interviews with a selected cross-section of the Tiwi Island community, Dr Robinson and his colleague, Gary Reilly, focused on whether the entry of a local Tiwi team into the Darwin-based competition might have beneficial social and health outcomes.

Gary Robinson: The initial project was to look at how we might get a handle on the health impacts of the entry of the Bombers into the competition and, really, it's one of those things it's very difficult to measure. So we decided to spend a little bit more time just exploring the kind of social pathways, the social impact it might have. The health impacts are something that it's very difficult to attribute to one thing, like the formation of a football team and so on.

Mick O'Regan: Were you able to draw conclusions about the impact of the Bombers' inclusion in the competition?

Gary Robinson: Yes, in the sense that this is part of a process of development that's occurring on the Islands. The Tiwi football's a remarkable phenomenon. There's probably only a few places in Australia where a sport has just taken off to the degree that it has. It's genuinely self-sustaining on the island, it's not propped up by all sorts of outsiders coming in, they have Tiwi coaches, you know, there's some administrative support from Sport and Rec. offices and so on, but generally this is a genuine Tiwi kind of phenomenon, the way football's played out on the islands, with six Tiwi teams and a flourishing competition that's in the news, the people fly out to the islands to the Grand Final every year and so on, that's just the weekend, by the way, on Sunday.

So there's been a long development of football on the Tiwi Islands. It's really part of Tiwi culture, and in some ways the formation of the Tiwi Bombers to play permanently and full-time in the Darwin competition is a culmination of that process of development. So it really says something about Tiwi society. Their outgoingness, their love for football, and the fact that they really see themselves as having the capacity to kind of move on to the big stage. So in that sense it's a very positive kind of sign of the way this group of people engages with the outside world.

Mick O'Regan: As far as your study is concerned, are you seeing positive improvements in areas, say, of public health or public participation or a reduction in issues to do with self-harm and suicide, as a possible causal factor from the inclusion of the Tiwi Bombers?

Gary Robinson: Look I don't think you can -- suicide and some of those sorts of serious social problems, they draw on difficulties in childhood, they draw on a whole range of causal influences, which you wouldn't expect simple formation of a football team to just influence overnight. There are a lot of factors that influence the suicide rate, so I don't think that's the place to look. Longer-term, yes, this is going to be one of those factors that add to self-esteem of young people, that gives them purpose and direction.

When the Bombers were formed, I asked the teachers actually to get some of their Grade 7 children to write stories about football, and what they were saying about the Bombers was, you know, that they love them, they're part of Tiwi, 'they make us feel proud, they make us feel strong'. I had young boys that were visiting me in town or that I saw on the islands, you know, they were just full of it. The idea that they could emulate their older peers and think of themselves as having real futures in football.

The Tiwi have had people playing in national competitions, the SANFL and the AFL over a number of years that everyone will know. But this kind of makes it much more of an accessible pathway. I think it was announced the other day that some of the players from the Tiwi Bombers are going to be invited to try out with South Adelaide down in the SANFL, so it's going to boost the numbers of young people who see this as a genuine pathway for them.

So the effects socially will percolate through a number of these kind of avenues in a sense, young people who see opportunities, young people who kind of can then use football more as a stepping stone to get involved outside of Tiwi society to learn about living in Darwin and set their sights even further in terms of participation and so on. So I think there's a number of pathways where it can provide people with learning experiences, where it represents positive kind of role models for what young people can aspire to. And you'd expect that over the next few years to just continue to build.

Mick O'Regan: Dr Gary Robinson from the School for Social and Policy Research at Charles Darwin University.

The Tiwi Island Grand Final is on Sunday, but tomorrow in the NTFL decider, St Mary's and the Waratahs will battle for premiership honours.

One of the better informed spectators will be Damian Hale, as I said, the federal member for the electorate of Solomon, but also last season's coach of St Mary's, and the man who guided the club to three premierships.

Damian Hale argues the key to understanding Territory footy is realising the importance of family connections.

Damian Hale: It's very family-based I think, that the big families of the Darwin-based clubs have had a lot of success. St Mary's I suppose are the most obvious, with the Longs and the Riolis and Dunns and Figonas, and those type of names that have played at St Mary's and generations of players that have come through. Buffaloes with their Bonsons and Ahmats, and their connections to their families as well. So it has always been a very family-based competition, and the clubs that have done well over the years, I think Buffaloes have 16 premierships and St Mary's 25, so when you look at that, there's, what's that? Forty-one premierships out of about 90 have been won by those two sides.

So it's been that connection and certainly probably more highlighted in recent times with the Tiwi Islands. And we understand and most people know of the social issues that were occurring on the Tiwi Islands, and through the football, it's a vehicle to lead kids to a better life. And the great example of that would be Austin Wonaeamirri, who played for St Mary's. I coached Austin, I coached Austin with the Northern Territory Thunder, and he played for the Tiwi Islands, he played for Norwood, and now he's been drafted to Melbourne. So he's a real success story of a guy that got on the pathway and has done very well.

Mick O'Regan: So what's it like in Darwin in the lead-up? Now I realise, Damien, that you're in Canberra as a federal MHR, but what's it like to be in Darwin in the lead-up to Grand Final week?

Damian Hale: Well it's the only time I actually miss coaching. I coached for about 13 years, and I sometimes get a little bit regretful that I'm not still coaching, but I remember all the hard stuff you do, and the thing about the Grand Final, and Brett Hand and Rick Hall will know this, that they'll have five minutes of glory to make up for the eight months of misery as a football coach, and the amount of time and effort you put into it, and don't get me wrong, it is rewarding, and the friendships I think that you make out of the game are the things that keep you going.

And I felt Saturday night at the St Mary's presentation night, I dropped in, and going to the Grand Final on the weekend, will be about the only time that I'd really miss not being involved, and of the guys playing for Saints on the weekend, 12 of them I've coached in premierships. I've got that bond with them, and certainly the new coach has been fantastic. No, I wish them all the best, but also I think that Waratahs are a very worthy opponent and Rick Hall's been fantastic in his first year. Both guys are first year coaches, and to get their charges through to a Grand Final is a great effort.

Mick O'Regan: In your mind's eye, how do you imagine this Grand Final; I'm presuming you think St Mary's will get up?

Damian Hale: I think St Mary's will win. I think it will be a very tough game though, and Waratahs have had a pretty solid three weeks. They had to get over the top of Palmerston, then they put the Tiwi Islands out of business, then they've beaten Southern Districts in what was a very heavy game, last week, and a very physical game, so I think that would have been taxing. St Mary's, on the other hand, have defeated the Tiwi Islands, defeated Southern Districts and have had a week off to freshen up, which is at this time of year, which is a great bonus for you. I think the key is Waratahs hanging in there, I really believe that if St Mary's get the jump early, Mick, and play the sort of footy they did against Southern Districts where they got out to that 4 or 5 goal lead, and just kept Southern Districts at arm's length, they're not the sort of side that you can really run down a St Mary's side from behind, they're very fit.

If there were two players I could single out, Mick, that I believe hold the key in regards to the ground level battle in the forward line, will be James Porter Jimmy, Jimmy Porter Jimmy, and Ross Tungatalum, and I really don't think Waratahs have got that Tiwi element; they haven't got any Tiwis in their side this year. They haven't got that dash, and somebody that can pinch that great goal on the siren at three-quarter time that put you in front.

Mick O'Regan: Federal MP and former footy coach, Damian Hale.

And later this year, ABC-TV will screen a documentary series on the Tiwi Bombers produced by Tony Collins and Carmel Young. And I'll give you more details on that closer to broadcast date.

Guests

Gary Robinson
Co-Director of Charles Darwin University's School for Social and Policy Research.

Andrew Farley
Commercial Operations Manager for the Northern Territory Football League.

Damian Hale
Federal member for Solomon.

Presenter

Mick O'Regan

Producer

Andrew Davies