Football helps reconciliation goal

MURDOCH Aboriginal PhD student Sean Gorman, is using a two-year, $16,000 Murdoch Reconciliation Scholarship to study the careers of well-known, Nyoongar footballing brothers Jimmy and Phil Krakouer, and their influence on the Australian reconciliation process.

In his thesis, Mr Gorman will examine the players’ status as popular sporting heroes and the path they blazed in the 1980s to take their place with other Indigenous football champions such as Syd Jackson, Polly Farmer, Barry Cable and Maurice Rioli.

Mr Gorman’s scholarship, sponsored by Murdoch’s Division of Social Science, Humanities and Education (SSHE) and the Murdoch Board of Research and Development, will enable him to explore some of the problems encountered by Indigenous footballers prior to the National Reconciliation movement and racial vilification laws of the 1990s.

While focusing on the Krakouers and football, Mr Gorman stressed this would be done so as to engage with and understand the wider social, cultural and historical influences that have impacted upon Indigenous Australians since the arrival of Europeans.

Mr Gorman completed his degree in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies in 1996 and continued his interest in Indigenous affairs throughout his Honours program at Murdoch University.

He said the idea for the Krakouer project came about when he was unemployed and visiting a friend in Melbourne in 1999.

“The Krakouer brothers’ experiences show how football, and sport in general, can be used as a positive force for reconciliation,” said Mr Gorman.

“Both brothers had long and exciting careers - both here in Perth at the Claremont Football Club and at North Melbourne.

“They produced some amazing footballing statistics, with both of them playing well over 100 games and kicking some 220 goals each in the VFL/AFL.

“Yet, despite these statistical similarities, their styles of play were markedly different.

“Jimmy would go in hard to the bottom of the pack to retrieve the ball while his brother would often finish the play.

“It was a wonderful combination and one that saw Jimmy (the older brother) often protecting Phil from opposing players.

“This was in keeping with Indigenous social practice in that the eldest sibling has a strong kinship obligation to look after younger family members.”

He said that if a player hit Phil, Jimmy would always want to square up and usually did, even if it took him a few seasons to do so.

But the Krakouers’ most significant effect, said Mr Gorman, occurred when many Australians began to perceive their close onfield relationship as symptomatic of things off the field between white and black Australians.

“What you have to realise is that for many Indigenous people, football is all they have,” said Mr Gorman.

“This is reinforced by the reality that, for many non-Indigenous Australians, the only engagement they have with black Australia is watching Chris Lewis or Dale Kickett running around on a football field for two hours on a Sunday afternoon.”

Mr Gorman has already spent many hours interviewing both Phil and Jimmy for his PhD.

The two brothers’ lives took distinctly different turns at the end of their playing careers with Jimmy convicted of drug trafficking in 1995 and Phil maintaining a low profile in Melbourne.

But the links between the Gormans and the Krakouers didn’t just end with football.

“Both of our families were born and bred in Mount Barker in the south of Western Australia,” said Mr Gorman.

“When I first left school and got my professional wool classer’s ticket, I ended up in Mount Barker working and playing football for Jim and Phil’s old club, North Mount Barker.”

Mr Gorman said his inherent knowledge of the Krakouer family and the district allowed for a greater interpretation of the material.

This would, hopefully, generate a greater empathy by non-Indigenous Australians for Indigenous Australians.

He hoped that his PhD would help people comprehend a better society by drawing on the popular cultural manifestation of Australian Rules, and engaging with the socio-cultural reality that exists for many Indigenous Australians.

“In light of the reconciliation process and Australia’s need to reassess its past in order to proceed positively into the future, I hope the Krakouer project will assist in some small way with that reassessment.”