One young man's journey from Law country to the hallowed turf
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, 300km 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 first 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 field," 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 resulting 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. 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 pre-season draft. That means he was numbered about 90 in the national draft system overall. Collingwood -- particularly a coterie called the Industrial Magpies -- have had 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 the 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.
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."
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 last year in the VFL 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 Betheras 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 like 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 on-line 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 Hearn-McKinnon, Melbourne have been 'great'. "Chris Connolly (Melbourne 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 top 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 189cm (some reports say 193cm). "He was only 73kg when he first came down here," says Hearn-Mackinnon. "We've got him up to 81kg 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 his 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 his third or fourth language. 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," Badger says.
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 team-mate 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.
MARTIN FLANAGAN
February 2009
* Martin Flanagan writes for The Age newspaper in Melbourne.
This article appeared in its sports pages this month and is reprinted here with his permission.
Last Modified on 11/02/2009 04:03