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Col Hutchison
Colin "Col" Hutchison is a veteran statistician, most notably in the Victorian/Australian Football League in the sport of Australian rules football. He served as the AFL's official historian from the 1990s until around 2005.
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Robert Brough-Smyth
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William Blandowski
Wilhelm (William) Blandowski born Johan Wilhelm Theodor Ludwig von Blandowski January 21, 1822 died December 18, 1878, a German zoologist and mining engineer, was born in Gleiwitz, Upper Silesia, Kingdom of Prussia (now: Gliwice, Poland).
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Gippsland is a large rural region in Victoria, Australia. It begins immediately east of the suburbs of Melbourne and stretches to the New South Wales border, lying between the Great Dividing Range to the north and Bass Strait to the south. The region is best known for its primary production such as mining, power generation and farming as well as its tourist destinations— Phillip Island, Wilsons Promontory, the Gippsland Lakes, Walhalla, the Baw Baw Plateau, the Strzelecki Ranges and the Gourmet Deli Region.
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Moyston is a town in the Western District region of Victoria, Australia, near the Grampians mountain range. The town is located in the Rural City of Ararat Local Government Area, north west of the state capital, Melbourne. At the 2006 census, Moyston and the surrounding area had a population of 575.
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New South Wales (abbreviated as NSW), Australia's most populous state, is located in the south-east of the country, north of Victoria, south of Queensland, east of South Australia and encompasses the whole of the Australian Capital Territory. The colony of New South Wales was founded in 1788 and originally comprised much of the Australian mainland, as well as Van Diemen's Land, Lord Howe Island and Norfolk Island in addition to the area currently referred to as the state of New South Wales, which was formed during Federation in 1901.
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The Riverina () is an agricultural region of south-western New South Wales (NSW), Australia. The Riverina is distinguished from other Australian regions by the combination of flat plains, warm to hot climate and an ample supply of water for irrigation. This combination has allowed the Riverina to develop into one of the most productive and agriculturally diverse areas of Australia. Bordered on the south by the state of Victoria and on the east by the Great Dividing Range, the Riverina covers those areas of New South Wales in the Murray and Murrumbidgee drainage zones to their confluence in the west.
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The Wimmera is a region in the west of the Australian state of Victoria.
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The Yarra Valley is the name given to the region surrounding the Yarra River in Victoria, Australia. The river originates approximately 80 kilometres east of the City of Melbourne and flows towards it and out into Port Phillip Bay. The name Yarra Valley is usually used in reference to the upper regions surrounding the Yarra River and generally does not encompass the lower regions including the city and suburbian areas, where the topography flattens out, or the upper reaches which are in inaccessible bushland. It is a popular day-trip and tourist area, featuring a range of natural features and agricultural produce, as well as the Lilydale to Warburton Rail Trail.
http://wn.com/Yarra_Valley
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Marn Grook (also spelt marngrook), literally meaning "Game ball", is a collective name given to a number of traditional Indigenous Australian recreational pastimes believed to have been played at gatherings and celebrations of up to 50 players. It is often confused with a separate indigenous game resembling Association Football known as Woggabaliri. Woggabaliri is recognised by the Australian Sports Commission as the earliest depicted indigenous ball game and is believed to be the subject of William Blandowski's engraving "never let the ball hit the ground" (see picture on right).
Generally speaking observers commented that Marn Grook was a football game which featured Punt kicking and catching a stuffed "ball". It involved large numbers of players, and games were played over an extremely large area. Totemic teams may have been formed, however to observers the game appeared to lack a team objective, having no real rules, scoring or winner. Individual players who consistently exhibited outstanding skills, such as leaping high over others to catch the ball, were often commented on.
Evidence supports such games being played primarily by the Djabwurrung and Jardwadjali people and other tribes in the Wimmera, The Mallee and Millewa regions of western Victoria, Australia (which are commonly associated with the name "Marn Grook"); however, according to some accounts, the range extended to the Wurundjeri in the Yarra Valley, the Gunai people of Gippsland region in Victoria and the Riverina in south western New South Wales. The Walpiri tribe of Central Australia played a very similar kicking and catching game with possum skins known as Pultja.
The earliest accounts emerged decades after the European settlement of Australia, mostly from the colonial Victorian explorers and settlers. The earliest anecdotal account was in 1841, a decade prior to the Victorian gold rush while the written account dates back to 1857. Although the consensus among historians is that marn grook existed before European arrival, not enough is known by anthropologists about the prehistoric customs of Indigenous Australians to determine how long the game had been played in Victoria or elsewhere on the Australian continent.Marngrook is especially notable as some historians claim it had a role in the Origins of Australian rules football. This connection has become culturally important to many Indigenous Australians, including celebrities and professional footballers from communities in which Australian rules football is highly popular.
Eye-witness accounts
Robert Brough-Smyth, in an 1878 book The Aborigines of Victoria, quoted William Thomas, a Protector of Aborigines in Victoria, who stated that in about 1841 he had witnessed Wurundjeri Aborigines playing the game. :The men and boys joyfully assemble when this game is to be played. One makes a ball of possum skin, somewhat elastic, but firm and strong. ...The players of this game do not throw the ball as a white man might do, but drop it and at the same time kicks it with his foot, using the instep for that purpose. ...The tallest men have the best chances in this game. ...Some of them will leap as high as five feet from the ground to catch the ball. The person who secures the ball kicks it. ...This continues for hours and the natives never seem to tire of the exercise.The game was a favourite of the Wurundjeri-william clan and the two teams were sometimes based on the traditional totemic moeties of Bunjil (eagle) and Waang (crow). Robert Brough-Smyth saw the game played at Coranderrk Mission Station, where ngurungaeta William Barak discouraged the playing of imported games like cricket and encouraged the traditional native game of marn grook.
An 1857 sketch found in 2007 describes an observation by Victorian scientist William Blandowski, of the Latjilatji people playing a football game near Merbein, on his expedition to the junction of the Murray and Darling Rivers. However the Australian Sports Commission considers this sketch to be depicting Woggabaliri, a football game more closely resembling Association Football than Australian Rules Football.
The image is inscribed: :A group of children is playing with a ball. The ball is made out of typha roots (roots of the bulrush). It is not thrown or hit with a bat, but is kicked up in the air with a foot. The aim of the game – never let the ball touch the ground.
Historian Greg de Moore comments: :What I can say for certain is that it's the first image of any kind of football that's been discovered in Australia. It pre-dates the first European images of any kind of football, by almost ten years in Australia. Whether or not there is a link between the two games in some way for me is immaterial because it really highlights that games such as Marn Grook, which is one of the names for Aboriginal football, were played by Aborigines and should be celebrated in their own right.
In 1889, anthropologist Alfred Howitt, wrote that the game was played between large groups on a totemic basis — the white cockatoos versus the black cockatoos, for example, which accorded with their skin system. Acclaim and recognition went to the players who could leap or kick the highest. Howitt wrote: :This game of ball-playing was also practised among the Kurnai, the Wolgal (Tumut river people), the Wotjoballuk as well as by the Woiworung, and was probably known to most tribes of south-eastern Australia. The Kurnai made the ball from the scrotum of an "old man kangaroo", the Woiworung made it of tightly rolled up pieces of possum skin. It was called by them "mangurt". In this tribe the two exogamous divisions, Bunjil and Waa, played on opposite sides. The Wotjoballuk also played this game, with Krokitch on one side and Gamutch on the other. The mangurt was sent as a token of friendship from one to another.
Relationship with Australian Rules Football and Association Football
Some commentators, including Martin Flanagan, Jim Poulter and Col Hutchison postulate that Tom Wills could have been inspired by Marngrook.
The theory hinges on evidence which is largely circumstantial and anecdotal. The tribe was one that is believed to have played marngrook. However the relationship of the Wills family with local Djabwurrung people is well documented.
Wills was raised in Victoria's western districts. As the only white child in the district, it is said that he was fluent in the local dialect and frequently played with local Aboriginal children on his father's property, Lexington, in outside of the town of Moyston. This story has been passed down through the generations of his family.
Col Hutchison, former historian for the AFL wrote in support of the theory postulated by Flanagan, and his account appears on an official AFL memorial to Tom Wills in Moyston erected in 1998.
Gillian Hibbins in the AFL's official account of the game's history published in 2008 for the game's 150th celebrations sternly rejects the theory:
:Understandably, the appealing idea that Australian Football is a truly Australian native game recognising the indigenous people, rather than deriving solely from a colonial dependence upon the British background, has been uncritically embraced and accepted. Sadly, this emotional belief lacks any intellectual credibility.
Hibbin's account was widely publicised and caused significant controversy and deeply offended prominent indigenous Australians who openly criticised the publication.
Comparisons with Australian Rules Football
Advocates of these theories have drawn comparisons in the catching of the kicked ball (the mark) and the high jumping to catch the ball (the spectacular mark) that have been attributes of both games. However, the connection is speculative. For instance spectacular high marking did not emerge in Australian rules football until the 1880s.
Marn Grook and the australian rules football term "mark"
Some claim that the origin of the Australian rules term mark, meaning a clean, fair catch of a kicked ball, followed by a free kick, is derived from the Aboriginal word mumarki used in Marn Grook, and meaning "to catch". However, the term "mark" has been used for a catch in both rugby football (the first recorded rule of Rugby football was the "fair catch" or mark rule to protect players) and early Association football in Britain since the 1830s—)—so the claim may well be a false etymology. The term is still used worldwide in Rugby Union in reference to a fair catch by a player who calls "mark" when catching a ball inside their team's 22 metre line. The application of the word "mark" in "foot-ball" (and in many other games) dates to the Elizabethan era and is likely derived from the practice where a player marks the ground to show where a catch had been taken or where the ball should be placed. The use of the word "mark" to indicate an "impression or trace forming a sign" on the ground dates to c1200.
In Popular Culture
Due to the theories of shared origins, Marngrook features heavily in Australian rules football and Indigenous culture.Marn Grook (documentary) was first released in 1996.
In 2002, in a game at Stadium Australia, the Sydney Swans and Essendon Football Club began to compete for the Marngrook Trophy, awarded after home-and-away matches each year between the two teams in the Australian Football League. Though it commemorates marngrook, the match is played under normal rules of the AFL, rather than the traditional aboriginal game.
The Marngrook Footy Show an indigenous variation of the AFL Footy Show began in Melbourne in 2007 and has since been broadcast on National Indigenous Television and Channel 31.
See also
References
External links
Category:Australian Aboriginal culture Category:Ancient sports Category:Traditional football Category:Words and phrases of Australian Aboriginal origin Category:Wurundjeri Category:History of Australian rules football Category:Sports originating in Australia Category:Indigenous Australian sport
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