By Caroline Wilson
The AFL is pushing to resurrect the Indigenous All-Stars after a decade in the wilderness in a bid to address the alarming decline in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander footballers playing the game.
Football boss Laura Kane said she hoped the proposed Indigenous exhibition game on the eve of next season would prove the headline act in a series of reforms to alter the trend where First Nations playing numbers at clubs fell from 87 to 71 since 2020, with that figure on target to fall again by 2025. Since 2020, 41 Indigenous players have been drafted while 58 have been delisted or retired.
Last year’s Norm Smith medallist Bobby Hill would be on top of the All Stars wish-list.Credit: Getty Images
“It can’t be fixed overnight,” declared Kane, who confirmed the AFL would also reform the Next Generation academies before the 2024 draft in recognition that head office has made it too tough to encourage clubs to develop Indigenous and multicultural talent. “But we will fix it.”
Mindful of clubs’ traditional reluctance to make key players available on the eve of the season, Kane said: “I think it’s bigger than that. The clubs understand that this is a serious issue. Numbers are declining and affirmative action is needed.
“We’re not suggesting every single AFL-listed Indigenous player take part and I get the high-performance concerns but the prospect of an 18- or 19-year-old Indigenous rising star setting an example for younger aspiring players ... we think that works.
“This All-Stars game is a big aspirational product to shine a light on what can be achieved. We think that works in the same way the AFLW provided a way forward for girls playing football. You can’t be what you can’t see.”
Carlton and Adelaide great Eddie Betts.Credit: AFL Photos
Several AFL clubs, including the Western Bulldogs and Port Adelaide, have signalled their interest in taking on the All-Stars in a match pencilled in for the third week of February 2025. North Melbourne assistant coach Xavier Clarke is favourite to coach the team, assisted by the likes of Shaun Burgoyne, Eddie Betts and Jarrod Harbrow.
However, a working party headed by AFL Indigenous leader Paul Vandenbergh prefers a clash with a “World Team” opponent including Irish, African, American and players of European descent. Max Gawn (whose parents are from New Zealand) and Mason Cox (US) have already shown some interest in taking part.
Venues under consideration include Geelong’s GMHBA Stadium, Carlton’s Ikon Park and even Adelaide Oval, where the South Australian government is looking at a deal involving Port Adelaide taking on the All-Stars. The last Indigenous All Stars clash took place at Leederville in 2015, where West Coast won by eight points against captain Shaun Burgoyne’s side.
Previously the All-Stars, coached by Michael O’Loughlin, toured Ireland in an international rules series in an event only cautiously supported by some AFL bosses. That team suffered heavy defeats. That golden era of players included Adam Goodes, Lance Franklin, Burgoyne and Eddie Betts.
A joint venture between the AFL and the NRL was pushed during the Indigenous players’ camp in Broome in 2017, and again in 2019 by O’Loughlin and former AFL staffers Chris Johnson and Mathew Stokes, along with rugby league’s Johnathan Thurston, Nathan Merritt and Justin Hodges.
It was cautiously supported by former AFL boss Gillon McLachlan but ultimately rejected by both codes.
The AFL has put the All-Stars proposal to the 18 clubs and has been buoyed by the relatively strong levels of support. But Collingwood, whose reigning Norm Smith medallist Bobby Hill would be on top of the All-Stars wish-list, have already voiced some misgivings.
Said the AFL’s inclusion and social policy boss Tanya Hosch: “It’s a challenging thing, to get the players released. But the players consistently tell us they want to do it and that includes the bigger names and the more experienced players.
“I don’t think it’s insurmountable. We know the communities love it. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders love seeing their heroes in the one team. And they’re happy to give back to the communities to inspire young people coming into the game.
“There’s always a concern about a player going down or wanting to protect the player and I completely understand that, but I really hope we can do this.
“This is my eighth season at the AFL and there hasn’t been an All Stars game in my time.”
Kane confirmed that a raft of recommendations to reform the Next Generation academies has been sitting with the AFL Commission since last August. The recommendations included a proposal to remove the draft restrictions on NGA talent, which currently mean clubs are unable to recruit their own academy products before pick No.40, and return it to anywhere from pick No.1.
The AFL’s football boss Laura Kane.Credit: Simon Schluter
The recommendations put to the commission last year in a report authored by Xavier Moloney and Vandenbergh also proposed that clubs be forced to commit for more than one year to category B rookies and redress the radical funding cuts to Next Generation academies.
While the AFL’s northern academies for Sydney, Greater Western Sydney, the Brisbane Lions and Gold Coast each receive annual AFL funding of about $600,000 respectively, the NGAs – designed to attract Indigenous and multicultural athletes with no Australian rules background – each receive one-tenth of that amount. Their funding was slashed from $120,000 to $60,000 a club during the pandemic.
Fremantle, who invest about $1 million a year into their Kimberley region, have lost two academy players – Jesse Motlop (Carlton) and more recently Mitch Edwards (Geelong) – since the AFL changed the rules in 2020.
Jamarra Ugle-Hagan was the No.1 pick in the 2020 national draft.Credit: Getty
However, those proposed academy reforms, according to the league’s football boss, would form part of a wider restructure that would include a rectified approach from the industry towards development of junior talent.
“Aboriginal players have made such a big contribution to our game, but there has been a disconnect from the pathway to the elite,” said Kane. “It’s going to take a lot of time. It can’t be fixed overnight but we will fix it.”
Then CEO-elect Andrew Dillon conceded to this masthead last July that the competition had perhaps overreacted in toughening up the Next Generation academy rules in 2020 after the Western Bulldogs took their star academy recruit Jamarra Ugle-Hagan at pick No. 1 in the national draft.
In 2020, 87 Indigenous footballers were playing at AFL clubs. Numbers since then have continued to decline on an annual basis with just 71 players currently listed. Those figures have also been reflected at national under-18 and under-16 levels with Indigenous coaching and other leadership roles in football’s pathways few and far between. State leagues remain unwilling or disincentivised to employ Indigenous staff.
Kane agreed the decision to toughen the academy rules had been a contributing factor to the falling Indigenous numbers, along with cost-of-living issues and the fallout from the COVID pandemic.
“Long-standing connections through the pathways were lost,” she said, “... and financial constraints challenged that family support which sees so many junior footballers from remote areas transported to and from training and competitions.”
Clarke, who this year moved from Richmond to North Melbourne, remains the only full-time assistant coach in the men’s competition despite affirmative action by head office which has seen a portion of Clarke’s – and any other indigenous or female coaches’ – wage placed outside the football soft cap.
Giants boss Dave Matthews has pushed the AFL to make Sydney’s west exempt from the bidding system, pointing to the 50,000-strong Indigenous population in western Sydney where talented athletes have traditionally chosen NRL.
While now placed in the AFL’s recent past, the treatment of Adam Goodes, Collingwood’s cultural issues as outlined in the Do Better report, the Taylor Walker racist slur, and historic allegations directed at Hawthorn by former First Nations players and their families have been identified as potential AFL red flags by some Indigenous leaders.
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