Jun 5
Arthur Streeton, The National Game (1889)
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Arthur Streeton, The National Game (1889)
call him Tarrare the way I would have him swallowing kids
The first Indigenous AFL umpire Glen James.
Overcoming the racial prejudices of the era combined with the task of umpiring in front of baying spectators would seem a herculean task, but across 166 games James became perhaps football’s most loved umpire of all-time. James credits his outgoing personality, fostered by a childhood competing with 12 siblings to get a word in, with breaking down barriers. “I spoke to players more than any other umpire did. And I’d be first into the aftermatch to mingle and have a drink with all the players. I’d kick-on to 8pm.” Those at the launch can attest to that charisma. He had a pack of journalists in stitches after telling one of them he looked like Dermott Brereton. “I reported you!” James even achieved the ultimate in 1980s football, receiving a nickname from legendary commentator Lou Richards to rival ‘Lethal’ Leigh Mathews and ‘The Incredible Hulk’ Rene Kink. He was ‘Jesse’ James, with ‘the fastest book in the west’, a nod to his propensity to pull out his notebook and report someone to defuse a hostile situation. (x)
Chris Hallinan and Barry Judd, Changes in Assumptions about Australian Indigenous Footballers: From Exclusion to Enlightenment
Spectacular marks in VFL/AFL history (x)
In footy parlance, Ebony Marinoff is in and under, she puts her body on the line and gives 110 per cent. Every single week. Symons says the photo of a blood-soaked Marinoff leaving the field made a lot of people uncomfortable and fuelled conversations about women playing contact sport. It’s an argument infamously articulated by former player and coach and now ABC Radio commentator Mick Malthouse in 2018 when he called for AFLW to be modified to remove tackling and heavy bumping to reduce injuries because of the experience of women in his family. “I don’t say you shouldn’t play it,” he told ABC. “I say I don’t like it.” Symons says it’s a complicated image because she doesn’t want “to romanticise injuries in sport”. But injuries are a part of sport and “we don’t want to create a narrative where we need to put bubble wrap around these women athletes”. “Marinoff is one of the most exceptional players that we’ve had in this competition since day dot. I think for her to unapologetically… [say] ‘yeah, I get hurt and I keep playing, this is what we do’ is great.” The Office for Women in Sport and Recreation’s annual report into the representation of women in sports news coverage found that in 2023-24 women were less likely to be depicted in images showing action than male athletes. They were also less likely to be depicted in portrait images.
Rhiannon Stevens, AFLW is celebrating 10 seasons, these photographs tell its story
AFL footy is my passion. But it’s the one place I can’t come out
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