Wrong code, right message: indigenous AFL stars boost pride on Palm Island
Andrew Stafford, Townsville
The Age
November 13, 2006
IT'S hard to get kids to attend school on a Saturday morning. Particularly when the school is on Palm Island and the visiting attraction is a bunch of AFL stars. In a place where the NRL team the Cowboys are kings and Matt Bowen is a god, there wasn't much interest in kicking the footy around on a sticky north Queensland day.
About a dozen young children straggled to the local sports oval to mix with their indigenous role models. Crowding around Carlton utility Cory McGrath, they smiled cheekily for photographs before vanishing into the mangroves.
McGrath was joined on Palm Island by Melbourne's Matthew Whelan, Kangaroo Daniel Wells,
Richmond's Richard Tambling, Brisbane's triple premiership star Chris Johnson and Port Adelaide's Shaun Burgoyne.
The visit was part of the AFL Players Association's biennial indigenous players' camp, organised in the past to celebrate the high number of Aboriginal players in AFL ranks — about 8 per cent of the total number of players this season.
The camp was in Broome in 2004 and Uluru in 2002 — but this visit targeted the rugby league stronghold of Townsville.
Full article at:
http://www.realfooty.theage.com.au/realfooty/articles/2006/11/12/1163266413370.html
