Good evening and Happy June. I’m writing this well in advance because today marks ten years since Lady BFC and I went on our first date, and if I’m in the DFO clubhouse typing away instead of celebrating, something has gone horribly wrong.

Speaking of things going horribly wrong, the reason you have me two Thursdays in a row is because LitreCola is rounding up an impromptu meeting of DFO Canucks, grabbing a beer with BeerGuyRob and potentially maestroing with Maestro. Either way, its a mini DFOCanadaCon, and I expect nothing less than a u filled repourt of debauchery and good times.

But tonight, tonight my friends, perhaps in the spirit of the still very much alive LagerHomeyRoy, we return to the subjects of history, Australia, honoring the indigenous people, and sartorial sportswear. When we left off last week, we covered a bunch of the Guernseys from the first installment of the Sir Doug Nicholls Round, but there are not one but two Doug Nicholls rounds, and I didn’t share all of the teams’ unis last week, so I’ll intersperse a few more in today’s article while we get around to the key topic of who exactly is Doug Nicholls? And I want to talk a little about Eddie Mabo as well.

I’m nothing if not long winded, so first a few more detours.  Geelong not only had great unis–

But Jeremy Cameron and a bunch of his teammates also had some incredible boots made by local indigenous artists as well–

Man, I can’t imagine something making Rex Ryan happier. Unless they were filled with whipped cream or something.

Oh, and maybe a quick WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO for that game/round! GWS came in the bigtime underdog and turned the pressure to 11 to claw, scratch, and tackle their way into a massive win, albeit with a tiny margin. The “stories of the game” go beyond the scoreworm:

and are probably Toby Greene scoring 4 first half goals in his 200th career game, phenomenal midfield play from Lachie Whitfield, Stephen Coniglio, and Callan Ward, and pressure, pressure, pressure and tackles, e.g.:

For some reason, the announcers tried to make the story of the game some combination of Geelong being decimated by injuries (which they have been but also the Giants were without arguably their second best player in Himmelberg, their second best midfielder in Josh Kelly, one of their top defenders in Nick Haynes, and possibly the best defensive player in the comp period in Sam Taylor so suck it) OR something about a lot of Irishmen in one oval. Regardless, 81-74 GWS is your final, and Coach Kingsley has to feel pretty good about being able to beat both of last year’s Grand Finalists during what is clearly a rebuilding year.  You could watch the last two minutes here but I think the full game highlights are worth a ganders:

I also watched a bit of Port Adelaide–Richmond, but the 77-67 final tally to the Power’s advantage doesn’t really tell that story either.  Port Adelaide were up by 25 at the beginning of the second quarter, and only a hot streak by Tim Taranto with three goals in a row (IIRC) got the Tigers back into it before the Power sealed the deal and put the kitties to bed.  Highlights here if you want em:

I also caught a bit of Brisbane-Adelaide and remember when I said Brisbane was starting to make me believe in them?  This rain game brought all the doubt right back. Crows win 95-78, and I don’t think Brisbane can blame it on the rain.  Highlights here:

I didn’t watch any of the other games from this round, so here’s a compendium of highlights from the round (seriously, the AFL’s youtube game is pretty on point):

and here’s your ladder so we can get to the learning:

A little breathing room from that wooden spoon seems nice from here, Collingwood looks very strong, but it really is wide open.  Outside of West Coast being just abominable. Oh, and that weirdo on reddit is still doing the ladder with stuffed bears:

Totally normal stuff around here. So where were we?  Who WAS the boss?  Abed has that on lock, let’s talk about Who Was Sir Doug Nicholls and why does he get a round and why is that round two rounds?

I remind you that as I pointed out last week, I am in no way qualified to teach/provide insights, but that doesn’t tend to stop white dudes from doing all sorts of shit, so let’s roll.

Speaking of white dudes doing shit, let’s talk about the work (read: colonial activity) of James Cook. SPOILER ALERT: Australia has a pretty rough history when it comes to how it treated indigenous Australians. I know we in the states learned about Aborigines, which is apparently NOT the appropriate term, so I’ll try to stick to indigenous Australians and First Nations.In fact, by some accounts, Indigenous Australians isn’t a great term since there are different categories of First Nations including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, but since the AFL talks about “indigenous players” all over its official collateral for the round that used to be called the Indigenous Round before it was renamed the Sir Doug Nicholls Round in 2016, I’m confused as shit and going to try and give this history lesson without delving too much further into the language component. Just know that I intend no offense and am trying to sail straight here.

Long story short, historians generally put the first Aboriginal settlers of Australia as coming over from Asia around 50,000 years ago, but now they’re thinking maybe it was 65-80,000 years ago. There may have been as many as 1-3 million First Australians prior to colonization, and in the late 1700s, shit got real. By the early 1900s, that number was less than 100,000. And it didn’t just happened, there were “frontier massacres”, as many as 255 state-sponsored campaigns that killed indigenous Australians, and massive relocations, “forcibly transferring children of the group to another group namely the removing First Nations children from their families and forcing them onto state-controlled reserves often run by religious missionaries to be eventually adopted by white families or taken by white families to work for them,” leading to what has been called the “Stolen Generations.”  There was an “Aborigines Protection Board” established in 1883 to do basically whatever the hell they wanted to the First Nations peoples, including giving them smaller rations than to white Australians, enforce segregation, ban the sale of alcohol to aboriginal Australians, and otherwise control their lives to the point of getting legislative authority to permit them to relocate aboriginal children (as I already mentioned). In 1901, their version of the 3/5 compromise was the 0/5 compromise since the Australian constitution explicitly prohibited the counting of Aboriginal Australians in the census. Individual state governments (Western Australia, New South Wales, etc) in the early 1900s passed a variety of laws giving the government more power over First Nations peoples including legal guardianship in some cases.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics has found that there “were approximately 250 Australian Indigenous languages spoken at the time of colonisation…” and that as of 2005, “…only 145 Indigenous languages are still spoken to some degree and less than 20 are considered to be “strong” and able to be spoken by all generations” (Source).  Tribes (or “mobs”) included (and still include) the Pitjantjatjara, Arrernte, Luritja, Warlpiri (aka “Yapa”), Wiradjuri, Yorta Yorta, and other peoples. These are a large and real bloc of Australians who have been part of the country’s history, economy, and culture for tens of thousands of years, despite attempts to kill, intimidate, or assimilate them.

And guess what–there are still disproportionately shitty outcomes and overt racism all over the place.

So a little depressing and very much an ongoing problem. “Reconciliation Australia reported that in 2020 52% of Indigenous people had recently experienced an incident of racial prejudice in the previous six months. This figure is an almost 10% increase from 2018″ (Source: Amnesty International).  ((Here’s another article from within the last week underscoring the point))

But what does this have to do with Aussie Footy, and when are you going to tell us about Doug?

All fair questions, and here’s a palate cleanser of another cool guernsey leading into the answer:

Sir Doug Nicholls was born on the Cummeragunja Reserve in 1906 and lived to be a footy player, a soldier, a pastor, the first aboriginal Australian knighted by the queen, a governor, and a hero to many. Oh, and he’s on a stamp. When he was 8, his sister was forcibly removed in front of him and relocated to the Cootamundra Domestic Training Home for Aboriginal Girls so she could become a domestic servant whether she wanted to or not. At 14, he was forced to leave home and find work as a laborer, including building levees, exactly the type of full child employment program Kevin McCarthy would like to see in the US.

He was an aboriginal champion in running, boxing, and yes, footy.  When he made a play for pro footy, he started out in the equivalent of juniors, never made it to a “big league” game for Carlton but got plenty of serious racism nonetheless. According to his nephew, when it was his turn to get a (non-Bob Kraft style) rubdown like the other players, his own team’s training staff said “we’re not going to rub you down because you stink.” He played for Fitzroy starting at age 25 and logged 54 games for them at a time where he was not exactly welcome. He was the one of (by my count) one or two Aboriginal players in the entire VFL during his entire career and unfortunately experienced exactly the kind of discrimination you’d imagine if you’re familiar with the stories of Jackie Robinson or racism in sports generally.  His own teammates called him various slurs, taunted him, and generally ostracized him, including him having to room on his own. But being only 5’2″ ended up making him a fan favorite since he was lightning fast and strong as hell. He “competed for five seasons, being named ‘best and fairest’ twice, appearing in three association grand finals and winning in 1929.” After his footy career is when he became quite famous, though, as he became very involved in his church, ministering to and advocating for fellow aboriginals as well as advocating for aboriginal rights and reconciliation, becoming Secretary of the Australian Aborigines’ League in 1940. From that perch he was a driving force for a national referendum and reconciliation broadly that undergirded the movement to restore the rightful place of First Nations peoples in Australia.

I can go on and on but click on (virtually) any of the links I included in the last few paragraphs and it will capture the essence of this leader. He was beloved by his fellow indigenous Australian as well as whatever we’re calling the descendents of colonizers in this situation.

How did he get a round? His family went to the AFL and said (the polite version of) why the hell isn’t this trailblazer in the hall of fame? Surely missing the minimum number of games isn’t enough to keep him out? And they came back and were like “hell let’s rename the indigenous round after him” which was pretty sweet.

But wait, didn’t you mention another guy, Eddie Mabo?  Yes, imaginary voice in my head, I did. But this is already longer than Milton Berle’s cock and I’m tired so short version is he sued the Australian government and won and the only reason I know about him is because the AFL gave his family a platform during the Sir Doug Nicholls Round last year. And that was pretty cool.

What’s On TV Tonight?

Aussie Footy:

If you stay up until 4:40AM DFO Time, you can catch Melbourne vs Carlton live.  I’ll probably catch the replay while I’m working out over the next two days. One of the nice things about being randomly obsessed with Australian football in the US is that there is almost no chance someone is going to spoil a game for you, so you can take your time on the rewatch. At least until the Grand Final.

Béisbol:

Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim at Houston Asterisks, 7:10PM DFO time on FS1. Check your local listings for the BoSox and Guardians games against two other teams I already forgot.

Fútbol:

Cuba is playing someone else in the CONCACAF Gold Cup at 6:30PM DFO time on FS1.  That can’t be true if the Angels-‘Stros game is also on FS1, but here’s my source, so take it up with a different stranger on the internet.

WNBA

Connecticut Sun vs Minnesota Lynx at 7PM DFO time on Amazon Prime.

NBA Playoffs:

Game One of the Finals at 7:30PM DFO Time on ABC.  I’m told the Heat should expect to be dismembered by Jokic and the Nuggets, so I presume this goes 7.

Alright, thanks for listening to my yammering/typing, get out there and start commenting!