It was a great speech. Two things stood out for me (apart from the ending bit about the Chicago Cubs, which was really well done). One was his subtle torpedoing of all the b/s rumours about Rance. The other was his little shout out to "the Brothers", what they've taught him and helped him teach others.
I've got a bit to say about this, so forgive me, as I'm indigenous, so it matters to me.
I've always wondered about how much the club's commitment to these issues has filtered through to all of the staff and the playing group. Back in about 2010, I was teaching at uni and one of my male students was chatting to some girls as we waited to get into a tute. He revealed to them that he was an employee of the RFC (I have no idea in what capacity) and was big-noting that he could get them tickets to a game. He then went on to qualify this by pointing out that that weekend was Dreamtime and that he hated "all that bullshit". Silly bugger didn't realise that the bloke who was going to mark his essays was Indigenous!
Anyway, I've always wondered how the demographics of where AFL footballers tend to come from effects all of this. On the one hand, famously, a disproportionate proportion are indigenous, but even more over-represented are private school boys and blokes from the country - two demographics that are more likely to produce a Sam Newman than a Joel Bowden.
Dave is as country as it comes. You'd expect him to come from a solid National Party family (I have no idea if this is true or not; maybe he comes from a family of Anarcho-Syndicalist farmers, but somehow I doubt it) and if what my sister, who lives in nearby Ararat and is heavily involved with the local Koori community, tells me of the area, it's as far from the latte sipping haunts of inner city Melbourne as you can get in Victoria.
So the point of my long ramble here, is that this is evidence of how profound our club's engagement with Aboriginal Australia has been. It's a credit to the club, and it's a credit to Dave.
❤
