Young indigenous footballers are going through ever greater scrutiny in their bid to play for the AFL. While some argue that it's better that clubs are aware of any cultural or disciplinary issues before recruitment, others say it's blatant and outrageous discrimination that indigenous young men are asked questions that would never be put to private school boys. 

 By LUKE MORTIMER

Tragedy struck AFL hopeful Liam Patrick just a few months after he moved to Melbourne from Lajamanu, a remote Northern Territory indigenous community, to attend pre-draft training with a league club.

The 20-year-old had moved to Melbourne with his partner, Loretta, and their 10-month-old son, hoping to be recruited by Essendon. But when a family member died three months later, he returned home without explaining to the club why he’d left.

“The club didn’t understand about my cultural things as well,” he said. “It was just me and the family that got into a bit of strife back home.”

Cultural obligations prevented Patrick from being able to refer to his family member or to  their death.

“It’s just for me, you know,” he explained. “It’s just for my knowledge.”

Patrick said the club’s recruiters apparently became concerned that he wouldn’t be able to live in Melbourne because of his cultural responsibilities. Recruiters also talked to his partner about her cultural responsibilities, and became worried Patrick wouldn’t cope with life away from his community.

Patrick’s experience and those of many other young indigenous footballers raise questions about whether AFL recruiters apply different standards and greater background scrutiny to indigenous players than hopefuls from other backgrounds.

These questions come as AFL clubs increase investment in selection programs, while programs that help indigenous players transition into the AFL have been neglected.

Deakin University Professor Chris Hickey was wary of the shift in emphasis.

“You’ll have people hiding in wardrobes soon and, you know, spying on kids or whatever to try and get as much intel as they possibly can,” he said.

These concerns have been raised just as indigenous representation in the AFL showed a decline after reaching a peak in the 2011 season at 11 per cent. In the 2014 season, indigenous players accounted for 8.38 per cent of AFL players.

Academics, player managers, and others with ties to the AFL blame a stringent selection process that has seen fewer indigenous rookie players chosen.

Patrick's mentor during his AFL career, former Northern Territory anti-discrimination commissioner Eddie Cubillo, said people weren't willing to take a risk.

“Just look at the numbers for indigenous players: selection’s dropped off.”

But AFL indigenous engagement officer Jason Mifsud said clubs needed to assess an indigenous player differently to determine if it had the resources to support the player's cultural needs.

“One of the really mature things I’ve seen clubs do is to appreciate what capability they have and they don’t have, and not draft players to set them up to fail,” he said.

“The alternative is you draft the player and you don’t have the resources to manage their transition, and the player leaves you six months in.”

Patrick was among many indigenous footballers from remote communities to billet with Cubillo at his Adelaide home in pursuit of an AFL career.

Cubillo said conversations with these young men had shaped his view that indigenous players were assessed differently to non-indigenous players during the AFL recruiting process.

“The selection process is a lot harder in comparison to non-indigenous kids,” he said.

“When I spoke to the kids I knew they just said they ask those sorts of questions, about cultural and drinking of alcohol ... harder than they would others.

“They ask more strongly when it comes to indigenous kids, like, ‘do you go home for cultural things?’ And most of us do, if not all.

“I’ve spoken to non-indigenous boys that have played, and they wouldn’t get asked those questions. Obviously it does go on.”

A joint research project on AFL recruiting practices – conducted during the 2008 draft with support from the AFL Players’ Association (AFLPA) – with Monash University Professor Paul Kelly and Prof Hickey found recruiters categorised players as "indigenous", "coming from rural areas", "low socio-economic", or "private school".

“What we identified is there is a cultural profiling of indigenous kids as being slightly more problematic, or more difficult, or potentially more difficult,” Prof Hickey said.

“They didn’t mention any other cultural groups at all, but they did mention indigenous kids.”

He said recruiters relied on negative indigenous stereotypes – such as family dysfunction or alcohol abuse – to guide their recruiting practices, which included interviewing family member and inspecting a player’s room, and asking indigenous players about their cultural responsibilities and alcohol use.

“They go and meet with school groups, they go and meet with parents, they go and interview madly, so they try and get to know the recruit through all sorts of lenses,” he said.

“There was a sense of cultural profiling that rendered them a little more problematic.”

But Mifsud said a thorough selection process enabled clubs to evaluate what additional resources they required to provide for the cultural needs of indigenous players.

“The diligence clubs pursue these days is as strong as it’s ever been,” he said.

“Some people might say clubs have overcorrected, but I’ve seen that clubs have a greater level of understanding about who they’re drafting.

“It’s really important to be clear about the clubs who don’t have the cultural knowledge.”

Patrick said nobody at the club understood the cultural reasons that prevented him from explaining why he needed to return home. Despite efforts from players, coaching staff, and player management to find out why, he wouldn’t refer to the family member’s death.

“I didn’t pass the message, because it’s more for ‘us’,” he said. “It can’t be in the public, so it’s more private. That’s why I didn’t explain much as well.”

Mifsud said the AFL Reconciliation Action Plan found 3 per cent of AFL employees were indigenous, but a majority held positions in the indigenous talent pathway programs, leaving clubs without adequate cultural expertise.

“The clubs have taken that step to say, ‘can you help us, can you provide some further cultural expertise into our recruiting systems?’.”

Scotch College football co-ordinator Rob Smith said recruiters had an expectation that indigenous players posed behavioural problems. He said when recruiters from St Kilda interviewed him about an indigenous footballer, they asked about the player’s family circumstances, whether he suffered from homesickness, and how regularly he returned home.

“They were very, very thorough talking about everything at the lowest possible level, trying to find some area that the kid didn’t do so well,” he said.

Prof Hickey said AFL clubs increased investment in their recruitment programs from the 2005 to 2010 season, with wealthier clubs trying to gain an advantage off the field, as the salary cap limited their ability to recruit higher quality players.

“Character and off-field profiling is certainly increased in its importance in the recruiting process. It’s very much a shift about protecting your brand,” he said.

“One recruiting staff member said it, ‘it’ll soon be private school [players] only, because you’re getting a higher quality kid who’s better prepared’.

“You’re going to get a higher quality kid in a sense, a more regulated kid, a better educated kid, a more disciplined kid.”

He said the AFL had started to regulate the recruitment process – including registration for interviews – but the measures didn’t go far enough.

“[Regulations] have been insidiously coming in,” he said. “It only takes a few complaints.”

Cubillo, a lawyer who has worked with Aboriginal legal aid who is now deputy chair of the Larrakia Development Corporation, said the AFL did not comply with anti-discrimination standards enforced in other workplaces.

He said if an employer in another industry questioned an indigenous person’s cultural responsibilities or alcohol use, it would be frowned on or would lead to a complaint to the Australian Human Rights Commission.

“If they were up for some employment laws and stuff like that, a lot of them could be in serious issues in regards to how they go about doing it,” he said.

He said indigenous players were still assessed differently during the recruitment process despite complaints made under the AFL Vilification and Discrimination Policy.

“At the discrimination commission at the time there are issues around for young indigenous kids in clubs, and the way they are treated when looking to be drafted,” he said.

Curtain University Senior Research Fellow Dr Sean Gorman said AFL draftees were vulnerable to discrimination, because the policy only protected players who had signed a contract with an AFL club.

“Once you sign off on that contract, well then that’s when you come under that broad umbrella of protection," he said.

“If you’re making a judgement based upon [Patrick’s] family … then I think that’s being discriminatory.”

AFLPA general manager Brett Johnson said draftees wouldn’t receive representation during discrimination disputes, because its membership was restricted to drafted players.

He said when player managers complained about selection practices, the AFLPA would consult with the AFL to prevent it from reoccurring, but wouldn’t be able to bring forward discrimination action against recruiters or a club.

“We get that feedback from player agents and then we work with the AFL to make sure these things are improved,” he said. “It’s not considered a profession at that point. There’s still some work to do.”

Cubillo said recruiters told the manager of former SANFL representative Charlie Sharples he wouldn’t be selected because he had committed a crime as a juvenile, which further isolated indigenous players because of the high-incarceration rates plaguing indigenous communities.

He said it was a standard set down by recruiters that cast selection doubts over a large portion of indigenous footballers from remote communities.

“He was overlooked due to indiscretions off the field, previous to his [football career]. Nothing, as a lawyer, nothing major,” he said.

“I know other AFL players who’ve done other things, and they’ve still gone on to play AFL.”

Gorman said recruiting practices that racially stereotyped indigenous players were embedded in a club’s culture over generations.

In interviews with recruiters who were at clubs during the 1980s, Gorman found they wouldn’t select more than two or three indigenous footballers, because they thought “players that were black were good instinctive players, but they didn’t think about the game”.

He said while recruiters didn’t rely on this negative stereotype now, discrimination had evolved to reflect current issues that characterised indigenous disadvantage in Australia, including crime, family dysfunction, and alcohol abuse.

“Old school recruiting habits are inherited to some degree,” he said. “It’s very hard to change those types of cultures once they’ve been bedded in a club for 100-odd years.”

Cubillo said indigenous AFL players were unlikely to complain, because historical and current issues – such as heavy policing, restricted movement (indigenous people were required to sign papers disowning their family to leave what were then known as missions), and high incarceration rates – were prominent in indigenous consciousness, especially in players from remote communities.

“If you don’t have to deal with them, don’t deal with them. It’s just not the done thing,” he said.

“When you’re in the system, you won’t want to speak out because there are issues around how you’d be treated.”

He said clubs should invest in supporting indigenous players, rather than implementing stringent recruitment programs.

“If you can go to the US, and you can go to Ireland, and you can go and get those kids from there, and you understand their cultural difference … you surely can put in an extra effort for your first peoples,” he said. “A lot of our mob don’t have a lot more than the football.”

Cubillo said Sharples was among many indigenous players that recruiters had overlooked because of minor offences they committed as juveniles, with indigenous juveniles 21 times more likely to be incarcerated than non-indigenous juveniles.

“That’s what I would say would be a high reason why clubs don’t play kids. They aren’t willing to take the risk,” he said.

“I just think it’s a really uneducated view on it.”

After his disappointment with Essendon, Patrick joined the Gold Coast Suns, playing several games before suffering a hamstring injury.

He returned to Lajamanu and this season signed with the Northern Territory Thunder, which involves an eight-hour car journey to Darwin each Saturday at dawn.

He sleeps at a teammate's home before driving home on Sunday. He said AFL clubs would need to accommodate the cultural needs of indigenous players from remote communities, because culture would remain the priority for him and many other indigenous footballers.

“Cultural things is a really massive thing towards us, not the whole; there are really different indigenous people as well, and some have lost their culture, and some still have their cultures,” he said.

“There’s no saying no towards that kind of thing for me.”

Essendon Football Club was not available for comment.