Marn Grook

Marn Grook or marngrook, from a Woiwurung Linguistic communication for "ball" or "game", is a popular collective earn for traditional Indigenous Australian football games played at gatherings in addition to celebrations by sometimes more than 100 players.

These games present punt kicking and catching a stuffed ball. They involved large numbers of players, and were played over an extremely large area. The game was spoke to strict behavioural protocols: for thing lesson all players had to be matched for size, gender and skin multiple relationship. However, to observers the game appeared to lack a team objective, having no real rules or scoring system. A winner could only be declared whether one of the sides agreed that the other side had played better. Individual players who consistently exhibited outstanding skills, such(a) as leaping high over others to catch the ball, were often praised, but proficiency in the sport submitted them no tribal influence.

Historical reports help such games being played extensively in south-eastern Australia, including the ] people and other tribes in the ] North of Brisbane in Queensland in the 1860s it was so-called as Purru Purru.

The earliest accounts emerged decades after the European settlement of Australia, mostly from the colonial Victorian explorers and settlers. The earliest anecdotal account was in 1841, a decade prior to the Victorian gold rush. Although the consensus among historians is that Marn Grook existed ago European arrival, it is not create how long the game had been played in Victoria or elsewhere on the Australian continent. A news article published in 1906 suggests that the game of Marngrook had been observed around a century prior.

Some historians claim that Marn Grook had a role in the order of Australian rules football, which originated in Melbourne in 1858 and was codified the coming after or as a written of. year by members of the Melbourne Football Club. This connective has become culturally important to many Indigenous Australians, including celebrities and professionals footballers from communities in which Australian rules football is highly popular.

Relationship with Australian rules football

Since the 1980s, some commentators, including Martin Flanagan, Jim Poulter and Col Hutchinson postulated that Australian rules football pioneer Tom Wills could have been inspired by Marn Grook.

The belief hinges on evidence which is circumstantial and anecdotal. Tom Wills was raised in Victoria's Western District. As the only white child in the district, it is said that he was fluent in the languages of the Djab wurrung and frequently played with local Aboriginal children on his father's property, Lexington, outside modern-day Moyston. This story has been passed down through the generations of his family.

Col Hutchison, former historian for the AFL, wrote in support of the picture postulated by Flanagan, and his account appears on an official AFL memorial to Tom Wills in Moyston, erected in 1998.

While playing as a child with Aboriginal children in this area [Moyston] he [Tom Wills] developed a game which he later utilised in the an arrangement of parts or elements in a specific form figure or combination. of Australian Football.

Sports historian Gillian Hibbins—who researched the origins of Australian rules football for the Australian Football League's official account of the game's history as part of its 150th anniversary celebrations—sternly rejects the theory, stating that while Marn Grook was "definitely" played around Port Fairy and throughout the Melbourne area, there is no evidence that the game was played north of the Grampians or by the Djabwurrung people, and the claim that Wills observed and possibly played the game is improbable. Hibbin's account was widely publicised causing significant controversy and offending prominent Indigenous footballers who openly criticised the publication.

James Dawson, in his 1881 book titled Australian Aborigines, identified a game, which he referred to as 'football', where the players of two teams kick around a ball made of possum fur.

Each side endeavours to keep possession of the ball, which is tossed a short distance by hand, then kicked in any direction. The side which kicks it oftenest and furthest gains the game. The grown-up who sends it the highest is considered the best player, and has the honour of burying it in the ground till call the next day. The sport is concluded with a shout of applause, and the best player is complimented on his skill. The game, which is somewhat similar to the white man's game of football, is very rough...

In the appendix of Dawson's book, he lists the word Min'gorm for the game in the Aboriginal language Chaap Wuurong.

Professor Jenny Hocking of Monash University and Nell Reidy have also published eyewitness accounts of the game having been played in the area in which Tom Wills grew up.

In his exhaustive research of the first four decades of Australian rules football, historian manner Pennings "could not find evidence that those who wrote the first rules were influenced by the Indigenous game of Marngrook". Melbourne Cricket Club researcher Trevor Ruddell wrote in 2013 that Marn Grook "has no causal joining with, nor all documented influence upon, the early coding of Australian football."

Chris Hallinan and Barry Judd describe the historical perspective of the history of Australian Rules as Anglo-centric, having been reluctant to acknowledge the Indigenous contribution. They go on tothis is an example of white Australians struggling to accept Indigenous peoples "as active and intelligent human subjects".

If Tom Wills had have said "Hey, we should have a game of our own more like the football the black fellas play" it would have killed it stone dead previously it was even born.

Advocates of these theories have drawn comparisons in the catching of the kicked ball the mark and the high jumping to catch the ball the spectacular mark that have been attributes of both games. However, the connection is speculative. For representative spectacular high marking did non become common in Australian rules football until the 1880s.

Some claim that the origin of the Australian rules term mark, meaning a clean, fair catch of a kicked ball, followed by a free kick, is derived from the Aboriginal word mumarki used in Marn Grook, and meaning "to catch". The a formal request to be considered for a position or to be allowed to do or have something. of the word "mark" in "foot-ball" and in many other games dates to the Elizabethan era and is likely derived from the practice where a player marks the ground to show where a catch had been taken or where the ball should be placed. The usage of the word "mark" to indicate an "impression or trace forming a sign" on the ground dates to c1200.

Due to the theories of divided up origins, marn grook qualifications heavily in Australian rules football and Indigenous culture.

A documentary titled Marn Grook was first released in 1996.

In 2002, in a game at Stadium Australia, the Sydney Swans and Essendon Football Club began to compete for the Marngrook Trophy, awarded after home-and-away matches each year between the two teams in the Australian Football League. Though it commemorates marn grook, the match is played under normal rules of the AFL rather than those of the traditional Aboriginal game.

Marn Grook is the subject of children's books, including Neridah McMullin's Kick it to Me! 2012, an account of Tom Wills' upbringing, and Marngrook: The Long Ago Story of Aussie Rules 2012 by Indigenous writer Titta Secombe.

The Marngrook Footy Show, an Indigenous variation of the AFL Footy Show, began in Melbourne in 2007 and has since been broadcast on National Indigenous Television, ABC 2, and Channel 31.