The Sydney Swans will celebrate Marn Grook at the SCG when they take on Carlton on Friday night as part of the AFL’s Sir Doug Nicholls Round.

The Swans have played for the Marn Grook Trophy in a special tribute to First Nations peoples and culture since 2002.

The first Marn Grook match at the SCG was played three years before the first Dreamtime game and five years before the AFL’s first full Indigenous Round.

Marn Grook was the name given to a traditional game played during a corroboree of the Djawurrung and Jardwadjali clans in Victoria’s Western District. It is believe that this game is one of the inspirations behind Australian Football as we know it today.

The traditional game was played with a ball made from possum skin, about the size of an orange, which was filled with pounded charcoal and/or grass and was bound into a hard ball with Kangaroo sinews and then kicked and tossed by two opposing teams of up to 50 players.

The meaning of Marn Grook translates to 'Game Ball', and it is believed the founder of Australian Football, Tom Wills, observed a game of Marn Grook in the 1840's and thought it would be a good way for Australian cricketers to keep fit during the winter months.

Dual Brownlow Medallist Adam Goodes wrote of the special connection between Marn Grook and Australian Football in Geoff Slattery's The Australian Game of Football.

“I believe Marn Grook played a role in the development of Australian Football,” Goodes wrote.

“I do know we were playing a similar game for the joy and excitement of it, before the said founders of the game, Tom Wills and James Thompson and William Hammersley and Thomas Smith came along.

“I don’t know the truth, but I believe in the connection. Because I know that when Aboriginal people play Australian Football with a clear mind and total focus, we are born to play it.”

The Marn Grook match was initiated by former Sydney Swans CEO and Brownlow Medallist Kelvin Templeton to celebrate the shared history of Indigenous culture and AFL football. 

Such was the significance of the event in the eyes of the club that in 2017 the match was added to the Heritage List in the Swans Hall of Fame.

The Swans have maintained their annual celebration of the rich and proud history of Indigenous people, and the joy and excitement Indigenous players have provided. 

In 2016, the AFL named the annual Indigenous Round in honour of Sir Douglas Nicholls, while in that same year the Sydney Swans introduced the Goodes-O’Loughlin Medal for the player judged best afield, to honour club greats Adam Goodes and Michael O’Loughlin. The medal features the blue and red colours of Sydney’s first Marn Grook guernsey, designed by Goodes' mother Lisa Sansbury.

The medal has been won twice by Isaac Heeney in 2018 and 2021, Lance Franklin in 2017 and 2022, and by Tom Mitchell (2016), Sam Reid (2019) and Fremantle’s Luke Ryan (2020).

Goodes and O’Loughlin, named at centre half back and full forward respectively in the AFL Indigenous Team of the Century in 2005, have worked tirelessly to promote Indigenous issues including participation in Australian football and zero tolerance for racism across sport and society more broadly.

The pair also founded the GO Foundation to empower Indigenous youth through education and to date they have awarded around 1000 scholarships in Sydney, Adelaide and Canberra.

The GO Foundation is the Match Day Partner for Sydney’s Marn Grook match.

Donate to the GO Foundation here and empower Indigenous young people through education.