The Sydney Swans will celebrate Marn Grook as part of the AFL’s Sir Doug Nicholls Round this week.
The Swans would usually be at home for Marn Grook at the SCG, a match held dear to the club since its inception in 2002.
The match honours the Indigenous roots of Australian football and recognises the enduring contribution of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander players to the game.
Marn Grook is the name given to a traditional game played during a corroboree of the Djawurrung and Jardwadjali clans in Victoria’s Western District.
It is believed this game was one of the inspirations behind Australian rules football as it’s known today.
The traditional game was played with a ball made from possum skin, about the size of an orange, filled with pounded charcoal and/or grass.
It was bound into a hard ball with kangaroo sinews and kicked and tossed by two opposing teams of up to 50 players each.
The meaning of Marn Grook translates to 'game ball' and it is believed the founder of Australian rules football, Tom Wills, observed a game of Marn Grook in the 1840s and thought it would be an ideal way for Australian cricketers to keep fit during winter.
Swans great Adam Goodes wrote of the special connection between Marn Grook and Australian rules 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.”
Goodes and fellow Swans champion Michael O'Loughlin are honoured at the annual Marn Grook match with the player judged best afield awarded the Goodes-O'Loughlin Medal.
The Goodes-O'Loughlin Medal features the blue and red colours of Sydney’s first Indigenous guernsey, designed by Goodes' mum Lisa Sansbury.
