Sport and Cultural Diversity
Amanda Smith: Today, handling cultural diversity in sport. Racial vilification continues to be a hot potato in Australian football, but what are other sports doing to address issues of difference, tolerance and intolerance?
THEME
Amanda Smith: The Federal Government, through the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, is running a scheme called 'Living in Harmony', which is about involving a whole lot of organisations around the country in promoting racial and ethnic tolerance. A number of sports organisations are involved in the scheme, and on The Sports Factor we're going to have a look at three of them.
The Australian Cricket Board is one of those involved; and what they want to do is move cricket away from its Anglo-Australian image, and work out ways to get more young people from non-Anglo backgrounds playing the sport.
By way of example, Phong Ng Yen, who's a youth worker, is well aware that cultural barriers do exist that make it difficult for teenagers of Asian backgrounds to get involved in cricket.
Phong Ng Yen: Firstly, things start at home. When your parents don't even know generally what the games you play are, and the money associated with it; then it's very hard to survive. I myself have run a cricket club, and we end up paying all sorts of fines for not having representatives at the club meeting, for being late when I'm the only one with one car to collect eleven players all over the town, and take them to one ground on Sunday to play cricket. It's just too much, and we end up maybe late, or don't have proper uniforms. A lot of the kids are from the so-called low socio-economic backgrounds, they don't have money and they don't have even decent pocketmoney to play the game. So I often have to umpire one game and pay the umpire who umpires my team's game.
So things like that. But then it's very hard if your association does not look into a special support, you know, to encourage kids to play sport.
Amanda Smith: And this is exactly the sort of thing that the Australian Cricket Board is now keen to address. They're about to set up two pilot projects, one in a metropolitan area, one in a regional centre, where there are high numbers of teenagers who are Aboriginal or from non-English speaking backgrounds, and who aren't currently playing cricket. Narelle Finch, from the Australian Cricket Board, is running the program.
Narelle Finch: We have some programs in place already, particularly targeted to indigenous Australians, but we do want to make sure that cricket is not a game that is perceived as being only for the traditional Anglo-Saxon backgrounds. We have some of our professional crickets starting to have some more interesting surnames, and I think reflecting more of the multicultural Australia, but it's something that we want to make sure that into the future we are truly representative of all Australians, of all multicultural backgrounds. Also all religious backgrounds, all financial backgrounds; that cricket isn't an elite game, that it isn't a male-only game, it's a product that's available across the board, no matter what sort of background you come from.
Amanda Smith: Well why do you think those perceptions about cricket are out there, Narelle, why do you need to develop special programs to encourage young people of non-English speaking backgrounds, and indigenous Australians into cricket?
Narelle Finch: I suppose what we want to make sure is that there aren't barriers. We've been trying to come up with examples of what could be out there in the community that might hinder someone playing. For example, your religious background might mean that you can't play sport on a Saturday. If the only club in your community only plays cricket on a Saturday, then we've effectively stopped it being available to you as an option, because it conflicts with your lifestyle. Now that's an example where we would then, through this program, develop some of those scenarios, educate our development officers around the country, and ask them to be mindful when they're going into a community, to identify that and then work with the local club and encourage them to offer other products that we have, like twilight competitions during the week.
So that's just one example where we think that could be a problem. I suppose the other great thing about cricket is that so many kids learn it from their families, from their descendants. Either Grandpa's playing with them in the backyard or Mum's throwing the ball at them after school, or whatever is the case. If someone is a new resident to Australia, or their family is relatively new to Australia, they might not have that background, and they might be bringing with them influences from sports from other countries. And so we've got to make sure that there are ways available to them that they can experience the game in a fun way, and in a participative way, because they don't have a skills base to do with cricket.
Amanda Smith: Another one of the barriers that we've heard of relates to particularly teenagers of Indochinese background, Vietnamese kids, where not only because their parents don't have a background playing cricket, and for socio-economic reasons ,it means that the parents aren't able to get involved with the volunteer level of running a club, which is so important to youth sport. So how might you address those sorts of issues?
Narelle Finch: Yes, very true. And that's where it comes back to the fact that you've got to look at the family unit, the decision makers. It's great to inspire the kids to say, 'I want to go and play cricket', but if the family has limited time to spend together in recreation, then yes, you want Dad and Mum to feel that they're as much part of the decision to play cricket as the child is. So that's why we would look at, in conjunction with going into schools and clubs and communities, running programs for volunteers. Whether that's how to be a fun level of coach rather than necessarily, or if you choose to, go on and be an accredited coach; how to be an umpire; what possible roles there are for you at a club. And again, if you have someone who has a language barrier or something, they might feel that it's hard for them to take the step and go and approach their club. So much better if we can go into a community and encourage the club to come into that community and say, 'Yes, you are welcome, yes we'd love to have you a part of the community. Here's the sort of roles that volunteers play in our club. How would you like to be involved?' So that Mum and Dad don't feel that it's something that the child leaves home and does, and that they're not part of it. And I think every child loves their parents being on the sideline and clapping and cheering, and certainly that's what we want to encourage about cricket, it's a whole-of-family game.
Amanda Smith: So I guess it's, as much as anything, finding what those barriers are that you may never have thought of yourself, yes?
Narelle Finch: Absolutely. And it's amazing how simple those sort of barriers can be. So far in working on 'Living in Harmony', I've been involving Gerard Clark, who's our National Manager of Development. Gerard is an ex-Victorian player, so he comes from a professional player background, cricket in his blood, loves the game. Gerard told me a great story about when he was a Development Officer working for Victorian cricket. He went out to a school in metropolitan Victoria to run one of our Milo clinics. He gathered all the kids together at the start of the day and went through some basic housekeeping, one of which was, 'When I talk, you don't talk'. And 'This is how the day will run, and terrific, so let's get underway.' Gerard started to make his presentation to the kids and these two little kids up the front were chatting away to themselves and he thought, well, I'll let that go for a little bit longer. And after a little while, he thought he had to call a halt to it and said to these two kids, 'Now come on, when I'm talking, you're not going to talk because otherwise, all this isn't going to work.' And this little boy said to him, 'But I have to interpret because this little guy can't speak English, and if I don't tell him what you're saying he doesn't know what's going on.' Now I mean, Gerard said to me that he was really taken aback by it, because he is someone who's very open-minded and has a child himself, and is very mindful of being inclusive and encouraging participation and so on, and it simply didn't occur to him that he needed to ask the kids, 'does everyone here speak English?'
Now that's the sort of thing where our products might be right, and our timeframe, our delivery, we're there in the schools where the kids have got time and the environment to take it on, but if a basic foundation isn't there, if the kids can't speak English, if they can't understand what's available to them, we just can't get the message across. I think it's a great little story.
Amanda Smith: And an illuminating one. That was Narelle Finch, from the Australian Cricket Board.
Now while cricket is trying to broaden its cultural diversity and appeal, soccer is probably the most ethnically diverse of all sports in Australia. According to Geoff Miles, Chief Executive of the Victorian Soccer Federation, which is also running a project under the 'Living in Harmony' scheme, this diversity has brought with it both positives and negatives.
Geoff Miles: Perhaps in the Australian community there has been a high degree of intolerance from Anglo-Australians, not so much the ethnic communities that have been the core participants in soccer in the early days, but perhaps the attitudes of Anglo-Australians for want of a better word, who perhaps are a little bit intolerant, and we've seen that a little bit. Whilst it hasn't been alarming, we're very keen to make sure that the attitudes and the approaches of everyone playing our sport are going along the right channels.
Amanda Smith: Yes, I guess soccer in Australia has been seen in a way as a bit of a double-edged sword when it comes to cultural diversity and tolerance, as both a positive and a negative force in this area. What do you think is the best way to proceed now as far as creating both an image and a reality around soccer that you want to project?
Geoff Miles: We're encouraging all the clubs to be a community club, and when I say a community club, I mean a broad community club.
Amanda Smith: But not a specific ethnically-based one?
Geoff Miles: Not exclusively. And what we say to our clubs, and I think they know in their own discussions at committee level, even some of the founders of the clubs recognise that, that they know their kids when they go to school, they're part of maybe 25 nationalities in the classroom. And so going down to the soccer club and being part of more than one nationality is something the kids want to do anyway. And it's a matter of just allowing that to happen very smoothly and whilst still not denying that there will be members of the club and people who are from a certain country of origin perhaps.
Amanda Smith: And how are you, as the Federation, helping to encourage them to broaden that base?
Geoff Miles: We're looking, as part of our 'Living in Harmony' project, to conducting some education seminars. And obviously part of that focus will be on behaviours and attitudes amongst the groups at the clubs, and also when they're playing in their competitive matches against opponents who may be from a different background to them, or a combination of backgrounds. And as part of that process we think that there'll be an awareness that both in their interaction with other clubs and the tolerance and understanding, they're some of the things they can bring into their own club and just have a look at their own policies and selection criteria, so that no-one is disadvantaged in any aspect of the club, whether it be playing on the field or in an administrative position.
Amanda Smith: And part of what you're doing, as I understand it, is developing an equal opportunity code of conduct, is that right?
Geoff Miles: Yes, that's right, and it is going to touch on a couple of areas, and we're really focusing in on the tolerance and an understanding of the different backgrounds, and racial and religious backgrounds. But also we're looking at issues of equality and gender as well, so that we can encourage clubs to not just have male committees and to have equal participation in coaching positions, administrative positions, that are open to anyone, male, female, irrespective of age, just so there is an opportunity. So we're looking at a fairly broad code here, an equal opportunity if you like, and with a specific focus on some of those tolerance issues that are right up front.
Amanda Smith: As I understand it, Geoff, some of the ethnic tensions around Australian soccer have largely been to do with club supporters and administration more than players. I might be wrong there, but that's my impression. Are there on-field issues that you do need to address as well? I mean do you have, for example, a racial and religious vilification policy?
Geoff Miles: Well that's one of the things we're developing here. It's really interesting that soccer doesn't seem to have had the on-field incidents that some of the other codes have had; Aussie Rules are facing another one now. We have an Aboriginal player playing for Carlton in the National Soccer League, Archie Thompson, and there a number of other athletes and players, but it doesn't seem to have come to the surface. Now that doesn't mean there haven't been some incidents that perhaps have been handled in different ways by clubs and the people concerned, but we're very keen to make sure that we have a code in place, so that if anything does surface, on the playing field and off it, it is handled appropriately. And also the role models are there. I think the benefit that soccer's had is because you've got such a terrific spread of nationalities and people out there playing alongside each other, week in, week out, probably there has been a fair degree of tolerance amongst the players themselves; and you're right, some of the spectators in previous years have perhaps not been as good in that respect.
But it is an interesting situation that a lot of the perceived difficulties that we've had with soccer supporters, and the majority of them have been quite a number of years ago, a lot of them have sprung up from lack of suitable facilities. So perhaps some of the issues are really crowd control and facility issues, rather than supposed ethnic tensions, and that's an issue that soccer is addressing nationally, just as cricket and Aussie Rules have. They've seated people, they've got surveillance cameras. So any of the young louts, and we have them everywhere, and the cricket crowds are probably as bad as any, they know that if they go to a cricket match now that there's an expectation of behaviour there. So yes, I think you're right, player behaviour and tolerance on the field has probably been pretty good in soccer, but we're very keen to make sure that we take a role here to keep it that way.
Amanda Smith: Geoff Miles, who's the Chief Executive Officer of the Victorian Soccer Federation.
Now Tui Crumpen is a Project Officer with the Shepparton Koori Resource Centre in central-north Victoria, and she's running a 'Living in Harmony' program with the Rumbalara Football and Netball Club. This is an Aboriginal-run sports club, and Tui says that the club's origins actually go back over a hundred years, to an Aboriginal football team based at the Cummeragunga Mission, near Barmah on the Murray River.
Tui Crumpen: And what the vision was, was that we have our own football club, and that's what Rumbalara is. So from 100 years ago that vision has worked its way up and become something. The club was formed in the late 1970s and we've been trying to break into the League for 20 years, and we finally did it in '97.
Amanda Smith: And where does the name 'Rumbalara' come from?
Tui Crumpen: It's a Yoorta Yoorta word for 'at the end of the rainbow'.
Amanda Smith: Oh yes, and why was that name and that idea of the end of the rainbow chosen?
Tui Crumpen: I think because that's where we'd all like to be, at the end of the rainbow!
Amanda Smith: Fair enough. Well as you said, the Rumbalara Football Club started playing in the Goulburn Valley League in 1997, this year it's now playing in the Central District League. How successful has the football been in the local competition since it came into it?
Tui Crumpen: The first year in operation in the League our football teams all made it to the finals. In the second year, all of our netball teams and all of our football teams made it to the finals. Our B-Grade netball team won the premiership and so did our seniors and reserves in football.
Amanda Smith: Oh right. That's incredible success. How important have the football and netball teams become to Aboriginal people in the district?
Tui Crumpen: Sport has always been important to Aboriginal people because I think that's where they've excelled. So the teams are really important, not just that we play as teams but that we're coming together and being together on a common ground, and that's never happened before that we can come together so often and have our own gathering place.
Amanda Smith: Well nevertheless, have the Rumbalara teams become a target for any racial conflict?
Tui Crumpen: Yes. We find on the ground that we experience racism from the opposition supporters; we experience conflict, you might not call it racism but conflict, because we are very successful.
Amanda Smith: Well racial vilification in the Australian Football League, the AFL, has had a lot of very high profile coverage in recent years, and it continues to be an issue, but is it even more of an issue and a concern in the country leagues, Tui, and where you are?
Tui Crumpen: Yes, it is because it's not as easily addressed, because we're not on Channel 7 every Saturday and stuff like that, and it's not seen. It's easily covered up and easily ignored in country leagues.
Amanda Smith: So what are you doing with this 'Living in Harmony' project to try to make relationships between the teams more harmonious?
Tui Crumpen: We want to make other clubs aware of what we're doing, and trying to break down the stereotypes and barriers that we have with mainstream and the indigenous community. And just trying to make mainstream aware that we're not all bludging blacks, and that we're out there doing things for ourselves, and that we're good at it, basically. You know, we can succeed and we are succeeding.
Amanda Smith: And how are you going about that, what sort of things are you putting in place?
Tui Crumpen: Well we'd like to do a cultural awareness course for umpires. We have a newsletter that we hand out on home games, which we hand out to everyone who comes through the gate. It just tells people about what's going on in the club, you know, the things that we are doing, showing our positive role models and what they're doing. We also want to organise having dinners and things with other clubs, so we're making contact with other clubs and they're making contact with us. And we also want to do some workshops and forums for just mainstream community, anyone really, who's interested in learning and becoming aware of indigenous issues.
Amanda Smith: So what are you hoping the outcomes of all this stuff will be?
Tui Crumpen: Well I don't really see any major and drastic changes happening, but really just to create awareness, and just to make a start on something, you know, on creating some kind of reconciliation, and just starting to create that awareness.
Amanda Smith: Tui Crumpen, from the Koori Resource Centre, and Rumbalara Football and Netball Club in Shepparton, in Victoria.
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Amanda Smith: Now, on another subject altogether, the Junior World Snowboarding Championships have been running this week in Colorado, USA. Snowboarding's a hybrid kind of sport that falls somewhere between skiing, skateboarding and surfing, and it's become increasingly popular in recent years, particularly with young people, In a very short time, snowboarders have gone from being seen as the ratbags and party animals of the ski slopes, to respectability. Snowboarding became an Olympic sport with the Winter Games in Nagano last year.
There's a team of 21 young Australians competing in these Junior World Championships; two of them are Nick Burton, and Alexandra Clark, both 16, who I spoke with just before they headed off to the competition. Nick and Alexandra each came into the sport from very different paths.
Alexandra Clark: I've been skiing with my family since I don't know when. And yes, I just got bored with skiing I suppose, and tried snowboarding because it was new; and had a lesson a week for about a year, and then after a couple of years I decided I liked it a lot better than skiing, gave up my skis and stuck on the snowboard.
Amanda Smith: And Nick, were you a skier before you took up the snowboarding?
Nick Burton: No, I actually had my first day on skis last year. It was a bit of an experience, but no, the first time I'd ever been to the snow was tobogganing, the second time I started snowboarding.
Amanda Smith: And had you skateboarded or surfed before you got into snowboarding?
Nick Burton: Yes, I skate and surf. At the moment I've been surfing every weekend pretty much, since I got back from Austria during the summer.
Amanda Smith: Does that help with the snowboarding skills?
Nick Burton: Yes, I think so. It's also a lot of fun.
Amanda Smith: Now there are three disciplines in competitive snowboarding. Alexandra, you compete in the dual slalom; tell me about that, what you have to do, what's involved and so on.
Alexandra Clark: Well there's qualifying runs where there's a set of about 24 gates I think which you have to turn around, and there's two courses set up side by side down the hill. Two competitors go down at a time. The first qualification runs you just compete mainly against yourself, although you do have the other person next to you. And you have two runs, one on each course, and then depending on your time with the rest of the field, I think the top 16 women go through to the final. And then it's a knock-out situation where you race against the other person and over the two runs, whoever has the best combined time goes through to the next round.
Amanda Smith: And what are the particular skills that you need for dual slalom, what's the hardest thing about it?
Alexandra Clark: Probably timing. You have to time your turns properly so that if you get late then you run the risk of missing a gate which means disqualification. And yes, mainly strength, concentration and speed.
Amanda Smith: And does the snow skiing background that you have help all that?
Alexandra Clark: Yes a bit, because I did some ski racing before I got into snowboarding, and it's the same kind of skills you need, although it is a different style.
Amanda Smith: Well Nick, as well as dual slalom, you also compete in the half pipe and the border cross, so tell me what's involved in those?
Nick Burton: Well border cross is basically like motocross, except you're on a snowboard. So a series of jumps, banks, turns, basically obstacles, and a few gates that you must go around to complete the course. And usually about four of you go down at the same time, and it's basically the first person to reach the bottom. There's not too many rules involved in that you're allowed to fend them off if they're coming too close to you. And then there's the half pipe which is basically like a skateboard ramp, cylindrical.
Amanda Smith: But made of snow?
Nick Burton: Yes. It's usually about 100 metres in length, and it just runs down the hill and you start. It's judged on things like amplitude, which is height; fluidity, which is how well you move, your transition through the half-pipe, up the walls and through the bottom of the half-pipe; and how much you rotate. A trick is actually to spin, 360 or 540 or more, you get judged on how much you spin, and the technical difficulty of your tricks.
Amanda Smith: Alexandra is it usual for snowboarders to specialise in one discipline? I mean Nick competes in all three, you compete in one. Is it more usual to compete in all three, or to specialise in a particular discipline?
Alexandra Clark: With the young people, kids of our age, it's usual to compete in all three, because you haven't really started specialising yet. It's fun to do all three. I do half-pipe, border cross, all that kind of stuff on the Australian calendar, just round all the mountains in Australia, but overseas I'm just doing dual because that's what I'm best at. Yes, it's mainly for fun, so we all get involved in everything and then when it comes to selection for the Australian team there's lots of people that are good at different things, so you mainly specialise for that.
Amanda Smith: Now snowboarders have a bit of a ratbag reputation, they're often regarded as the louts of the ski slopes. Is that reputation deserved, do you think? Nick?
Nick Burton: Yes. I think people generalise a bit too much. I think the majority of people sort of blame snowboarders without thinking. Skiers from our point of view are just as bad.
Alexandra Clark: They're just as dangerous.
Nick Burton: And if not, in some ways worse, because they think, 'Oh, we've been here longer, it's our mountain'. So they're a bit sort of arrogant like that I guess.
Amanda Smith: Nick, how do snowboarders train over summer? You're competing in a world championship but there's been no snow in Australia to practice on for months.
Nick Burton: Yes. Well I went to Austria over January. I left end of summer, just after Christmas, I went over with the Mount Buller team and the coaches.
Amanda Smith: Well that's a pretty expensive commitment, I guess. What about kids who can't afford or are unable to travel to the northern winter to train. Alexandra?
Alexandra Clark: There's lots of other things you can do to prepare for it, like strength training, weights. I've been rowing all summer because I row for school and that takes up a lot of time. We had a camp over summer. Rowing's actually pretty good for snowboarding because you use the same muscle groups, being the legs, the quads, all that kind of stuff. And rowing also helps with mental training, like concentration, competition and all that kind of stuff. And also last year, both Nick and myself were doing some trampoline training, where you can practice all your tricks and stuff on the trampoline.
Amanda Smith: Alexandra, the Australian team for the Junior Championships has just as many girls as boys on it; is snowboarding a bit less of a boy scene than related sports are, like skateboarding, or like surfing has traditionally been?
Alexandra Clark: I suppose there's more girls getting into snowboarding. When I was starting there weren't many girls at all, but it's growing pretty fast. I suppose in the limelight there's more girls that you see in snowboarding than, say, skateboarding. Surfing there's quite a few girls around. It is growing and the competition's getting harder and harder each year.
Amanda Smith: Do both of you want to go on with the sport into open competition?
Alexandra Clark: Yes, definitely. I think that we can keep going, even if we do decide not to compete later or if you get injured or something, it is an industry where there's always some jobs round, like instructing or coaching, or managing a team, or something like that.
Amanda Smith: Well as of last year's Winter Olympics in Nagano, snowboarding is an official Olympic winter sport. Do either of you have sights set in that direction?
Alexandra Clark: Haven't really thought about it that much. I'm taking it one step at a time basically because you never know what's going to happen, and once you get into open competition, it's a lot harder. So just take it step by step, see how we go, and yes maybe there's a prospect there, but haven't thought about it yet.
Amanda Smith: What about you, Nick?
Nick Burton: Yes, pretty much. It still feels a long way away, it's another three years. And I think I've come a long way in the four years that I've been doing it so far, so if I'm only half-way there then I guess it should be achievable.
Amanda Smith: Nick Burton and Alexandra Clark, two 16-year-olds who are currently competing for Australia in the Junior World Snowboarding Championships in Colorado, in the United States.
And that's The Sports Factor for this week.
I'm Amanda Smith; as always, thanks for your company. Hope you'll join me again next week.
THEME
The Sports Factor can be heard on Radio National, 8.30am Fridays (Repeated Friday evenings at 8.30pm).