Indigenous Studies

The Aboriginal Soccer Tribe: A History of Aboriginal Involvement with the World Game by John Maynard

by Bernard Whimpress •

June 2012, no. 342

Magabala Books, $24.95 pb, 192 pp

Indigenous Studies

The Aboriginal Soccer Tribe: A History of Aboriginal Involvement with the World Game by John Maynard

by Bernard Whimpress •

June 2012, no. 342

Communities, extended family connections, and role models have been keys to Aboriginal participation in Australian sport. Other factors – racist exclusion among them – have limited the appearance of Indigenous athletes in professional running and boxing. The high proportion of Aboriginal footballers now playing in the Australian Football League and both rugby codes inevitably begs the question of absences in other major sports.

Bernard Whimpress

By this contributor

Bernard Whimpress is a writer, historian, and former curator of the Adelaide Oval Museum. A member of the Australian Society for Sports History, Bernard has written twenty books mainly on sport, including The Official MCC Ashes Treasures, Passport to Nowhere: Aborigines in Australian Cricket 1850–1939, The Greatest Ashes Battles and as co-author The History of Australian Cricket. He published and edited the Australian cricket journal Baggy Green from 1998 to 2010.