Are you a life-time supporter of the Melbourne Football club? Not anymore. You are now a supporter of the ‘Narrm’ Football Club, whether you like it or not. And presumably you don’t, but the club doesn’t care what you think because these days it seems to be more interested in politics than it actually does football.
According to the MFC, changing the name to Narrm, the traditional Aboriginal name for Melbourne, is part of the club’s vision of ‘reconciliation’ to ‘unite Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples with non-Indigenous people, to understand and embrace history, culture and community.’
This is an odd thing to say, because it clear that for centuries, sport in Australia has been one of the country’s greatest unifying forces which has inspired millions of people, from all walks of life, to pursue excellence. The club itself has a long and rich history of Aboriginal players, boasting that ‘some of the game’s finest Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders have played for the Melbourne Football Club.’
By renaming Melbourne Football Club to ‘Narrm’ after 160 years, the club is emphatically stating that it believes that it has been operating illegitimately for nearly two centuries, and that everything up until this point has been a story of land theft, dispossession, system racism and genocide. It is the club telling its supporters that only way to right the wrongs of the past is by rebranding itself so that it can distance itself from the supposed sins of colonisation.
But if it was really serious about reconciliation, the MFC could do considerably more than a bit of virtue signalling and political posturing. On its website, the MFC says that ‘we acknowledge and pay respect to the Traditional Owners of the land in which we are privileged to play our great game of AFL.’
Back in 1862, the Crown gave the land that the MCG was built on, to a group of white men who made up the Trustees of the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Thus, according to the MFC’s own version of the past, the land which the club is ‘privileged’ to play on was stolen from the Traditional Owners by the King Edward VII.
According to the latest MCG Trust annual report, the land value of the MCG is currently $44.7 million. The Trust holds assets valued at over $499 million, including $1.8 million in cash and term deposits. While the MFC has no ties with the MCG trust, it should be agitating for everything to be given back to the traditional landowners of the Kulin Nation, that is the Wurundjeri, Boonwurrung, Wathaurrung, Taungurung and Dja DjaWrung people.
When referring to the name change, Melbourne Football Club CEO Gary Pert said that ‘It’s exciting to be building on this and taking a step further on our own journey, while bring our fans along with us.’ The question remains as to whether the fans will want to go.
