The Footy Almanac. Sport. Write from the heart.
Swannies’ Umpire in Saigon, Rocket (Ahem, that’s now Dr Rocket) wrote the foreword to the 2012 Footy Almanac.
Last week, on 15 March, the Footy Almanac published an article by Trevor Banerjee and Fevin Mascarenhas titled, It’s time to spice up footy! It talks about the Masala Football Club in Melbourne which is made up of players predominantly from the Sub continent.
Today, in Melbourne, the Masalas will play sister club of the Swans, the Southern Dragons which is a team made up of predominantly Vietnamese.
AFL India is doing a lot of exciting things at the moment and both the EAAFL and AFL India are in regular contact.
But below is an extract from It’s time to spice up footy!
Some of my best mates were engaged in a rare argument on a sporting issue on a balmy Melbourne night. Since one of them was of Indian origin and the other from Pakistan, I figured I knew what this might be about. Cricket, right? Wrong! “Collingwood are going to smash the Hawks this year” said one. “Keep dreaming” said the other!
The face of Australian Football seems to be changing quicker than the first quarter of an exciting grand final…
So what’s next for footy? Well my natural response to that would be “How about a player from the Sub-Continent?” It does seem like a far-fetched dream, to say that a cricket-obsessed region will churn out an athlete for the AFL. However, believe it or not but some inroads have been made.
The AFL International Cup that took place in 2011 sported 16 teams with one of them being the Indian Tigers. The team was formed with 16 players flying in from India & the remainder were Indian locals living in Australia…
The highlight however, was India’s first ever AFL victory and that came against East Timor in only their 5th game. The team finished strongly in their final game against the highly celebrated ‘Peace’ team which consisted of players from Israel & Palestine and was coached by none other than Robert ‘Dipper‘ DiPierdomenico!
Following on from this, Ash Nugent, the team manager for AFL India gathered a few of the local players who represented AFL India to form a committee and setup the exciting venture of the Masala Football Club… The objective is not to be an exclusive club, but to offer first generation Australians a means to connect with the community through Australia’s favourite sport.
Masala FC has made great progress since its inception late last year. The team has had over 25 player registrations, who have been actively training since January. The VAFA have also accepted the team to play in the Club 18’s starting this season (2013). Currently the home ground is based at the BJ Powell Reserve in Noble Park.
… Their next practise game (will be) against the Southern Dragons at BJ Powell Reserve on Friday, March 22 from 6pm onwards.
So stay tuned folks and look out for some South-Asian faces in the AFL soon. These kids have some skills and they are not afraid to add their spicy flair to the game!
