- Chris Bandy and Auskick in Indonesia
The AFL website has run an article entitled, Junior Footy surges in Indonesia. The article, written by Graeme Carey from World Footy News, interviews Australian Youth Ambassador, Chris Bandy and looks at the country’s and Jakarta Bintang’s impressive achievements in junior footy and how they are being achieved.
Chris Bandy has been in the job as Head of Australian Football Development in Indonesia for a year, after an Australian Youth Ambassadors for Development grant allowed for the introduction of Australian Football into Indonesian Schools.
The initial results have been highly encouraging, and it is expected that a fully-functional junior competition will be set up in Jakarta next year. worldfootynews.com recently interviewed Chris on his adventures in what is a challenging, but most interesting and rewarding environment.
WFN: What’s been done so far, where are we today?
The first thing we did, we were able to get on-side three Indonesian development coaches, Boy, Ardy and Rian, and with the help of these native Indonesians we have entered and conducted clinics in nearly 50 schools and had almost 6000 kids, boys and girls, exposed to the game. From this we have obtained a core group of between 200-300 children who regularly come to training at various grounds we’ve hired in the greater Jakarta area. Signs are promising for the establishment of a fully functioning schools based league by the end of next year.
Aside from the Indonesian component and Indonesian schools which comprises 90% of the work we undertake, we’ve also been involved in coaching an under 16 team from the British International School who play under the moniker of the ANZ Jakarta Bulldogs.
They recently travelled to Singapore with the senior team, where they won the inaugural Asian Under 16 Championships. Comprising players from England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Indonesia, Finland and of course Australia, this is yet another way of expanding our game globally.
The only issue with these lads is they have do not have enough competition. Their enthusiasm is tremendous, they just need to be able to play more often and that is going to be one of our challenges.
We’re in the process of putting a new proposal to AII and it is hoped that we may be able to secure more funding from them for another year.
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