'This book will revolutionise the history of Indigenous involvement in Australian football in the second half of the nineteenth century. It collects new evidence to show how Aboriginal people saw the cricket and football played by those who had taken their land and resources and forced their way into them in the missions and stations around the peripheries of Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia. They learned the game and brought their own skills to it, eventually winning local leagues and earning the respect of their contemporaries. They were prevented from reaching higher levels by the gatekeepers of the domestic game until late in the twentieth century. Their successors did not come from nowhere.' (Publication summary)
'In his latest work, Aboriginal People and Australian Football in the Nineteenth Century: They Did Not Come from Nowhere, Roy Hay critically examines a popular origin story of Australian football and details the nature and extent of early Aboriginal involvement in the code throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In doing so, Hay finds no evidence to support the tradition that holds Australian football to be partially derived from Aboriginal games like marngrook, but seeks to offer an alternative origin story to Aboriginal Australians’ involvement in the code. To this end, he details the scale and substance of early Indigenous involvement in the sport on the missions and stations of Victoria and southern New South Wales and, to a lesser extent, South and Western Australia. Hay draws on recently digitised newspaper archives and employs demographic analyses to explore the development of the code at specific stations and missions and he uncovers the successes and triumphs of numerous Aboriginal sporting teams and individuals in a context that was not conducive to that success. In this way, Hay fills an important lacuna in the history of sport in Australian society.' (Introduction)
'The high visibility of Aboriginal players in the Australian Football League is well recognised and their skills admired. But as Roy Hay argues in the pithy subtitle of his penetrating new history, they did not come from nowhere.' (Publication abstract)
'The high visibility of Aboriginal players in the Australian Football League is well recognised and their skills admired. But as Roy Hay argues in the pithy subtitle of his penetrating new history, they did not come from nowhere.' (Publication abstract)
'In his latest work, Aboriginal People and Australian Football in the Nineteenth Century: They Did Not Come from Nowhere, Roy Hay critically examines a popular origin story of Australian football and details the nature and extent of early Aboriginal involvement in the code throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In doing so, Hay finds no evidence to support the tradition that holds Australian football to be partially derived from Aboriginal games like marngrook, but seeks to offer an alternative origin story to Aboriginal Australians’ involvement in the code. To this end, he details the scale and substance of early Indigenous involvement in the sport on the missions and stations of Victoria and southern New South Wales and, to a lesser extent, South and Western Australia. Hay draws on recently digitised newspaper archives and employs demographic analyses to explore the development of the code at specific stations and missions and he uncovers the successes and triumphs of numerous Aboriginal sporting teams and individuals in a context that was not conducive to that success. In this way, Hay fills an important lacuna in the history of sport in Australian society.' (Introduction)