Only a few years ago it seemed that the North Melbourne Football Club was heading for the Gold Coast.
The AFL was looking to expand into new markets, while consolidating the number of teams in Melbourne. As the smallest and most financially vulnerable of the Melbourne-based teams, North was the prime candidate for relocation – and huge financial incentives were being put forward to ease the transition.
Club members fought hard to ‘keep North at North’, and the proposed relocation was ultimately rejected. But in the wash-up from this turbulent period, club leaders faced up to a sober reality: if the club had left North Melbourne, many people in the local community probably wouldn’t have cared.
North Melbourne was once a tough working class neighbourhood. Locals were proud of the football club and the ‘Shinboner spirit’ that the club personified.
From the 1980's however, the area’s demographics began to change. Waves of new immigrants from Asia, and more recently Africa, moved into local neighbourhoods such as North Melbourne, Kensington and Flemington.
Today, over half of the population of the North Melbourne area was either born overseas, or comes from a family where the parents were born overseas.
The new arrivals did not come to North Melbourne with an in-built understanding of Australian rules football, let alone an emotional connection to the professional football club in their midst.
So after deciding that the club’s future was to stay in North Melbourne, the club had to find new ways to reconnect with its local community.
It decided to renovate the old house and invite the neighbours over – rebuilding its Arden Street headquarters (now called Aegis Park), and making the new facilities available to the public.
But this is the where the story gets really interesting.
The club did its homework. It consulted with experts, conducted research, analysed gaps in local services, and took inspiration from the community engagement programs of English Premier League clubs.
The result of that research and planning was The Huddle – an award-winning program to build social cohesion in the North Melbourne area, and to help children from migrant backgrounds survive and thrive in their new home.
The centrepiece of The Huddle is a community classroom – a facility inside Aegis Park equipped with computers, Internet access and other educational tools, staffed by a team of professionals and volunteers from the local community.
From this base, The Huddle runs a range of programs to help local children with their education, to introduce them to organised sport, and to build social cohesion.
Three streams
The General Manager of The Huddle, Dr Sonja Hood, has been running the operation for the past three years. She says The Huddle’s activities can be grouped into three distinct streams.
The first stream is a study support program, which operates out of the community classroom from 4pm to 7pm, Monday to Thursday. The study support program is targeted at children over the age of 15 to avoid duplicating existing programs for younger students.
Local students who choose to participate in the program receive one-to-one help from around 50 volunteer tutors.
Student numbers have grown steadily, with 70 teenagers involved in the program so far in 2013.
Schools Program
The second stream is the schools program, which is run out of the community classroom during the day.
Schools from around Victoria can book to take students through the curriculum, which touches on topics such as local history, the local environment, personal development and leadership.
Dr Hood says the schools program teaches students about the values of diversity and inclusion, but in a very Melbourne context. She says the curriculum gives students “a sense that Melbourne has always been multicultural – it isn’t something that we just made up.”
Community Sport
The third stream of The Huddle’s activities is all about building participation in community sport. This is achieved through an outreach program in local schools, and through events and competitions at Aegis Park.
While Australian football is obviously a focus, The Huddle also encourages people of all ages to learn about sports such as cricket, soccer volleyball, badminton and basketball – again making full use of the facilities at Aegis Park.
It’s not unusual to see the Kangaroo’s AFL stars taking part on these activities.
“It’s part of the club’s playing contract that everyone must participate in at least two Huddle activities over the year,” Dr Hood says.
The players don’t always receive the adulation from the local children that they might expect, however.
Dr Hood says that many of the participating children aren’t footy followers. “They are delighted when the footy players are here, but they aren’t star-struck,” she says.
One exception to this rule is towering Sudanese-born ruckman Majak Daw.
“The kids relate to him because he came here as a migrant,” Dr Hood says, “regardless of whether they are Sudanese or not.”
The beauty of involving players in the delivery of the community sport program is that nobody gives without also receiving. It is a rich and rewarding experience for the players as well as the participants.
Come on down
While it’s been a few years since North Melbourne added any Premiership silverware to the Arden Street trophy cabinet, The Huddle has been steadily picking up awards for its contribution to community development.
After winning the Victorian Premier’s Award for Excellence in the 2012 Victorian Multicultural Awards, The Huddle went on to take out the 2013 Australian Migration Council’s Award for Sports Leadership.
AFL CEO Andrew Demetriou has also praised The Huddle, describing the program as a perfect example of sport and the community, with corporate support, working together for a common outcome.
The Huddle works because it creates a sense of belonging, in a community where there was previously a sense of social dislocation.
For people in the multicultural suburbs of Melbourne’s inner north, The Huddle helps them to feel at home in Australia, and at home in Melbourne, and at home in Arden Street.
And for North Melbourne FC, the true benefits of the program are building over time, with a new generation of Kangaroos supporters growing up with a genuine emotional connection to the club.
“One of the best things in the world is to look out and see a training session, and because we don’t have a fence around this ground all of our training sessions are open,” Dr Hood says.
“And to see the kids from the local flats coming down to watch training, dads and their sons coming down to watch training – that’s a great feeling.”
