“Raise your hand if you speak more than one language,” Uncle Bill Nicholson asked while conducting a smoking ceremony during the welcome to country at the eleventh annual Unity Cup.
Looking out across the crowd of approximately 300 boys and girls attending the Unity Cup, it was clear that almost everyone was raising their hand.
This physical representation of the multiculturally diverse group was striking. As the participants looked around at who else was raising their hand, laughter rippled across the group with one boy turning to his neighbour to say ‘and here we all are, playing footy’.
That comment encompasses the entire event that is the Towards Zero Unity Cup. It uses footy to transcend the barriers that language or cultural differences can sometimes impose on us.
The Unity Cup is an AFL 9s, round-robin style tournament typically for people who don’t participate in AFL at the local level.
It’s an event that includes people from different communities and backgrounds. There were teams from African, Indian, Asian, and Middle Eastern backgrounds, among others.
The Unity Cup pushes to make AFL representative of the all the communities that live in Australia, to invite people to get to know each other and to exchange and share our different cultures while learning the national sport of Australia.
The North Melbourne Football Club in conjunction with its award-winning not-for-profit, The Huddle, has been involved with the Unity Cup since 2012, and each year enters a male and female team. This year the club also assisted in fielding a boy’s team from Werribee.
Though at the end of the day it was the Bharat Bombers boys team and an UMOJA girls team that took the premiership, it was nonetheless a positive day for all teams affiliated with The Huddle.
Though The Huddle’s girls team had various cancelations the day of, leaving the team with only three players, what could have turned the whole day sour actually turned into something fortuitous.
Throughout the afternoon, the girls team rotated to fill the six other positions, girls from different teams, different countries, and speaking different languages pulled on the royal blue and white jumper to help round out the Huddle’s team.
Steph Webb, North Melbourne Community Sport and Recreation Coordinator of The Huddle, coached the girls' team on the day.
“The Unity Cup isn’t about just footy or about winning, it is about building relationship and getting outside and trying something new in a non-judgmental space,” Webb said.
“Everyone was there for the same reason, whether you were winning or losing, taking a break or on the field, everyone was chatting and having a good time.”
