Marn Grook - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Marn Grook literally meaning "Game ball", is a collective name given to a number of traditional Indigenous Australian recreational pastimes believed to have been played at gatherings and celebrations of up to 50 players. It is often confused with a separate indigenous game resembling Association Football known as Woggabaliri

Woggabaliri

Woggabaliri, literally meaning "play", is the name given to a traditional Indigenous Australian "co-operative kicking volley game" similar to the English game of Keepie uppie.-History:...

. Woggabaliri is recognised by the Australian Sports Commission

Australian Sports Commission

The Australian Sports Commission is the governing body responsible for distributing funds and providing strategic guidance for sporting activity in Australia. It is an agency of the Government of Australia within the portfolio of Health and Ageing...

as the earliest depicted indigenous ball game and is believed to be the subject of William Blandowski

William Blandowski

Wilhelm Blandowski born Johan Wilhelm Theodor Ludwig von Blandowski January 21, 1822 died December 18, 1878, a German zoologist and mining engineer, was born in Gleiwitz, Upper Silesia, Kingdom of Prussia ....

's engraving "never let the ball hit the ground" (see picture on right).

Generally speaking observers commented that Marn Grook was a football

Football

Football may refer to one of a number of team sports which all involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball with the foot to score a goal. The most popular of these sports worldwide is association football, more commonly known as just "football" or "soccer"...

game which featured Punt kick

Punt kick

The Punt kick is a common style of kicking in football games. It is described as kicking the ball without the ball first hitting the ground. It is practiced in many sports to some degree: Australian rules football, American & Canadian football, rugby league, and rugby union...

ing and catching a stuffed "ball". It involved large numbers of players, and games were played over an extremely large area. Totemic teams may have been formed, however to observers the game appeared to lack a team objective, having no real rules, scoring or winner. Individual players who consistently exhibited outstanding skills, such as leaping high over others to catch the ball, were often commented on.

Evidence supports such games being played primarily by the Djabwurrung

Gunditjmara

Gunditjmara, or Gundidj for short, are an Indigenous Australian group from western Victoria . Their neighbours to the west were the Buandig people, to the north the Jardwadjali and Djab wurrung peoples, and in the east the Girai wurrung people.The name may also be spelt Gournditch-Mara...

and Jardwadjali

Jardwadjali

The Jardwadjali people are Indigenous Australians who occupy the lands in the upper Wimmera River watershed east to Gariwerd and west to Lake Bringalbert. The towns of Horsham, Cavendish, Coleraine, Asply, Minyip and Donald are within their territory...

people and other tribes in the Wimmera

Wimmera

The Wimmera is a region in the west of the Australian state of Victoria.It covers the dryland farming area south of the range of Mallee scrub, east of the South Australia border and north of the Great Dividing Range...

, The Mallee

The Mallee

The Mallee is the most northwesterly district in the state of Victoria, and also encompasses the agricultural district of South Australia. Definitions vary, however all are based on the Victorian distribution of mallee eucalypts...

and Millewa

Millewa

The Millewa is a region of north western Victoria in Australia. It covers the triangular area north of the Sunset Country and south of the diagonal Murray River that grows wheat and other dryland crops. The part of this triangle that is irrigated is known as Sunraysia.The County of Millewa was...

regions of western Victoria, Australia (which are commonly associated with the name "Marn Grook"); however, according to some accounts, the range extended to the Wurundjeri

Wurundjeri

The Wurundjeri are a people of the Indigenous Australian nation of the Woiwurrung language group, in the Kulin alliance, who occupy the Birrarung Valley, its tributaries and the present location of Melbourne, Australia...

in the Yarra Valley

Yarra Valley

The Yarra Valley is the name given to the region surrounding the Yarra River in Victoria, Australia. The river originates approximately 90 kilometres east of the City of Melbourne and flows towards it and out into Port Phillip Bay...

, the Gunai

Gunai

The Gunai or Kurnai is an Indigenous Australian nation of south-east Australia whose territory occupied most of present-day Gippsland and much of the southern slopes of the Victorian Alps. The nation was not on friendly terms with the neighbouring Wurundjeri and Bunurong nations...

people of Gippsland

Gippsland

Gippsland is a large rural region in Victoria, Australia. It begins immediately east of the suburbs of Melbourne and stretches to the New South Wales border, lying between the Great Dividing Range to the north and Bass Strait to the south...

region in Victoria and the Riverina

Riverina

The Riverina is an agricultural region of south-western New South Wales , Australia. The Riverina is distinguished from other Australian regions by the combination of flat plains, warm to hot climate and an ample supply of water for irrigation. This combination has allowed the Riverina to develop...

in south western New South Wales

New South Wales

New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...

. The Walpiri tribe of Central Australia

Central Australia

Central Australia/Alice Springs Region is one of the five regions in the Northern Territory. The term Central Australia is used to describe an area centred on Alice Springs in Australia. It is sometimes referred to as Centralia; likewise the people of the area are sometimes called Centralians...

played a very similar kicking and catching game with possum skins known as Pultja.

The earliest accounts emerged decades after the European settlement of Australia, mostly from the colonial Victorian explorers and settlers. The earliest anecdotal account was in 1841, a decade prior to the Victorian gold rush

Victorian gold rush

The Victorian gold rush was a period in the history of Victoria, Australia approximately between 1851 and the late 1860s. In 10 years the Australian population nearly tripled.- Overview :During this era Victoria dominated the world's gold output...

while the written account dates back to 1857. Although the consensus among historians is that marn grook existed before European arrival, not enough is known by anthropologists about the prehistoric customs of Indigenous Australians to determine how long the game had been played in Victoria or elsewhere on the Australian continent.
Marngrook is especially notable as some historians claim it had a role in the Origins of Australian rules football

Origins of Australian rules football

The origins of Australian rules football are obscure and still the subject of much debate.The earliest accounts of "foot-ball" games in Australia date back to July 1829 and the earliest accounts of clubs formed to play football date to the late 1850s. Football in the early years was played by a...

. This connection has become culturally important to many Indigenous Australians, including celebrities and professional footballers from communities in which Australian rules football

Australian rules football

Australian rules football, officially known as Australian football, also called football, Aussie rules or footy is a sport played between two teams of 22 players on either...

is highly popular.

Eye-witness accounts

Robert Brough-Smyth, in an 1878 book The Aborigines of Victoria, quoted William Thomas

William Thomas (Australian settler)

William Thomas represented Aboriginal people in various roles in the Port Phillip district during his lifetime.-Various official roles:...

, a Protector of Aborigines

Protector of Aborigines

The role of Protectors of Aborigines resulted from a recommendation of the report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons on Aborigines . On 31 January 1838, Lord Glenelg, Secretary of State for War and the Colonies sent Governor Gipps the report.The report recommended that Protectors of...

in Victoria, who stated that in about 1841 he had witnessed Wurundjeri

Wurundjeri

Aborigines playing the game.

The men and boys joyfully assemble when this game is to be played. One makes a ball of possum

Possum

A possum is any of about 70 small to medium-sized arboreal marsupial species native to Australia, New Guinea, and Sulawesi .Possums are quadrupedal diprotodont marsupials with long tails...

skin, somewhat elastic, but firm and strong. ...The players of this game do not throw the ball as a white man might do, but drop it and at the same time kicks it with his foot, using the instep for that purpose. ...The tallest men have the best chances in this game. ...Some of them will leap as high as five feet from the ground to catch the ball. The person who secures the ball kicks it. ...This continues for hours and the natives never seem to tire of the exercise.

The game was a favourite of the Wurundjeri

Wurundjeri

-william clan and the two teams were sometimes based on the traditional totemic moeties of Bunjil

Bunjil

In Australian Aboriginal mythology, Bunjil the eagle is a creator deity, culture hero and ancestral being. In the Kulin nation in central Victoria he was regarded as one of two moiety ancestors, the other being the trickster Crow. Bunjil has two wives and a son, Binbeal the rainbow. His brother...

(eagle) and Waang (crow). Robert Brough-Smyth saw the game played at Coranderrk

Coranderrk

Coranderrk was an Indigenous Australian mission station set up in 1863 to provide land under the policy of concentration, for Aboriginal people who had been dispossessed by the arrival of Europeans to the state of Victoria 30 years prior. The mission was formally closed in 1924 with most residents...

Mission Station, where ngurungaeta

Ngurungaeta

Ngurungaeta is a Wurundjeri word meaning 'head man' or 'tribal leader'. Ngurungaeta held the same tribal standing as an Arweet of the Bunurong and Wathaurong people...

William Barak

William Barak , was the last traditional ngurungaeta of the Wurundjeri-willam clan, based around the area of present-day Melbourne, Australia...

discouraged the playing of imported games like cricket and encouraged the traditional native game of marn grook.

An 1857 sketch found in 2007 describes an observation by Victorian scientist William Blandowski

William Blandowski

, of the Latjilatji people playing a football game near Merbein, on his expedition

Blandowski Expedition

The Blandowski Expedition was a scientific expedition that travelled from Melbourne to the area of the junction of the Darling and Murray Rivers in north-western Victoria, and south-western New South Wales, Australia, to study the natural history of the region and to acquire specimens for the...

to the junction of the Murray

Murray River

The Murray River is Australia's longest river. At in length, the Murray rises in the Australian Alps, draining the western side of Australia's highest mountains and, for most of its length, meanders across Australia's inland plains, forming the border between New South Wales and Victoria as it...

and Darling River

Darling River

The Darling River is the third longest river in Australia, measuring from its source in northern New South Wales to its confluence with the Murray River at Wentworth, New South Wales. Including its longest contiguous tributaries it is long, making it the longest river system in Australia.The...

s. However the Australian Sports Commission

Australian Sports Commission

considers this sketch to be depicting Woggabaliri

Woggabaliri

Woggabaliri, literally meaning "play", is the name given to a traditional Indigenous Australian "co-operative kicking volley game" similar to the English game of Keepie uppie.-History:...

, a football game more closely resembling Association Football than Australian Rules Football

Australian rules football

Australian rules football, officially known as Australian football, also called football, Aussie rules or footy is a sport played between two teams of 22 players on either...

.

The image is inscribed:

A group of children is playing with a ball. The ball is made out of typha roots (roots of the bulrush). It is not thrown or hit with a bat, but is kicked up in the air with a foot. The aim of the game – never let the ball touch the ground.

Historian Greg de Moore comments:

What I can say for certain is that it's the first image of any kind of football that's been discovered in Australia. It pre-dates the first European images of any kind of football, by almost ten years in Australia. Whether or not there is a link between the two games in some way for me is immaterial because it really highlights that games such as Marn Grook, which is one of the names for Aboriginal football, were played by Aborigines and should be celebrated in their own right.

In 1889, anthropologist Alfred Howitt

Alfred William Howitt

Alfred William Howitt was an Australian anthropologist and naturalist.-Background:Howitt was born in Nottingham, England, the son of authors William Howitt and Mary Botham. He came to the Victorian gold fields in 1852 with his father and brother to visit his uncle, Godfrey Howitt...

, wrote that the game was played between large groups on a totemic basis — the white cockatoo

Cockatoo

A cockatoo is any of the 21 species belonging to the bird family Cacatuidae. Along with the Psittacidae and the Strigopidae , they make up the parrot order Psittaciformes . Placement of the cockatoos as a separate family is fairly undisputed, although many aspects of the other living lineages of...

s versus the black cockatoos, for example, which accorded with their skin system

Australian Aboriginal kinship

Australian Aboriginal kinship is the system of law governing social interaction, particularly marriage, in traditional Australian Aboriginal culture...

. Acclaim and recognition went to the players who could leap or kick the highest. Howitt wrote:

This game of ball-playing was also practised among the Kurnai, the Wolgal (Tumut river people), the Wotjoballuk as well as by the Woiworung

Wurundjeri

, and was probably known to most tribes of south-eastern Australia. The Kurnai made the ball from the scrotum

Scrotum

In some male mammals the scrotum is a dual-chambered protuberance of skin and muscle containing the testicles and divided by a septum. It is an extension of the perineum, and is located between the penis and anus. In humans and some other mammals, the base of the scrotum becomes covered with curly...

of an "old man kangaroo

Kangaroo

A kangaroo is a marsupial from the family Macropodidae . In common use the term is used to describe the largest species from this family, especially those of the genus Macropus, Red Kangaroo, Antilopine Kangaroo, Eastern Grey Kangaroo and Western Grey Kangaroo. Kangaroos are endemic to the country...

", the Woiworung made it of tightly rolled up pieces of possum

Possum

A possum is any of about 70 small to medium-sized arboreal marsupial species native to Australia, New Guinea, and Sulawesi .Possums are quadrupedal diprotodont marsupials with long tails...

skin. It was called by them "mangurt". In this tribe the two exogamous divisions

Australian Aboriginal kinship

Australian Aboriginal kinship is the system of law governing social interaction, particularly marriage, in traditional Australian Aboriginal culture...

, Bunjil

Bunjil

and Waa, played on opposite sides. The Wotjoballuk also played this game, with Krokitch on one side and Gamutch on the other. The mangurt was sent as a token of friendship from one to another.

Relationship with Australian Rules Football and Association Football

Some commentators, including Martin Flanagan, Jim Poulter and Col Hutchison

Col Hutchison

Colin "Col" Hutchison is a veteran statistician, most notably in the Victorian/Australian Football League in the sport of Australian rules football...

postulate that Tom Wills could have been inspired by Marngrook.

The theory hinges on evidence which is largely circumstantial and anecdotal. The tribe was one that is believed to have played marngrook. However the relationship of the Wills family with local Djabwurrung

Gunditjmara

people is well documented.

Wills was raised in Victoria's western districts. As the only white child in the district, it is said that he was fluent in the local dialect and frequently played with local Aboriginal children on his father's property, Lexington, in outside of the town of Moyston

Moyston, Victoria

Moyston is a town in the Western District region of Victoria, Australia, near the Grampians mountain range. The town is located in the Rural City of Ararat Local Government Area, north west of the state capital, Melbourne...

. This story has been passed down through the generations of his family.

Col Hutchison, former historian for the AFL wrote in support of the theory postulated by Flanagan, and his account appears on an official AFL memorial to Tom Wills in Moyston erected in 1998.

Gillian Hibbins in the AFL's official account of the game's history published in 2008 for the game's 150th celebrations sternly rejects the theory:

Understandably, the appealing idea that Australian Football is a truly Australian native game recognising the indigenous people, rather than deriving solely from a colonial dependence upon the British background, has been uncritically embraced and accepted. Sadly, this emotional belief lacks any intellectual credibility.

Hibbin's account was widely publicised and caused significant controversy and deeply offended prominent indigenous Australians who openly criticised the publication.

Comparisons with Australian Rules Football

Advocates of these theories have drawn comparisons in the catching of the kicked ball (the mark) and the high jumping to catch the ball (the spectacular mark) that have been attributes of both games. However, the connection is speculative. For instance spectacular high marking did not emerge in Australian rules football until the 1880s.

Marn Grook and the australian rules football term "mark"

Some claim that the origin of the Australian rules term mark, meaning a clean, fair catch

Fair catch

A fair catch is a feature of American football and several other codes of football, in which a player attempting to catch a ball kicked by the opposing team – either on a kickoff or punt – is entitled to catch the ball without interference from any member of the kicking team...

of a kicked ball, followed by a free kick

Free kick (Australian rules football)

A free kick in Australian rules football is a penalty awarded by a field umpire to a player who has been infringed by an opponent or is the nearest player to a player from the opposite team who has broken a rule.-Protocol:...

, is derived from the Aboriginal word mumarki used in Marn Grook, and meaning "to catch". However, the term "mark" has been used for a catch in both rugby football

Rugby football

Rugby football is a style of football named after Rugby School in the United Kingdom. It is seen most prominently in two current sports, rugby league and rugby union.-History:...

(the first recorded rule of Rugby football was the "fair catch" or mark rule to protect players) and early Association football in Britain since the 1830s—)—so the claim may well be a false etymology

False etymology

Folk etymology is change in a word or phrase over time resulting from the replacement of an unfamiliar form by a more familiar one. Unanalyzable borrowings from foreign languages, like asparagus, or old compounds such as samblind which have lost their iconic motivation are...

. The term is still used worldwide in Rugby Union

Rugby union

Rugby union, often simply referred to as rugby, is a full contact team sport which originated in England in the early 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand...

in reference to a fair catch by a player who calls "mark" when catching a ball inside their team's 22 metre line. The application of the word "mark" in "foot-ball" (and in many other games) dates to the Elizabethan era

Elizabethan era

The Elizabethan era was the epoch in English history of Queen Elizabeth I's reign . Historians often depict it as the golden age in English history...

and is likely derived from the practice where a player marks the ground to show where a catch had been taken or where the ball should be placed. The use of the word "mark" to indicate an "impression or trace forming a sign" on the ground dates to c1200.

In Popular Culture

Due to the theories of shared origins, Marngrook features heavily in Australian rules football and Indigenous culture.

Marn Grook (documentary) was first released in 1996.

In 2002, in a game at Stadium Australia, the Sydney Swans

Sydney Swans

The Sydney Swans Football Club is an Australian rules football club which plays in the Australian Football League . The club is based in Sydney, New South Wales. The club, founded in 1874, was known as the South Melbourne Football Club until it relocated to Sydney in 1982 to become the Sydney...

and Essendon Football Club

Essendon Football Club

The Essendon Football Club, nicknamed The Bombers, is an Australian rules football club which plays in the Australian Football League...

began to compete for the Marngrook Trophy, awarded after home-and-away matches each year between the two teams in the Australian Football League

Australian Football League

The Australian Football League is both the governing body and the major professional competition in the sport of Australian rules football...

. Though it commemorates marngrook, the match is played under normal rules of the AFL, rather than the traditional aboriginal game.

The Marngrook Footy Show an indigenous variation of the AFL Footy Show began in Melbourne in 2007 and has since been broadcast on National Indigenous Television

National Indigenous Television

National Indigenous Television, commonly referred to as NITV, is an Australian television network broadcasting throughout Australia via satellite.-History:...

, ABC 2 and Channel 31.

External links

AboriginalFootball.com, "Marngrook"
Article by leading Australian historian John Hirst September 2008, The Monthly
The Monthly
The Monthly is an Australian national magazine of politics, society and the arts, which is published eleven times per year on a monthly basis except the December/January issue. Founded in 2005, it is published by Melbourne property developer Morry Schwartz...
GROOK Network

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Eye-witness accounts

Relationship with Australian Rules Football and Association Football

Comparisons with Australian Rules Football

Marn Grook and the australian rules football term "mark"

In Popular Culture

See also

External links