by On a cool, cloudy spring day on Sunday, Sydney’s Redfern Oval was a time capsule for inner-city rugby league. Classic Australian rock music blared from the speakers, the stadium was only $2 to enter, and cash was the only payment for the long line of customers waiting for sausages.
The Redfern All Blacks A-Reserve team have reached the 2024 South Sydney District Rugby League Grand Final – the same year Australia’s oldest Indigenous rugby league club celebrates its 80th anniversary, commemorating its official entry into the South Sydney Rugby League competition in 1944.
For Nathan Moran, a Birripi-Dunghutti man and CEO of the Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council, the region’s RABs and rugby league have a deep meaning to his community. “Football and boxing have always been our escape, literally out of the mission, and then later as a chance to progress,” says Moran, a former All Blacks coach and player. “It’s not just a pleasure for us, it’s an escape and a movement.”
All Blacks fans and players are easy to spot in the crowd, many wearing white hoodies that read: “We keep the ball in motion.” The line from the team song is a reference to the club’s DNA: the now-defunct Tweed Heads All Blacks, who came to Sydney to play exhibition matches in the 1930s, inspiring the Redfern Aboriginal community to form their own team.
The club’s rich history was on display on Sunday – at the community’s elders’ tent, Moran was surrounded by elderly Redfern All Blacks pioneers, including John Young, also known as ‘Uncle Blackdog’. Young is nearly 70 and has been involved for 47 years as a player and coach and, today, as the team’s strapper, bandaging ankles and other injuries.
He takes great pride in being a part of the club and points to the All Blacks’ No. 17, a big, burly forward known as “Bubba”. “He’s just like his dad and brother: quiet off the field but tough on it,” he says. “I coached ‘Bubba’ in nursery school and now I coach him in the boys’ football team. It makes me so proud.”
For the club’s junior manager Keith “Kip” Munro, helping keep the club healthy has been a personal mission. When the All Blacks were dangerously short of five teams, he committed to rebuilding the club to 20; two years ago, the club achieved that goal and is thriving again, creating role models at all age levels and providing cultural affirmation.
“We’re a beacon, a safe place for the community,” Munro said. “A place where you can be yourself, play fun football and identify with that sense of pride in what we’ve built over the last 80 years.”
The Redfern All Blacks have been at the heart of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s journey to rights, from exclusion to inclusion and integration to maintaining their cultural identity in a mainstream league. Once confined to missions and reserves by the Aboriginal Protection Act, Aboriginal people began moving to Redfern in the 1920s to work in the Eveleigh railway workshops and the Botany Road mills.
After the All Blacks were officially born in 1944, the club provided a unifying backbone for families from different Aboriginal nations in New South Wales and helped establish the first Aboriginal-controlled legal, housing and medical societies in the early 1970s.
On the field, the Redfern All Blacks won the South Sydney A-Grade championship seven times, while off the field they were heavily involved in activism and resistance within the civil rights and Black Power movements. The club was also scrutinised by ASIO for its links to communism and served as a rallying point for the death of TJ Hickey and the subsequent riots.
Gathering together every week to watch the All Blacks games has become an act of defiance to combat assimilation. The latest challenge is gentrification: the social housing stock in the area is shrinking and many families have moved to western Sydney and now commute weekly to play.
The biggest positive change for the All Blacks, according to Munro, has been the success of the women’s program, with women and girls now making up 45 per cent of the players, including four Australian Jillaroos.
It wasn’t always this way, according to community matriarch Aunty Beryl Van-Oploo OAM, still going strong at 82 and having arrived in Redfern aged 16 from Walgett. Aunty Beryl notes that when it comes to the All Blacks, she has: “Been there, seen there, done there.”
“Women never dreamed of acting, but we used to fundraise, cook, wash and iron jerseys on Eveleigh and Louis Streets on ‘The Block,’” she said. “It’s great to see our young girls now have a choice.”
The All Blacks fought bravely on Sunday but, despite overwhelming support from the home crowd, lost a close 16-12 game to Mascot. The men in black and white were beaten but not defeated and the loyal Redfern All Blacks fans gave them a standing ovation and heartfelt hugs.
“We are resilient, still here and strong, and there is always next year,” Moran said as he returned home with his family. “We just have to keep moving forward.”
