Marn Grook
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Marn Grook (also spelt marngrook), literally meaning "Game ball", is the collective name given to a number of traditional Australian Aboriginal ball games believed to have been played at gatherings and celebrations of up to 50 players.
Evidence supports the game being played primarily by the Djabwurrung and Jardwadjali [1] people and other tribes in the Wimmera, The Mallee and Millewa regions of western Victoria, Australia (which are commonly associated with the name "Marn Grook"); however, according to some accounts, the range possibly extended to the Yarra Valley, Gippsland regions in Victoria and the Riverina in south western New South Wales.
The earliest accounts, mostly from the colonial Victorian explorers and settlers, date back to the early beginnings of the Victorian gold rush, but the game may have been played since ancient times.
Marn Grook is especially notable as it is claimed by some to have had an influence on the modern game of Australian rules football, most notably in the catching of the kicked ball (the mark in Australian football), and in particularly high jumping (the spectacular mark in Australian football) exhibited by the players of both games.
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[edit] Eye-witness accounts
Robert Brough-Smyth, in an 1878 book The Aborigines of Victoria, quoted Richard Thomas, a Protector of Aborigines in Victoria, who stated that in about 1841 he had witnessed Aborigines playing the game.
- The men and boys joyfully assemble when this game is to be played. One makes a ball of possum 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. 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.
An 1857 sketch found in 2007 describes the game Victorian scientist William Blandowski saw the Nyeri Nyeri people playing a football game at Merbein, on his expedition to the junction of the Murray and Darling Rivers.[1]
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, wrote that the game was played between large groups on a totemic basis — the white cockatoos versus the black cockatoos, for example, which accorded with their skin system. 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, and was probably known to most tribes of south-eastern Australia. The Kurnai made the ball from the scrotum of an "old man kangaroo", the Woiworung made it of tightly rolled up pieces of opossum skin. It was called by them "mangurt". In this tribe the two exogamous divisions, 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.[2]
Tom Wills, who drew up the rules of Australian rules football in 1858-59, was raised in Victoria's western districts and is said to have played with local Aboriginal children. He recalled watching a game in which they kicked a possum skin about the size of an orange, stuffed with charcoal.[3] The game was totemic, with teams often representing animal totems. Although there were no goal posts, the game was similar to keepings off and the winner was somewhat subjective. It was sometimes the side with the player who had the most possessions or the side that kicked the ball the most and the furthest. Teams played until there was a single winner.
[edit] Marn Grook and the football term "mark"
Some claim that the origin of the Australian rules term "mark", meaning a clean, fair catch of a kicked ball, followed by a free kick, is derived from the Aboriginal word "mumarki" used in Marn Grook, and meaning "to catch".[4][5] However, many point out the fact that the word "mark" has been used in British football codes since the 1830s—in both rugby football and early Association football (soccer)—and that this claim is therefore a false etymology. Indeed, the term mark is still used in Rugby Union in reference to a fair catch by a player who calls "mark" when catching a ball inside their team's 22 metre line. The origin of the term "mark" is said to come from the practice in these early codes when a player, after catching the ball, marks the ground with his foot to show where the catch had been taken and calls out "mark" in order to be awarded a free kick.[citation needed]
[edit] The "Marngrook Trophy"
In 2002, in a game at Stadium Australia, the Sydney Swans and Essendon Football Club began to compete for the Marngrook Trophy, awarded after home-and-away matches each year between the two teams in the Australian Football League. Though it commemorates marngrook, the match is played under normal rules of the AFL, rather than the traditional aboriginal game.
[edit] References
- ^ Kids play kick to kick -1850s style from abc.net.au
- ^ AW Howitt, "Notes on Australian Message Sticks and Messengers", Journal of the Anthropological Institute, London, 1889, p 2, note 4, Reprinted by Ngarak Press, 1998, ISBN 1-875254-25-0
- ^ (September 25, 2000). "Minister Opens Show Exhibition Celebrating Aussie Rules’ Koorie Heritage". Press release.
- ^ Early History
- ^ Aboriginal Football - Marn Grook
[edit] External links
[edit] Other Sources
- Marn Grook (1996) (VHS. Classification: G. Runtime: 45 min. Produced In: Australia. Produced by: CAAMA (Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association), based in Alice Springs (NT). Directed By: Steve McGregor. Language: English.)
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