It has produced a string of talented players for the AFL, but can Halls Creek calm its troubled footy crowds?

An outback town in northern WA faces a huge test this football season — to stop crowd fighting and feuding from overshadowing its reputation as an AFL talent factory.

Halls Creek is the hub of the East Kimberley Football League’s southern division, where teams from largely Indigenous communities play a fast, instinctive and highly-skilled style, grounding an over abundance of top league players.

The AFL has identified Halls Creek’s potential and, along with the state government, has invested in the region to smooth the pathway from the remote town to the highest level.

Families enjoy the thrill of watching football in Halls Creek.(ABC Kimberley: Ted O’Connor)

Most people in Halls Creek are Indigenous and football in the dry season is a huge part of the town’s identity, instilling pride in players and their families.

But leaders lament the sporting spectacle has an unwanted dark side.

They say for too long it’s been a magnet for drunken spectators looking to settle old scores in long-running family feuds.

Community advocates say intergenerational trauma and entrenched social problems such as alcohol abuse and welfare dependency help fuel bad behaviour, especially when bragging rights are on the table.

Brawl mars grand final

Last year, when the Yardgee Dockers soundly defeated the Kururrungku Roos in the grand final, their celebrations were tarnished.

When the siren blew, spectators came onto the field and a brawl broke out, injuring three police officers.

A group of spectators running on a football field

The brawl cast a shadow over the football season in Halls Creek.(Supplied)

More than a dozen people were charged and criminal court proceedings are still playing out.

The incident meant Yardgee’s players did not receive their premiership medallions after the match.

an Indigenous football team on an oval

The Yardgee Dockers won the East Kimberley Football League southern division premiership last year.(Supplied: Jahmal Stretch)

Yardgee assistant coach Dennis Chungulla said the brawl ruined a moment to recognise the players’ profound achievements, especially those who had used football to turn their lives around.

He said some players had been involved in youth crime, in particular stealing cars, until they were encouraged to join the club.

“We got all those young fellas in, they didn’t know they were going to make it to the grand final, they were just happy,” he said.

“When the kids know themselves they realise something, instead of skidding in cars and stealing … (they think) let’s do something for our family.”

An Indigenous man stands in a park

Dennis Chungulla says a tough stance needs to be taken against violence at football games.(ABC Kimberley: Ted O’Connor)

The leader in the Halls Creek-based Indigenous community said while the league should take a harder line with violent spectators — families and elders also needed to step up.

“Respect your elder, respect your players and respect your family, that’s the most important thing,” he said.

“It’s got to start from your home. Mob want to see their kid play.”

League to crack down

Supporters from the two clubs had brawled previously in 2021, leading to spectator bans and games held without crowds.

In the lead-up to last year’s grand final brawl, clubs in Halls Creek warned the league that feuding in communities was spilling into games and could have an impact on the decider.

The league sought help from police and breathalysed spectators on entry, but it was to no avail.

EKFL president Wayne Paul said tougher measures would be considered this season.

“People have got to understand there are acceptable levels of behaviour,” he said.

“If something like that happens again we might say, ‘Right, we’ll have a grand final but there are no spectators’,” Mr Paul said.

Halls Creek Hawks players mingle with family members

Community leaders say football games at Halls Creek should be a safe space for families.(ABC Kimberley: Ted O’Connor)

He said the league would ban the spectators convicted by criminal courts for their involvement in the brawl for at least a year, depending on the circumstances.

“Hopefully, that’ll put the word out to the rest — if you misbehave in football you run the risk of getting a ban,” the league president said.

a boy holds a footy on an dry oval near players warming up

Young people in Halls Creek look up to football players as role models. (ABC Kimberley: Ted O’Connor)

Halls Creek to go it alone

Football in Halls Creek has traditionally been administered from Kununurra, more than 350km to the north, under the East Kimberley Football League umbrella.

Now planning is underway for the southern division to stand alone in 2025.

Games will be played on the one oval in Halls Creek, and leaders say attracting enough officials, umpires and volunteers from that town and surrounding Indigenous communities will be a huge task.

The state government and AFL have made millions of dollars of funding available to boost football in the Kimberley, where socio-economic barriers and huge geographical distances limit its much-vaunted potential.

a man kicks a football during a game

There’s an abundance of Indigenous football talent in Halls Creek and the surrounding area.(Supplied: Jahmal Stretch)

That cash injection has supported work on the ground by Country Football WA East Kimberley regional representative Louis Tanner, who says the grand final brawl exposed shortcomings with local capacity.

“We realised we had a few less volunteers than we needed on that day and we had to rely on police support,” he said.

“The lesson learned is they need extra support from the community to help football grow and survive.”

Indigenous footballers play footy on a red gravel oval

Some people in Indigenous communities in the Kimberley play football on rocky hard ovals.(Supplied: Giancarlo Mazzella)

This year’s football season is likely to be delayed and shortened due to upgrades on the oval.

Mr Tanner wants to kick the season off with a round robin carnival to allow teams to meet and work towards creating a smooth-running competition.

“I think the grand opening of the new oval would be a start, almost like a clean slate,” he said.

“There’s so much funding support, it’s really just looking for local leaders to step up.”

A Halls Creek Hawks player about to kick the football during a match

Halls Creek teams play a fast free-flowing style.(ABC Kimberley: Ted O’Connor)

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In a battle for the corridor, it was the thriller kings who prevailed on footy’s biggest day

For much of its history, Collingwood was notorious for losing close ones on the biggest stage.

No side has made more grand finals nor won more premierships. No team has also lost more grand finals.

But that was then, before Craig McRae came to the club.

At the end of what was one of the greatest games of Australian Football, and arguably its greatest grand final in living memory, the best team ever in tight games has walked away with the flag.

The 2023 grand final saw 10 lead changes, with the scores drawing level an additional four times. There was no lead greater than 13 points. There are tight games, there are attacking games, but rarely a combination of the two play out together.

Games like this are why we all watch footy.

Two years ago, McRae took over the reins at Collingwood, entrusted to bring the club back to the top of the competition after a dismal 2021 season.

In just 12 months the Pies went from the bottom four to top four. 

McRae has turned around what was once the club Achilles heel, namely, losing close games.

Under McRae, Collingwood has won 20 games by two goals or less. No club in the past half century has won more tight games than McRae’s Pies.

Most footy analysis has suggested that success in close games is more luck than skill. Collingwood is single-handedly changing that perception for most fans.

“We’re really proud of our journey. We mentioned during the week that it takes two years to get to this point,” McRae said last week after winning a tight game in the preliminary final against GWS.

“You had two years of doing one-on-one fight sessions — like, we’d do it every session. Two minutes of it — tick off. Two minutes — next one. I don’t know how many hours that is.

“You saw how much we’d rehearsed those moments.”

That poise late in games showed through on the biggest stage of them all.

For Brisbane, a couple of missed half-chances means that they are still waiting for their fourth flag as a merged club.

The margins between ultimate success and crippling defeat are sometimes as narrow as an errant knock of the ball forward, or an umpire’s call.

Collingwood put together the closest string of wins ever seen in an AFL-era finals series.

It was truly a masterclass of control via chaos, of seizing the moment when it arose.

This is how Collingwood won a stellar 2023 grand final.

Desire and euphoria

The grand final presented a contrast between two styles, making for an intriguing match.

Through the game, Collingwood lent on their well-honed brand of footy built on trust, spacing, movement and risk.

When Collingwood is running on all cylinders it is hypnotising, with waves of black and white stripes confounding opponents.

Magpies players ran hard for their teammates at all times on the day, overwhelming the Lions with chains of running handballs and numbers at the contest.

It forced Brisbane defenders to choose between two seemingly unstoppable options. The Pies seemed to find open space where there shouldn’t have been any, finding open marks inside 50.

Instead of clearly gaining possession, Collingwood thrived on knock-ons, taps, ground kicks and fumbles forward to put the defence under pressure.

The Lions generally were more controlled when moving the ball — looking to switch and change angles where they could. Where the Pies used chaos to push the ball forward, the Lions tried to use the width of the ground.

The contrast in styles saw a tense contest early, with both teams putting the feelers out early.

But there was one common element — a battle to get the ball in the corridor, and to win the ball in the middle of the ground.

Early on, the Pies were able to get their turnover game going, scoring 15 to six in the first quarter.

Eventually, the Lions got the dangerous press going, matching the Pies in this area.

Through the first half, both sides were able to limit the impact of the taller forwards on the game.

Despite Collingwood losing Nathan Murphy early to a head knock, Brisbane took until late in the second quarter to register its first mark inside 50.

Meanwhile, the Magpies’ struggles for their tall forwards to have an impact may be down to how they deployed them.

Billy Frampton came into the Collingwood side for an injured Dan McStay, and the former Adelaide swingman played a negating role on star Lions defender Harris Andrews.

While Andrews was still able to shape the game from down back, he was thrown out of position more than once by the work of Frampton.

The second half saw more patience from both sides, with the avenues to goals being curtailed.

Both sides put a heavy priority in closing down any attacks from up the ground. The two teams were cautious of each other’s strengths, forcing them to take the long way up the ground.

As the clock wore down, Collingwood switched between its two fabled late-game modes.

For much of the fourth quarter, the Pies slowed the pace down, killing the clock and forcing the Lions into engaging risk.

For a brief minute it looked like paying off for Brisbane, thanks to Charlie Cameron’s late snap that saw the Lions take what could have been a match-winning lead.

Then the Pies did what they did best — attack.

They prioritised moving the ball forward, with spaced runners and aggressive taps doing a lot of the hard work for them. In a blink of an eye, two black-and-white goals hit the scoreboard.

Brisbane, to its credit, never gave up fighting.

A late goal by Joe Daniher gave them a shot for a heart-stopping win, before a late contentious advantage call took the wind from their sails.

The result was another Collingwood late-game masterclass ending with the most famous McRae win.

Hill’s day out

On a day full of potential matchwinners on both sides, one stood out more than the others.

Bobby Hill’s journey has taken him right across the country — from his birthplace of Northam on Noongar boodja country to Western Sydney, then Collingwood.

A year before joining the Magpies it looked likely that the electric forward would join Essendon, before being told the deal fell through while he was in the chair of his tattoo artist.

He’s also battled and beaten cancer, a fair struggle for any 23-year-old man.

Hill’s best footy has always been electric and jaw dropping, with his athleticism and footy nous shining through.

The Pies utilised his speed and running ability to its full extent, pushing him up the ground to contests and running him off any potential opponents.

Hill also had inspiration from another great small forward.

“To be honest, I was watching Cyril Rioli’s highlights,” Hill said.

“So there you go, Cyril, thank you!”

This innate ability saw him find space where there shouldn’t be any. His four first-half goals gave the Pies an early edge, and his continued influence through the game contributed significantly to the win.

Team of the future?

In 1990, after their famous drought-breaking premiership, Collingwood great Lou Richards “buried” the “Colliwobbles” in front of a enthusiastic crowd at Victoria Park.

While the curse went into the ground, it may have been more stunned than buried.

Despite a number of veterans with heavy roles such as Scott Pendlebury, Steele Sidebottom and Jeremy Howe, the future seems bright for Collingwood.

It’s easy to see a future where the Pies firmly put their finals struggles in the ground for good.

By the same token, Brisbane seem likely to only continue getting better.

The products of their early 2000s success have provided the club with a stream of talented young players, from Will Ashcroft and Harris Andrews to Jaspa Fletcher and Keidean Coleman.

They’ve also become an attractive destination for veteran players looking for club away from the Melbourne footy bubble. They might even be better next year, which is scary considering they were just a kick from the flag.

For all Collingwood players, coaches and fans, next year is a world away. For now, there’s a flag to celebrate.

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AFL grand final five quick hits: Hill and Bailey trade spectacular moments as controversial decision causes fan outrage

It was one of the great grand finals of the modern era.

No matter which side of the room you stood on, this game gave every footy fan in the country moments of utter joy and stunned disbelief.

Huge goals and bigger moments, towering marks and controversial decisions.

This was footy at its best — and these were the five moments that stood out in a match packed full of stunning moments.

1. Bailey boots a belter

Some grand final moments go down in history — win or lose — as an act of individual brilliance that will forever be etched in the minds of footy purists.

The Goddard mark. The Ottens tackle. The Shaw smother.

And this was Zac Bailey’s moment to scribble his name into the yellowing tome of Aussie Rules September magic.

Having kicked Brisbane’s first of the match on the run from a tight angle after a perfect Oscar McInerney tap, Bailey pulled a rabbit from his hat and a dove from his sleeve simultaneously with 5 minutes to go in the first quarter.

On another day, the umpire might have called for the 50m penalty as Bailey toed the line of the protected area around Mason Cox, but with no whistle blown, the nippy David to Cox’s Goliath dived forward and executed the perfect smoother.

With Joe Daniher collecting the spill and barrelling into the Isaac Quaynor tackle, the Sherrin tumbled into the hands of Bailey, who appeared to make things harder for himself as he ran to the boundary, backing himself to take on the lumbering Cox and the chasing Nathan Murphy.

Right, left, he twisted and turned, almost going over the boundary but staying in enough to keep the pill alive as the Magpies defenders clutched at fresh air.

Sprinting back into the danger area, he laid his slick right boot into the leather and perfectly curved the ball through the big sticks to give the Lions their first lead of the match.

It was a sign of the sorcery that would be sprinkled throughout the first half to come.

2. Hill climbs the mountain

With the Lions looking in relative control in a match where control was at a premium, Jeremy Howe streaked through the middle of the MCG and launched a long ball into the forward 50.

There were 6 minutes left, and Brisbane had a one-goal lead.

Running back with the flight of the ball was Brandon Starcevich, a nervous position for any defender, made all the more harrowing by the spectre of the dangerous Bobby Hill lurking behind.

With the sun in his eyes, the Lions backman did all he could to make contact with the pill, with one arm attempting to shade his face, the other reaching into the air.

And Hill took his moment.

Leaping high over the Lions’ back, Hill fumbled the ball slightly but controlled it to the ground in a magic moment that rivalled Bailey’s goal in the first quarter.

Sensing the enormity of the occasion, the small forward went back calmly, took his time, and nailed the set shot.

Scores tied. And the match was set up to be one of the greats.

3. Punch and counterpunch

To overlook the third quarter feels like a crime to AFL humanity, but we’ve got five spots to fill here and the final quarter could have filled all of them.

It was an oddly tentative last term as both teams looked desperate to not make the mistake that would cost them the game, but with five and half minutes left on the clock, the Lions struck.

With the ball in dispute on the wing, the Lions were the first to get clean hands on the pill, with Jarryd Lyons finding Jarrod Berry, who blind-turned around the reaching Nick Daicos.

Thumping it into the forward 50, Charlie Cameron and Brayden Maynard wrestled and fought for position, with the Lions magician turning his opponent inside out, tapping the ball along the ground, seeing off Isaac Quaynor, and desperately getting his left boot to ball to put his team in front amidst delirious Brisbane fans.

But it didn’t last long.

At the following bounce, Scott Pendlebury cleared the ball in a very Scott Pendlebury way, belting it towards the 50m mark and the waiting pack, where the crumbing Nick Daicos took it cleanly and handballed it quickly and clinically in a very Nick Daicos way, finding the open Jordan De Goey.

And dare we say, Jordan De Goey hammered the ball right through the middle of the goals in a very Jordan De Goey kind of way.

While Steele Sidebottom would kick the next goal from a 50m penalty, and Joe Daniher would answer after some Hugh McCluggage sparkle, it was the Cameron and De Goey punch and counterpunch that would ultimately feel like it decided the game.

4. Advantage? No, but play on

Wait a minute, let me rewind.

That 30-odd seconds of footy between the Cameron and De Goey goals would be the “football act” that felt like it decided the game.

Neutral and Lions fans alike would argue it was an umpire’s non-decision that really decided the game in the final minutes. 

With the Daniher goal still fresh in memory, the Lions went on the attack once more — 1 minute and 22 seconds to break a 20-year drought.

Going low as he always does, Lachie Neale gathered the pill away from Oleg Markov, and looked to get the handball out as Markov’s tackle slipped low and took Neale’s legs away from him.

In what felt like a split second, the ball landed in Zac Bailey’s hands, the umpire blew the whistle for a tripping free kick, and Bailey got the kick away.

Advantage, play on.

In the umpire’s mind, Bailey had made the conscious decision to keep the ball moving. In the minds of almost everyone else not wearing black and white — or fluoro green — there was no advantage and Bailey had barely heard the whistle.

The ensuing kick would tumble towards a pack and eventually fall into Collingwood hands, instead of giving Neale a clean shot at a free kick into the forward 50.

There would be arguments for and against the call — but on the balance of opinion, the wrong call had been made.

5. Right in the feels

For all the marks, and the kicks, and the smothers, for all the bumps, and bruises, and bloody noses, it was an embrace after the final siren that brought it all home.

A dad and a son, together in pure jubilation and love for each other.

Peter Moore, the oh-so-close Collingwood legend who had starred on the big stage but never tasted ultimate glory, proudly hugging his boy, Darcy, the newly minted premiership captain and defensive hero.

As Peter handed the cup to Darcy, those overwhelming feelings of love could be felt through the air, and it would have been the stoniest of hearts to not feel something as it played out in front of the 100,000 fans.

Family and footy — at the end of it all, that was all that mattered.

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War of words erupts as fallout from A-Leagues grand final decision continues

As the fallout from the A-Leagues’ decision to sell their grand final hosting rights to Sydney continues, more clubs and players have taken to social media to clarify their positions, with one club shareholder and former director criticising the actions of a key decision-maker.

At 10:20pm AEDT on Tuesday, following an emergency meeting between club owners, the Australian Professional Leagues (APL) — which own and operate the A-League Men and A-League Women — released a statement doubling-down on their decision to partner with Destination NSW to host their showpiece events in Sydney for the next three years for a reported eight-figure sum.

“The Australian Professional League Club Chairs met today to reaffirm their support for the partnership with Destination New South Wales,” the statement said.

“As a result of the consensus achieved in this meeting, APL is committed to this new and significant partnership and the resulting generation of important new funds for football — all of which will be invested into the growth of the game.

“We believe in the potential for Australian football to close the gap on professional football in other parts of the world. We thank DNSW for sharing in that belief and our strategy to continue to grow the Australian professional game.

“Our immediate focus will be to work with partners to ensure accessible travel and accommodation for all travelling fans and to build a festival of finals football worthy of our game.”

When it was originally posted on social media, the statement was accompanied by the names of 11 club chairs — with the exception of Anthony Di Pietro, who resigned from his position on the APL board earlier in the day, and a representative from Canberra United — implying all had agreed to the information it contained.

However, the statement was soon taken down after some club figureheads — including Western United Football director Steve Horvat and Perth Glory chairman Tony Sage — revealed they never agreed to have their names included on the release, or were not part of the meeting from which the statement came at all. The APL then replaced the statement with one that had the names removed.



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