Ahmed Thafer is a current coach and youth leader, having come to Australia as a 16-year-old Iraqi refugee. He didn’t have access to any soccer balls in Iraq; instead, he and his siblings would fashion balls out of the materials they could find around them. When he settled in western Sydney he discovered FUn, and finally his talent was recognised and fostered. He went from kicking bits of scrap plastic in the midst of a war zone to playing for Australia at the Football for Hope Festival, run alongside the FIFA World Cup in 2010. ‘It gave me a lot of confidence, because I came from Iraq, the country of war, and just joined Football United. I had no hope of joining a team, so Football United gave me the hope and gave me the confidence to play and represent Australia in 2010 in the World Cup in South Africa.’
For a young man from a war-torn country, it was a defining moment, and now he’s using his experience to lead the next generation. ‘Once I was there playing with the kids, and now I’m a youth leader. It changed my life. Through Football United I gained a lot of experience to coach and I grew up much faster with that. Football United’s best part is multiculturalism and that’s the beauty of it — it brings and welcomes everyone from different backgrounds.’
Teresa Yuol was born in a refugee camp in Kenya, and was orphaned at a young age. She came to Australia when she was ten, and got involved with FUn through Evans High School. While she too went to the Football for Hope Festival, she came away from FUn with something even more precious.
After realising the enormous academic potential but limited opportunities for FUn participants, Anne lobbied UNSW to provide a scholarship to one student, because ‘kids like these haven’t had the same chances as their Australian counterparts’. And despite having no more than a few years of broken schooling in her whole life before coming to Australia, Teresa was the standout candidate for the scholarship. She has since represented UNSW in a delegation of students doing community building in Costa Rica, and has even been invited to do Honours. Anne says, ‘I think the biggest impact it can have is it inspires them to believe in themselves and to realise that it’s worth making an effort.’
The symbolism of the ‘United’ in Football United resonates strongly, with more than fifty nationalities represented across the thousands of participants. Many come to Australia with little or no family or friends, unable to even speak English, but something as basic as a place to play football creates a positive new dynamic.
Anne enthuses about the friendships created on the football fields, which transcend nation, race and religion. She proudly talks about Christian and Muslim kids transforming from teammates on the pitch to lifelong friends: ‘it enables these kids to build bridges across cultures’.
Seventeen-year-old Sandy Youkhataz, a current student coach from Iran, says, ‘I think they learn new skills, and the main thing I think is it helps them with their English because when we’re here we always talk English. Playing soccer makes them know lots of people and make lots of friends.’
That’s obvious at one of FUn’s biggest sites, at Fairfield High School, in Sydney’s western suburbs. On a scorching afternoon, there are around fifty kids from all different backgrounds being put through their paces, some sporting the standard Barcelona and Chelsea jerseys, others simply in their school uniform, but all with a common drive. They attack the training cones with commitment, they shoot towards the goal with purpose, and pull off saves as if an English Premier League scout is watching. This isn’t just training — it’s a new way of life.
FUn started out helping newly arrived immigrants, and while that’s still its core group, it’s now expanded to Indigenous communities and helping Australian-born children from disadvantaged backgrounds. And, as you’d expect, Anne has big dreams for its future. She wants the FUn concept to expand into other sports, and roll out across the country to provide a nationwide tool for social change. ‘My passion is enabling things to happen. I would personally like to help other groups go on and develop … I would love to see the public school system have more capacity to be a platform for sports across the board. I really think we need to better develop school-based sports, so it’s not so inconsistent.’
While the future beckons, at present FUn has already achieved some amazing feats. There are many children in FUn who’ve witnessed war, grown up surrounded by poverty, known nothing else but the confines of refugee camps, and had their parents captured as political prisoners, or even killed. They have come to Australia stripped of their childhood and innocence, so cruelly discarded by the unforgiving world. And yet they each have the common language of a round ball. To these kids football isn’t just a game — it’s a reminder of their past, and a beacon of hope into their future.
Whether they’ve come from Iraq, Bosnia, Nepal, Sierra Leone or Sudan, they all consider themselves Australian. Football United hasn’t just given them a team; it’s provided something much more profound — an identity.
As Anne says, ‘Underlying everything is the whole push for the kids to realise that they need to have a dream and that anything is possible, and that they can reach their dream in one way or another.’
Boxing gloves and battlefields
by Drew Ellis
WHEN THE AUSTRALIAN troopship HMAT Commonwealth left the Port of Melbourne on 2 November 1917, it had aboard a cargo of fresh-faced young men. These were some of the newest members of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF). They were members of various units — most of them Light Horse — that made up the mounted divisions that were then engaged in operations against the Turkish forces in the deserts of the Middle East. Their units, having recently fought in a series of battles at places such as Gaza and Beersheba, had become depleted of men. These soldiers were the next batch of reinforcements, and they were sorely needed.
Most of the passengers, the majority of whom were South Australian, were leaving Australia for the first time, without any previous experience of war. Despite that, as they headed westward towards a risky and uncertain future, they would have felt nine feet tall and bulletproof.
After leaving Melbourne, the Commonwealth would set steam via Fremantle and Colombo, with the voyage finally culminating at Port Said, Egypt. It would take about five weeks to deliver the troops to their destination.
A combination of boredom and youthful energy could quite easily transform into mischief. That is why the officers of these men ensured that they would be kept busy, sharpened mentally and conditioned physically, through a series of sporting competitions. The most popular event was the boxing, in which representatives from the various units matched it in the ring against opponents across a range of weight divisions. The knockout competition would eventually end — somewhere west of Colombo — in the crowning of each weight division’s boxing champion.
The days were filled with lessons, military training and routine administrative duties. In the evenings the ship’s company would assemble on the upper deck for the serious business of competitive sport. Representative boxers from the various corps of the AIF — the Light Horsemen, Medical Corps, Service Corps, and others — would don gloves and put on a show for their shipmates. Competitors who were able to avoid elimination moved incrementally closer to the finals.
Once the minor bouts were completed, it was decided to defer the finals until after the stopover at Colombo. Shore leave was a possibility for the diggers, and it was thought that it would be best to make sure that this distraction did not influence the outcome or the spectacle of the deciding rounds. Private T. Arnold, described as a South Australian of the Third Light Horse Regiment, was one of the soldiers who remained in the competition.
The semi-finals were staged on 29 November, as the ship steamed its way towards the two-thirds point of the journey. In the Lightweight fight, Private Arnold, boxing with the support of the South Australians, advanced to the final with an easy win. The following night, in an attempt to secure a place in a second final, he entered the ring again, this time fighting in a higher weight division. His cleverness as a boxer was again demons
trated as he bettered an opponent who was nineteen pounds (eight kilograms) heavier. Having fought his way into two finals, he had become the crowd favourite.
The finals proceeded a couple of nights later. Before the main event was announced, the audience was treated to some support acts in the form of pillow fighting, euchre and quoits demonstrations. The audience was rowdy and enthusiastic by the time the boxing events were announced. When the two fighters were finally introduced, the crowd had high expectations. The first bout was the final of the Lightweight division, in which the popular ‘South Australian’ Private Arnold was up against Private Tollis, a New South Welshman from the Army Service Corps. The two fighters were evenly matched and, over fifteen two-minute rounds, neither was able to deliver a decisive blow. In the end, it came down to a points decision, and it was decided in favour of Private Arnold. It was a victory for the Light Horse, and for the South Australians. The result of Arnold’s second final is not known. Unfortunately, the witness upon whose account this story depends did not think to record it.
The officiating of the bouts was sometimes contentious. To illustrate, the next final saw a fight over six two-minute rounds between Private Monty Clarke, a South Australian of the Army Medical Corps, weighing in at ten stone three (about sixty-five kilograms), and Private Bates, a New South Welshman also of the Medical Corps, weighing in at ten stone two. The bout was given to Bates, but the general opinion of those present was that Clarke had won. There was nearly a riot, but the referee’s decision stood. This result meant that the only victory that could be claimed by the South Australians that evening belonged to Private Arnold.
These events were all recorded in a small notebook by one Private Frederick Godlee, a South Australian Light Horsemen (Fourth Light Horse Field Ambulance), who was one of the many first-hand witnesses to these boxing bouts. As this scribe commenced his own journey to war, he began to keep a diary of his experiences. I first discovered Godlee’s war diary as I was researching material for a book. Although Godlee’s experiences were relevant to my project, Private Arnold’s were not. But as I pondered Godlee’s descriptions of Arnold’s exploits in the ring, I began to wonder about this lightweight pugilist who seemed well able to compete against much heavier opponents. I was especially curious about how he had fared outside of the ring in the biggest fight of all — the desert war of the Australian Light Horse. So, armed only with his name and the knowledge that he had sailed on the Commonwealth, I went in search of this Private Arnold. I found his personnel dossier at the National Archives.
His full name was Trevor George Arnold. He had just turned eighteen when he enlisted to become a Light Horseman. He was indeed a Lightweight: his enlistment documents show that he stood at a mere five foot five, and that he weighed only 127 pounds (fifty-seven kilograms). He recorded his religion as ‘Church of England’, and his trade as ‘labourer’.
Contrary to the understanding of the diary keeper, Frederick Godlee, Trevor Arnold was not South Australian at all. Rather, he was Tasmanian. He had been born in Hobart, and was living at Triabunna as he contemplated joining the AIF. He returned to Hobart to enlist in 1917.
Following his voyage on the Commonwealth, Private Arnold joined his unit in Egypt and became Trooper Arnold. A short time later, he entered the deserts beyond the Suez Canal to advance on the enemy. In April and May of 1918, his unit — a subunit of the First Light Horse Brigade — took part in a successful series of raids against the enemy across the River Jordan. These raids marked the beginning of the end for the Turkish enemy, and the capture of Amman (along with ten thousand prisoners) in September 1918, broke their resolve completely. Arnold had helped bring the enemy to its knees and restore a temporary peace to the deserts.
He survived his encounters with the Turks in the deserts of Palestine and Syria. He also survived his later role in suppressing the Arab Revolt that sprang up immediately following the war. Six months after the Armistice, he was finally on a troopship for the return voyage to Australia. He arrived home in Australia, being discharged in the Sixth Military District (Tasmania) on 11 June 1919.
Having survived war in the desert as well as fights in the ring, Trevor Arnold had little to prove thereafter. It is not known whether he boxed again, or instead hung up his gloves to pursue other activities. Either way, he finishes, in this story at least, as a winner. He was, after all, Champion of the Commonwealth.
Based on the following documents:
National Archives of Australia, First Australian Imperial Forces personnel dossiers (World War 1 service records), Arnold T G, and
PRG446 — War Diary of Frederick Oscar Godlee, 1917–1919 (provided by the State Library of South Australia, with kind permission of Mrs M. Gurner).
For the love of football
by Debbie Spillane
WHEN I FIRST met Julie Dolan, I had no idea who she was.
I’d arrived in a frazzled state at a Football Federation Australia function being held to announce details of the Socceroos’ qualifying schedule for the 2014 World Cup. It was a hideous, wet, midwinter night in Sydney. Traffic had been gridlocked across the city, and my cab ride from the ABC offices to the exclusive harbourside restaurant venue had taken three times longer than I’d expected.
As I stepped out of the cab, my mobile announced a text message. Bad news. It was a fellow female sports journalist advising me that her weekend roster had been changed, forcing her to withdraw from Hens FC, the all-woman panel show I hosted on Saturdays discussing sports.
‘Damn!’ I thought. I hated trying to find panellists at short notice and started racking my brain to think of someone available who had football knowledge, because the Socceroos were playing on Saturday morning and that was going to be a key talking point.
And that wasn’t my only concern. Given that my taste for the round-ball football code was acquired relatively late in life, I wasn’t the sort of person who walked into a Football Federation do and was recognised by every guest in the room. In fact, it quickly became clear that I was confronting that awkward option of standing alone and admiring the view for an extended period. Then I saw my colleague Stephanie Brantz, who was compering the proceedings.
I made a beeline for Steph, who was talking to two other women. One of them was a slight but extremely athletic-looking woman in her forties or fifties.
Steph introduced us. ‘You know Julie Dolan, don’t you, Deb?’
I tried to cover what I sensed was a gap in my knowledge by giving it the vague each-way bet: ‘Um, maybe, I’m not sure, have we met before …?’
When Steph told Julie my name, she responded enthusiastically. ‘Oh, you’re Deb Spillane. I have to tell you I love Hens FC.’
‘Really?’ I was surprised, but suddenly sensed an opportunity. ‘Do you want to be on it this Saturday?’
‘Are you serious?’ she replied with a laugh. When I told her I’d just had a late withdrawal and was in urgent need of a replacement, she laughed again and, with a sort of I’m-up-for-anything attitude, agreed.
It was a weird situation. I’d just booked a guest for a sports show with no idea who she was, although, in my defence, it was an intuitive gamble. Julie Dolan has something of a quiet presence about her. The combination of her lean, fit build, and the fact that she was at a Football Federation function made me guess she’d probably played the game. When I asked if that was the case she gave me a sardonic ‘Yeah, a bit’.
Steph then pointed out that while the top male player in the A-League each season is presented with the Johnny Warren Medal, the top player in the women’s W-League gets the Julie Dolan Medal.
Two feelings hit me at once. One: embarrassment that I did not recognise — in fact, had never heard of — someone so clearly influential in football in Australia. Two: relief that I hadn’t booked some clueless, random hanger-on to come on my show and talk about sports the following Saturday.
Julie Dolan grew up in the Sutherland Shire of Sydney in a family of ecumenical sporting tastes. Her dad, Bil
l, had played Aussie Rules, and her mum, Win, was inducted into the Tamworth Hall of Fame as a diver and narrowly missed out on Olympic selection. Her brothers played football and rugby league, she followed the Cronulla Sharks in rugby league and she and her sister, Kerry, both played hockey.
Julie, in fact, was so talented at hockey that she was in training for the New South Wales state trials when an offhand comment changed the course of her life. A teammate mentioned that she had to leave early to go to soccer training. Julie, who’d had a kick around with her brothers in the backyard, thought that sounded like fun and made enquiries about joining the team.
So it was that, at fourteen, Julie joined her first football team.
Before she turned fifteen, she was playing in an Australian senior team.
In 1975, women’s soccer (as it was known then) had no established national governing body, so there was no officially recognised Australian team. But the sport was sprouting all over the region. So much so that the Asian Ladies’ Football Confederation decided to stage the first-ever Asian Cup for women. They wanted a team from Australia, and husband-and-wife team Joe and Pat O’Connor were given the task of assembling an Aussie outfit.
The pair was among the pioneers of women’s football in Australia, with Joe having set up the St George Budapest women’s team, a side that Julie had moved into quickly after her diversion from hockey that fateful day. She’d clearly made an immediate impact because Joe chose her in that Australian team for the tournament in Hong Kong.
There was only one other fourteen-year-old who made the trip: Cindy Heydon. Julie remembers their experience of being the babies of that team as fairly surreal. ‘You can imagine, two fourteen-year-olds, let loose in Honkers! We just tried not to get into trouble.’
ABC Grandstand's Unsung Sporting Heroes Page 15