Malcolm Cooper (footballer)

Last updated

Malcolm Cooper
Playing career
YearsClubGames (Goals)
1954–1955 Port Adelaide 5

Malcolm Cooper was an Aboriginal Australian Australian rules footballer who played for Port Adelaide during the 1950s, and a social activist.

Contents

Early life

Cooper spent his boyhood years at St Francis House in Adelaide, South Australia. [1]

Football

Cooper was noticed as an up-and-coming player in the junior ranks, winning the "most improved" award for Port Adelaide Colts in 1953. [2] He is considered the first Indigenous Australian to play senior football for Port Adelaide in the South Australian National Football League (SANFL). [3] (Harry Hewitt did represent the club in an interstate match against Victorian club Fitzroy in 1891 but that was not an SANFL fixture. [4] )

Cooper was also the first Aboriginal footballer to play for the Port Adelaide Football Club in a Grand Final, the seven-point loss to West Torrens in the 1953 Grand Final. [5] He played 5 SANFL games between 1954 and 1955. [6]

Social activism

Cooper met and lobbied Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies in 1963 in Canberra as part of a delegation to promote justice for Aboriginal people, [5] and in 1964 founded the Aborigines' Progress Association in Adelaide, becoming its first president. [7] The association was formed in response to perceptions that the South Australian Aborigines' Advancement League of South Australia was dominated by non-Aboriginal members, lessening the voice of Indigenous Australians politically. [8]

Death

Cooper died prematurely of a brain haemorrhage in his twenties or thirties after being flown up to Darwin from Tennant Creek. [1]

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References

  1. 1 2 "Alice Springs boys first Indigenous players for Port Adelaide – Alice Springs News – Blacksonrise.com". Blacksonrise.com – Blacksonrise. Retrieved 29 November 2020.
  2. ↑ ""Sport" Holes". Messenger (135). South Australia. 29 October 1953. p. 2. Retrieved 20 April 2019– via National Library of Australia.
  3. ↑ Homfray, Reece (13 July 2017). "If you bleed black and white you're in part of the family". WA Weekend.
  4. ↑ "The Fitzroy Matches". South Australian Chronicle . XXXIV (1, 720). 8 August 1891. p. 15. Retrieved 9 April 2017– via National Library of Australia.
  5. 1 2 Chlanda, Erwin (1 February 2019). "Kids from The Alice: When Malcolm met Menzies". Alice Springs News. Retrieved 29 November 2020.
  6. ↑ "List of Port Adelaide's indigenous players in the AFL and SANFL - portadelaidefc.com.au". portadelaidefc.com.au. Retrieved 21 October 2018.
  7. ↑ "Port Adelaide's pain over racism after long and proud Indigenous history". ABC News. 23 August 2016. Retrieved 3 November 2018.
  8. ↑ Australia, National Museum of. "Collaborating for Indigenous Rights Home". indigenousrights.net.au. Retrieved 3 November 2018.
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