Martin Flanagan | |
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Born | Martin Joseph Flanagan 1955 (age 67–68) Launceston, Tasmania, Australia |
Occupation | Sportswriter, journalist, columnist |
Nationality | Australian |
Alma mater | University of Tasmania |
Relatives | Richard Flanagan (brother) |
Martin Joseph Flanagan (born 1955) is an Australian journalist and author. He writes on sport, particularly Australian rules football. Flanagan also writes opinion pieces, some of which are examinations of Australian culture and the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. [1]
Martin Flanagan is one of six children of Arch Flanagan, a survivor of the Burma Death Railway. He is descended from Irish convicts transported to Van Diemen's Land in the 1840s. He grew up in Tasmania, graduated in Law at the University of Tasmania, and now lives in Melbourne. One of his three brothers is Tasmanian author, historian and film director Richard Flanagan. [2]
Flanagan has written 16 books, including the novel The Call (1998), an "historical imagining" into the life of Tom Wills, the enigmatic father of Australian rules football and captain-coach of the first Aboriginal cricket team. Flanagan portrays Wills as a tragic figure caught between white and black Australia, and postulates that the Aboriginal game of Marngrook influenced his conception of Australian rules football. [3] Flanagan subsequently became embroiled in football's "history wars" which received significant coverage in the national media in 2008, the year of the game's 150th anniversary celebrations. [4] He and Bruce Myles adapted The Call into a stage play of the same name, which premiered at Melbourne's Malthouse Theatre in 2004. [5]
The Game in Time of War (2003) is a collection of essays Flanagan wrote on the role that Australian rules football plays during wartime. He co-authored the non-fiction books The Line (2005) with his father Arch Flanagan, and The Fight (2006) with Tom Uren. Flanagan has also written biographies of Australian rules footballers: Richo (2010) on Matthew Richardson [6] and The Short Long Book (2015) on Michael Long. In 2023 he published a memoir called ‘’The Empty Honour Board’’.
Australian rules football, also called Australian football or Aussie rules, or more simply football or footy, is a contact sport played between two teams of 18 players on an oval field, often a modified cricket ground. Points are scored by kicking the oval ball between the central goal posts, or between a central and outer post.
Adam Roy Goodes is a former professional Australian rules footballer who played for the Sydney Swans in the Australian Football League (AFL). Goodes holds an elite place in VFL/AFL history as a dual Brownlow Medallist, dual premiership player, four-time All-Australian, member of the Indigenous Team of the Century and representative of Australia in the International Rules Series. In addition, he has held the record for the most VFL/AFL games played by an Indigenous player, surpassing Andrew McLeod's record of 340 during the 2014 AFL season before having his own record surpassed by Shaun Burgoyne during the 2019 AFL season.
Thomas Wentworth Wills was an Australian sportsman who is credited with being Australia's first cricketer of significance and a founder of Australian rules football. Born in the British penal colony of New South Wales to a wealthy family descended from convicts, Wills grew up in the bush on stations owned by his father, the squatter and politician Horatio Wills, in what is now the state of Victoria. As a child, he befriended local Aboriginal people, learning their language and customs. Aged 14, Wills went to England to attend Rugby School, where he became captain of its cricket team and played an early version of rugby football. After Rugby, Wills represented Cambridge University in the annual cricket match against Oxford, and played at first-class level for Kent and the Marylebone Cricket Club. An athletic bowling all-rounder with tactical nous, he was regarded as one of the finest young cricketers in England.
Football in Australia refers to numerous codes which each have major shares of the mainstream sports market, media, broadcasting, professional athletes, financial performance and grassroots participation: Australian rules football, rugby league, rugby union and soccer. There are four pre-eminent professional football competitions played in Australia: the Australian Football League, the National Rugby League, Super Rugby and the A-League (soccer). By most measures, including attendance, television audience and media presence across the most states, Australian football is the most popular nationally. However, in the states of New South Wales and Queensland, rugby football is overall the most watched and receives the most media coverage, especially the Rugby League State of Origin contested between the two states referred to as “Australian sport's greatest rivalry”. In recent times, there has been an increase in popularity in Australian football and corresponding decrease in popularity of Rugby union in New South Wales and Queensland. Soccer, while extending its lead in participation rate, particularly in the large cities, and improving its performance at the FIFA World Cup and at the FIFA Women's World Cup, continues to attract the overall lowest attendance, as well as media and public interest, of the four codes.
In 1868, a cricket team composed of Aboriginal Australians toured England between May and October of that year, thus becoming the first organised group of Australian sportspeople to travel overseas. It would be another ten years before an Australian cricket team classed as representative would leave the country.
Marn Grook, marn-grook or marngrook is the popular collective name for traditional Indigenous Australian football games played at gatherings and celebrations by sometimes more than 100 players. From the Woiwurung language of the Kulin people, it means "ball" and "game".
Matthew Richardson is a former professional Australian rules footballer and current media personality who represented Richmond in the Australian Football League (AFL).
Women's Australian rules football, is the female-only form of Australian rules football, generally with some modification to the laws of the game.
Australian Aboriginal culture includes a number of practices and ceremonies centered on a belief in the Dreamtime and other mythology. Reverence and respect for the land and oral traditions are emphasised. Over 300 languages and other groupings have developed a wide range of individual cultures. Due the colonization of Australia under terra nullius concept these cultures were treated as one monoculture. Australian Aboriginal art has existed for thousands of years and ranges from ancient rock art to modern watercolour landscapes. Aboriginal music has developed a number of unique instruments. Contemporary Australian Aboriginal music spans many genres. Aboriginal peoples did not develop a system of writing before colonisation, but there was a huge variety of languages, including sign languages.
Australian rules football has had a significant impact on popular culture in its native Australia, capturing the imagination of Australian film, art, music, television and literature.
The Cullin-la-ringo massacre, known historically as the Wills tragedy, was a massacre of white colonists by Indigenous people that occurred north of modern-day Springsure in Central Queensland, Australia on 17 October 1861. Nineteen men, women and children were killed in the attack, including Horatio Wills, owner of Cullin-la-ringo station. It is the single largest massacre of colonists by Aboriginal people in Australian history. In the weeks afterwards, police, native police and civilian posses carried out "one of the most lethal punitive expeditions in frontier history", hunting down and killing up to 370 members of the Gayiri Aboriginal tribe implicated in the massacre.
Derek Peardon is a former Australian rules football player who played in the VFL between 1968 and 1971 for the Richmond Football Club.
George Frederick Smeaton was an Australian rules footballer who played for the Richmond Football Club in the Victorian Football League (VFL) between 1935 and 1942 and then again from 1944 to 1946.
Moyston is a town in the Western District region of Victoria, Australia, near the Grampians mountain range. The town is located in the Rural City of Ararat local government area, 224 kilometres (139 mi) north west of the state capital, Melbourne. At the 2021 census, Moyston and the surrounding area had a population of 403.
The origins of Australian rules football date back to the late 1850s in Melbourne, the capital city of Victoria.
The Dreamtime at the 'G is an annual Australian rules football match between Australian Football League clubs Essendon and Richmond.
The Marngrook Footy Show was a sport panel show broadcast in Australia focusing on Australian rules football and aimed at Indigenous viewers. Debuting on television in 2007 after 10 years on radio, the show first aired on NITV and on Channel 31 Melbourne, moving to ABC2 during 2011 and 2012 before moving back to NITV. The show was cancelled in October 2019, replaced by Yokayi Footy in March 2020.
The sport of Australian rules football has been called by a number of different names throughout its history. Since 1905, with the formation of the Australasian Football Council, the game has been called "Australian football". The name has been codified by the AFL Commission, as the game's name in the "Laws of Australian football". Historically, the sport has been referred to as "Victorian rules", the "Victorian game", "Australasian rules", the "Australian game" and "Australian national football", "national football", the "bouncing game" and, derisively, "aerial ping pong" as well as several other names. Today, the common names for the sport are "Australian Football" and "Australian rules football" and it is referred to as "football", "footy", "Aussie rules" or sometimes as "AFL".
In 1870, Irish Australian artist William Handcock completed a portrait of Tom Wills, Australia's pre-eminent cricketer of the mid-19th century and one of the key founders of Australian rules football. It is unknown who commissioned the work or where it was kept after completion, but in 1923 it was acquired by the Melbourne Cricket Club through its then-secretary, Test cricket great Hugh Trumble.
Cricketer and Australian rules football pioneer Tom Wills is the subject of a growing body of works in art and popular culture.