The Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games (GC2018) were branded innovative and inclusive — an opportunity for all Australians, including Indigenous Australians—to showcase their culture and talents. Underpinning this inclusivity, Games partners, including Indigenous Elders, developed a Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP), the first delivered by a major Australian sport event. Acknowledging the Games’ recent staging and gender equity objectives, this research explores how the GC2018 RAP enabled the inclusion of Indigenous Australian women. A social inclusion framework based on four inclusion dimensions—spatial, relational, functional and power— frames our examination of the implementation of the RAP. In applying this framework, the research informs critical debates concerned with understanding RAP outcomes and effects. Key themes include making space for Indigeneity, cultural belonging, skills and leadership opportunities and enabling the Indigenous voice. The study findings can inform future planning of reconciliatory activities associated with sport events.
Indigenous sport history in Australia focuses almost exclusively on Aboriginal people and ignores the Torres Strait Islands. Based on sheer neglect alone there is a clear need for inclusion of the Strait, and there are also compelling sport histories yet to be explored. Indeed, sport has been a popular pursuit in the Strait and several Islander athletes have been prominent nationally and internationally. Sport history research in and with the Strait has the potential to differentiate this region's history from that of Aboriginal Australia, with which it sometimes is conflated. This article surveys the sparse research on the sport history of the Torres Strait Islands, offers a critique of that literature, considers reasons for the overall neglect, and suggests possible areas for research as well as source and methodological considerations for such research efforts.
In the contemporary global war of spectator and participant sports the Australian Football League (AFL) pursued three revolutions, seeking to ensure the Australian game remains Australias most successful sport. A womens national league, AFLW, in February 2017, addressed high profile spectator support and womens participation as players. Despite some voices of discontent AFLWs great success built on three decades of increased womens participation in Australian Football, on and off the field. AFLX, a tentative 2018 and 2019 experiment in inventing an instant sport, with smaller teams, spaces and shorter matches, drew traditionalists opposition, as it sensibly addressed new overseas markets and new immigrant demographics. A 2019 tentative revolution changed AFL rules, challenging the ugly, defensive play characterising most top sports. The three revolutions might ensure Australian Footballs sporting primacy in 2058, during the bicentenary of the oldest codified form of football.
