The AFL has asked clubs to have an Indigenous specialist present when they interview First Nations youngsters at the upcoming draft combine.
In a memo to the 18 clubs, the AFL “highly recommended” that the clubs have their Indigenous player development manager with recruiting staff when interviewing First Nations players at the draft combine, which begins on Friday and continues on Saturday and Sunday.
The AFL has sent a memo to clubs ahead of the draft combine.Credit:Darrian Traynor
In what is clearly a response to the fallout to the Hawthorn scandal involving alleged mistreatment of First Nations players and their partners, the AFL told the clubs that they should have their Indigenous player development manager – or another First Nations member of staff – on the interview panel for Indigenous draft prospects.
In the memo, the AFL’s talent operations lead Roger Berryman and wellbeing and prevention projects manager Nicky Couston told the clubs that including Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander representation on the interview panel “is to support the cultural safety for all involved in the interview”.
The AFL also advised the clubs, via the memo – which was issued just before the draft combine – that if they did not have an Indigenous staffer available, then the AFL would provide the clubs with one. “The AFL is able to provide a representative for the players,” it said.
“The group of First Nations players will be represented and supported by the AFL staff throughout the event,” the memo said of the draft combine, in which list managers, recruiters and club psychologists/psychiatrists interview the teenagers they are interested in drafting, while the players also undergo tests of their athletic prowess, measuring their speed, endurance, spring and agility.
Sources familiar with past draft combines, formerly known as the draft camp, said the AFL’s recommendation – a virtual mandate to have the Indigenous expert present in interviews with First Nations teenagers – was unprecedented and a measure of the AFL’s increased awareness of the risks of non-Indigenous officials mishandling a young First Nations player.
A number of Indigenous players will be at the draft combine, including Alwyn Davey jnr – an Essendon father-son recruit who is highly regarded. More than 10 per cent of all current AFL players have Indigenous backgrounds, with the clubs now required to have an Indigenous staffer in the football department.
The Hawthorn scandal prompted the AFL to set up a four-member panel to investigate the allegations contained in Hawthorn’s cultural safety review and first aired by the ABC online. The most serious allegations were levelled against then Hawthorn coach Alastair Clarkson, then football operations boss Chris Fagan and then Hawthorn welfare manager Jason Burt.
The lawyer representing one of the families that contributed the Hawthorn cultural review, Dr Judy Courtin, said it was too soon to say whether her clients would be willing to speak to the AFL panel. The AFL cannot compel the former Hawthorn players or their families to speak in the inquiry, those families having expressed misgivings about the independence of the AFL’s investigation.
Clarkson, Fagan and Burt have said via statements that they welcomed the investigation and that they were not guilty of any wrongdoing. Fagan has taken leave of absence from his position as coach of the Brisbane Lions, while Clarkson has deferred his start as North Melbourne coach as a result of the investigation. AFL commissioner Andrew Newbold, who was Hawthorn president for some of the period when the incidents allegedly occurred, also has stepped aside from his position on the commission.
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