If you stayed in your seats throughout round 23’s “battle of the west” last season between Parramatta and Penrith, you might have witnessed some unusual on-field tactics.
That includes players in Parramatta kit holding hands to form an unbroken, snaking defensive line, with the player on one end going in to make a tackle. You might have heard repetitive chanting or been confused by some creative rule interpretations.
Children from schools in Parramatta play a rugby league-kabaddi hybrid game at half-time of the round 23 clash between Parramatta and Penrith last season.Credit: Parramatta Eels
The players weren’t from the Eels or the Panthers, but from three junior schools in Parramatta, and the game was a hybrid of league and the south Asian team-based tackling sport kabaddi, which translates as “holding hands”.
This week, the NRL celebrates its fourth Multicultural Round, but the work of bringing new communities to the game goes on year round. And it seems to be paying off. This year a record 65 national heritages are represented in the NRL and NRLW, from American Samoa to Zimbabwe. About a third of NRL players were born overseas and almost half have at least one parent born overseas.
The skills in kabaddi, in which a raider tries to tag out defenders and return to their own half without being tackled, have some transferability to league. Credit: NRL
From pioneering Indigenous players to the post-war migrant stars of the 1970s and ’80s and the Polynesians who paved the way for Pacific Islanders to make up the largest contingents in the men’s and women’s games today, the professional game has always been multicultural.
But the round, which mirrors the AFL’s Cultural Heritage Round, also reflects the ongoing competition for newly arrived communities – part of the code war that prompted ARL Commission chairman Peter V’landys to claim earlier this year that rugby league was “indisputably the No.1 sport in Australia and the Pacific”.
Nowhere is this contest more apparent than Parramatta, a club whose western catchment area includes south Asian, Pasifika, Middle Eastern, African and south-east Asian communities.
“Many newly arrived families come from places where rugby league doesn’t exist, so there’s no built in understanding of the game, the rules or the culture around it,” Kate Chapman, who manages the Eels’ community outreach program, said.
The 65 national heritages represented in the NRL and NRLW this year.Credit: NRL
The Eels are going to great lengths to accommodate different cultural backgrounds, from ticket giveaways for new migrant fans to tailored nutrition and training loads for Muslim senior and junior players fasting during Ramadan.
In the five local government areas in the Eels’ catchment, Indian fans comprise the third largest ancestry group (12 per cent), after English and Australian.
It is hoped the kabaddi-rugby league hybrid game could help that interest flow through to participation, some day creating a generation of south Asian rugby league stars, mirroring the recent AFL success of players from the Sudanese community. Port Adelaide and former Sydney Swans defender Aliir Aliir was the first player with Sudanese heritage taken in the national draft in 2013, while GWS player Leek Aleer was drafted in 2021 after coming to Australia as a refugee when he was six years old.
Telugu Titans and Jaipur Pink Panthers players in action during a Pro Kabaddi League match. The sport is the second most popular in India after cricket.Credit: Getty Images
At the official launch of Multicultural Round, Wests Tigers centre and Lebanese-Australian Adam Doueihi spoke about the popularity of league among second- and third-generation migrants.
“I’m pretty close with the other first-grade guys – me, Jacob Kiraz [Bulldogs], Mitch Moses [Eels], Alex Twal [Tigers],” he said. “We want to do everything we can to help younger Lebanese kids come through our game.”
For all the positive steps, the themed round also brings questions about racism in Australian sport. Last year, the NRL banned two spectators indefinitely following the alleged abuse of South Sydney Indigenous players Latrell Mitchell and Cody Walker.
Peter Mamouzelos (Rabbitohs), Sione Katoa (Sharks) and Adam Doueihi and Alex Seyfarth (Tigers) with junior players during the launch of Multicultural Round.Credit: Getty Images
A 2024 UTS study found that racism among spectators may be on the rise. More than 2000 fans of the AFL, NRL and A-League Men’s competitions were surveyed and about a third said they had witnessed racism at recent matches, but only 3 per cent of AFL fans, 2 per cent of NRL fans and 1 per cent of A-League Men supporters said they had used anonymous hotlines advertised during matches to report it.
Daryl Adair, associate professor of sport management at UTS, said themed rounds were not a solution and can even provoke backlash because they were perceived as “woke”.
“They are, instead, a celebration of those communities in sport, whether as players or fans,” he said.
A Japanese dance group practices at Belmore for Canterbury’s multicultural day in 1994.Credit: Steven Siewert
One of those multicultural success stories is the Bulldogs. The club’s Belmore Sports Ground hosted multicultural days at matches in the 1990s until the events outgrew the ground.
At the launch of this year’s round, players and coaching staff held a potluck with a spread ranging from falafel and pitta to homemade lasagne and Vegemite sandwiches. Darug man Josh Curran wore shorts with a dot-painting design, while Reed Mahoney wore budgie smugglers.
Stephen Crichton, in traditional Samoan dress, wheeled out a boom box to play Polynesian tunes, as well as Dean Martin’s That’s Amore. After flicking off the music to take questions, he was direct about racism in the stands: “It’s not a nice thing.”
“I feel like this Multicultural Round will definitely show how diverse our community is, and especially here at the Bulldogs,” he said.
As well as historic Middle Eastern and Mediterranean connections (a recent survey found 41 per cent of Bulldogs fans spoke Arabic, 18 per cent spoke Greek and 15 per cent Italian), there are now strong links with the Pacific Islands. Last year the NRL said about half of NRL and NRLW players had Pasifika or Maori heritage.
The Bulldogs’ links include pathways from Fijian second-rower Viliame Kikau’s Kikau Academy and semi-professional Fijian club the Kaiviti Silktails.
“It’s very hard to get opportunities to live a life like we live over here,” Kikau said. “It just means a lot when the club helps.”
Bulldogs coach Cameron Ciraldo said they had recently identified more Silktails prospects. Ciraldo, the grandson of Italian migrants, echoed Crichton in saying the game was now better at embracing its multicultural heritage.
“Things can always be done better,” he said. “If we continue to do that, we’ll continue to be the No.1 sport in Australia.”
