Since the 2016 VFL season, the Coburg Football Club has been proud to celebrate NAIDOC week each year by working with Aboriginal members of the community to have an Indigenous design guernsey created and worn in a VFL match.
In 2022, the club will once again be celebrating NAIDOC week in the same fashion, however, 2022 will also see the club’s Womens team also wear the specially designed guernseys in a game.
NAIDOC week 2022, which runs from the 3rd of July till the 10th July, has the theme of Get Up! Stand Up, Show Up! which encourages all of us to champion institutional, structural, collaborative, and cooperative change while celebrating those who have already driven and led change in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities over generations.
This years NAIDOC week Indigenous guernseys have been designed by proud young Wurundjeri artist Ky-ya Nicholson-Ward who earlier this year also designed the guernsey worn by Narrm during the Sir Doug Nicholls round in the AFL competition.
The design of the guernsey incorporates the following features:
- A large circle in the centre which represents the large permanent Aboriginal camp that was situated behind what we now know as Pentridge.
- Ripples of water which represent the Merri Creek and all of the fish, mussels and yabbies that used to be harvested from it
- Symmetrical lines that represent the many paths that have been walked by Wurundjeri people for tens of thousands of years
- The NAIDOC week 2022 logo
Because the club’s SEWFL Premier Division Women’s team does not have a fixtured game during NAIDOC week 2022, they will wear the special guernseys on Sunday June 26th at Piranha Park when they take on Tyabb.
The club’s VFL Mens team will wear the guernsey on Sunday 3rd July at Piranha Park when they face the Gold Coast Suns for the first time.
Both of these games will feature a pregame Welcome to Country.
The guernseys also feature the logo of Sobah Beverages which is a proudly Aboriginal owned, Queensland based company that make non-alcoholic beverages. Their delicious non-alcoholic beer is the perfect drop for those that understand and appreciate that you do not need to have alcohol to have a great time wherever you are which is a very important message for our community. Head to https://sobah.com.au/ for more information about their products.
Please show your support for NAIDOC week by attending each of these games and being together as we Get Up! Stand Up and Show Up as we champion NAIDOC week and our proud Aboriginal history and tradition again in 2022!
