School Sport, 2007

"Aussies rule…OK!" an article by Laura Taylor for School Sport.  Issue No. 14, April/May 2007:

They’ve thrashed us at cricket and rugby – now one of Australia ’s national sports is gaining a foothold in the life of Britain ’s school timetable.

Aussie Rules football has proved a popular addition to Carshalton Boys Sports College in London – so much so that it has even kicked traditional soccer off the PE curriculum.

Now director of sport Paul Avery is urging other schools to follow suit as a means of spicing up their sporting schedules.

He explained: “We set Aussie Rules up as a summer school activity five years ago and the boys on the summer school loved it, so a year later I made the decision to take football off the PE curriculum.

“We still have at least an A and B team in every school year as well as playing Saturday morning fixtures. All our boys will and do play football every minute of the day.

“But as head of PE at the time I believed that football was not a good motivating tool for improving teaching and learning around our school.

“I wanted to broaden their horizons and show and teach them new activities. Also football at the time was being let down by poor role models, a lack of respect for officials, swearing etc.”

To help set up the radical move, Paul contacted Brian Clarke at Aussie Rules UK for support and guidance. Now the sport is thriving.

“No-one had played it before so we introduced it first at KS3 for a six week block. All students started off from the same learning point and behaviour improved immediately because they wanted to learn something new.

“In the first year 500 students took part in the programme. Then in the second year the programme was opened to the whole school – 1100 students.

“We have also introduced it to all of our cluster schools through our SSCo and have run primary school festival days. We have even got to play in front of 20,000 fans at the Oval before the Senior AFL game.”

Paul knew the programme was really paying dividends when eight pupils from Carshalton represented the England Dragonslayers in the first-ever Aussie Rules junior international against Denmark in Copenhagen .

“We beat Denmark 46-6 which was a bit of a shock as Denmark have been running a junior programme for over 10 years,” he added. “One of our students was captain, another was top scorer and we hope to arrange a rematch sometime.”

Other international matches are due to be played against France , Sweden , Wales and the USA .

Elsewhere, boys have been playing Aussie Rules football for some time at The Trinity School in Nottingham .

Australian head of PE Marcus Caton introduced the sport for KS3 and 4 students with all boys in year nine completing a seven-week unit and taking part in matches on the school’s rugby pitch.

Aussie Rules has been included in the schools extra curricular sporting programme with an inter-house competition planned.

“It was introduced in an effort to broaden the already wide array of sports on offer at the school and expose the students to an important part of Australian sporting culture,” Marcus explained.

“The boys have really taken to it because it’s new to them, the principles of play are simple and there is no previous experience to give anyone an advantage over others.

“Our goal now is to find other schools in the UK who are interested in developing the sport, or schools who are already playing and develop a series of annual fixtures.”

Any schools interested in introducing the sport, and or establishing fixtures, can contact Marcus Caton at mcaton@trinity.nottingham.sch.uk or Paul Avery at pavery@carshaltonboys.org