Key Points：
- Chinese heritage players have engaged with Australian football for 140 years.
- Author Patrick Skene's new book, 'Celestial Footy: The Story of Chinese Heritage Aussie Rules', documents 60 footy players of Chinese background.
- Players of Chinese heritage established a new team under the White Australia policy with Aboriginal players.
In 1882, 17-year-old Henry George Chin Kit played for the Ironbark Football Club against Charing Cross in the Bendigo Football League. It remains a mystery how he, being Chinese, learned to play Australian Rules football in those days.
The son of a Guangdong Taishan migrant who followed hundreds of his compatriots to Australia during Victoria's Gold Rush, Henry became the first player with Chinese heritage documented to have played Australian Rules football.
It is generally believed that there isn’t much connection between the Australian-Chinese community and Aussie Rules football.
In late June this year, the Sydney Swans hosted a China-themed game to attract the Chinese community in Australia to once again participate in this sport. China’s Ambassador to Australia Xiao Qian toss the coin for the game.
Jin Wu Koon Dragon & Lion Dance Association performed at the China-themed game in Sydney in June. Credit: Ranky Law
But a new book by Patrick Skene, the author of several works on the meeting grounds between Australian sports and multicultural communities, documents Chinese migrants who have been engaged with Australian Rules football for 140 years.
In Celestial Footy: The Story of Chinese Heritage Aussie Rules, Mr Skene tells the stories of 60 Australian Rules football players of Chinese background.
Patrick Skene's new book, 'Celestial Footy: The Story of Chinese Heritage Aussie Rules' tells the story of the Chinese connection to AFL. Credit: Don Arnold/Getty Images
We are fed the stereotype that the Chinese were just here for the gold and they didn’t really involve themselves in the local affairs… but through these stories, a very different picture emerged.Patrick Skene
In the mid-19th century, Australia’s Gold Rush attracted a large number of Chinese immigrants and the gold mining areas, like Bendigo and Ballarat, became the birthplace not only of Chinese-Australian immigration but also of their involvement in the history of Australian football.
On an August afternoon in 1892, a large crowd of Chinese players in black stockings and red sashes with long Manchu pigtails on their heads, assembled outside the Red Lion Hotel in Goldfields, Ballarat.
These were two footy teams made up of the miners and the market gardeners who were about to play an unprecedented game – a Goldfield League match between two Chinese teams.
“[They] were transported in a six-car procession with the townspeople cheering them down the dusty streets,” describes Rob Hess, an Australian sports historian and associate professor at Victoria University.
The press at the time described the match as “the celestial football match”.
In the Victorian goldfields era, the Chinese were often referred to as ‘celestials’ or ‘children of the sun’ by Australian writers.Patrick Skene
So emblematic was this word for the identity of the local Chinese community that Mr Skene borrowed it for the title of his new book.
As described in the book, Victoria’s economy boomed and prospered in the late 19th century and stimulated the population explosion which made Australian football a tool for social cohesion in rural areas.
The “celestial” football match was an example, which not only made the Goldfields League game popular in the Ballarat area, but quickly spread across Victoria.
In 1928, a portrait of Chinese player Les Kew Ming who was well-known for his kicking, was printed on a cigarette card. Credit: Courtesy 'Celestial Footy: The Story of Chinese Heritage Aussie Rules'
At the same time, however, the then practice of rejecting non-British immigrants had intensified.
In December 1901, the Immigration Restriction Act came into force, specifically restricting non-British immigration to Australia.
This officially imposed the White Australia policy that made Chinese people in Australia become ‘the other’ and reduced their rights as citizens.
“For example, the Chinese were not allowed to work in key union jobs,” Mr Skene tells SBS Chinese.
In his book, he quotes Dr Siqin Wang, an honorary research fellow in GI Science at Queensland University, as saying that around 100,000 people entered Australia from China between the 1840s and 1901, but the number of Chinese-Australians on the continent had fallen to less than 15,000 by the start of the World War II.
Wally Koochew with the players of the Carlton team in 1908. Credit: Courtesy 'Celestial Footy: The Story of Chinese Heritage Aussie Rules'
“When Chinese player Wally Koochew was selected for the Carlton Club in 1908, a member of Carlton was outraged, and handed his membership back. Because, he said, picking a Chinese person is a death blow to the White Australia policy,” he said.
But surprisingly, despite under the 72-year-long policy, the Chinese community’s participation in Australian Rules football was exceptionally high.
Mr Skene’s research found that at least 100 players of Chinese heritage engaged with the AFL between 1901 and 1973.
In contrast, there was only one Chinese player in cricket, rugby and football teams in the same period.
Footy was by far the most popular sport in the Chinese community... not many people understood that.Patrick Skene
While the Chinese community in Sydney and Melbourne had to be confined to Chinatown under the White Australia policy, in Darwin, “they were the centre of the community,” says Mr Skene.
“When Australian Rules football came to Darwin, the Chinese played pretty much straight away,” he elaborates.
Mr Skene narrates that in 1926, when Darwin’s white athletes broke away from the Aboriginal players to form their own league, 30 Chinese athletes moved from the Darwin Soccer Club to establish the Darwin Buffaloes alongside the Aboriginal players.
And they formed their own league, the Darwin Football League.
A group photo of the Darwin Buffaloes from 1950-1951. Credit: Courtesy 'Celestial Footy: The Story of Chinese Heritage Aussie Rules'
In his research, he also found that it is not only in recent years that Chinese players have excelled in the sport and won accolades.
As far back as 1896, a Chinese athlete called Billy Wong helped the Mooroopna Club – a small town in country Victoria — win the premiership.
The name Billy Wong became even more legendary when 90 years later, his great grandson with the same name helped the same club win the premiership yet again.
In 2019, Billy Wong was inducted into the Goulburn Valley League Hall of Fame. Credit: Rodney Braithwaite/Shepparton News
At the beginning of the Western Australian Football League (WAFL) 1980 season, the West Perth Cardinals welcomed the club’s youngest-ever captain, the 23-year-old Les Fong, who had won a premiership with the club.
Les Fong is arguably the greatest of all the players.Patrick Skene
“This is a 140-year-old hidden tradition which covered a lot of the old days, but it hadn’t been linked to the current players who have Chinese heritage,” Mr Skene says, adding, “the linking of the chain has actually created this 140-year-old sporting tradition that I find a very significant story in Australia’s history”.
On 14 May 2017, Port Adelaide undertook a historic match against Gold Coast Suns in Shanghai, tying Australian football and the Australia-China diplomatic relationship.
Among those who stood at Shanghai’s Jiangwan Stadium six years ago, was Port Adelaide player Brendon Ah Chee.
His great-great-grandfather Owen Ah Chee was an immigrant from Guangdong who helped found the small town of Derby in Western Australia in 1885.
The Ah Chee family took root in Australia. Owen married an Aboriginal woman, Nellie.
But little did he know that history would bring his fifth-generation grandchildren back to China through an Australian sport.
In Celestial Footy, Brendon says, “it’s a beautiful thing … I’d love to tell him that we’re grateful for what he did for Derby and that we have kept his surname alive and we’re carrying it proudly.”
The 2017 AFL match in Shanghai attracted nearly 6,000 Australian fans.
“I don’t think there’s ever been a mass travelling of Australians to China at any scale ever in our history,” Mr Skene says.
The AFL also hosted a match for premiership points between St Kilda and Port Adelaide in Shanghai in 2019.
This annual international game has been interrupted since the outbreak of COVID.
A Future Stars Program with a three-year commitment will identify up-and-coming players of Chinese heritage who will participate in specialised coaching sessions with AFL and Sydney Swans development coaches.
“I’m sure there will be more and more Chinese Aussie football fans,” Mr Skene says with confidence.
While there is no data to support his ideas, as a multicultural marketing practitioner, Mr Skene is also confident that “there are way more Chinese AFL supporters of clubs than there are for the rugby league or any of the other sports. And it’s been a proven diplomatic platform.”
