Category: Sports

It had already been a week of emotional homecomings when Robert Muir returned to St Kilda Football Club’s Moorabbin training facility last Friday, but the Boon Wurrung greeting written in giant letters above the Saints’ new players’ entrance heralded an important new beginning: “Womindjeka — eat with purpose”.

It didn’t need repeating that Muir hadn’t always felt so welcome in the 38 years since he played the last of his 68 games in the red, white and black.

Yet his passion for St Kilda is undimmed. Two years on from telling his painful and poignant story about him, his purpose was to reconnect and see what’s changed. St Kilda, after some false starts, was eager to show its progress.

Saints CEO Matt Finnis and the club’s Indigenous development manager Aunty Katrina Amon showed the way, guiding Muir and a strong contingent of his grandchildren and great-grandchildren around the rebuilt Moorabbin.

There was one hitch: in Muir’s wilderness years, much of the extended family’s allegiance had shifted to Hawthorn. A dozen Saints scarves quickly materialized and there was talk of a mass conversion, but a lifetime habit seemed hard to break when they swamped Saints assistant coach Jarryd Roughead for photos.

His partner Donna Pickett at his side, Muir was wide-eyed at the club’s transformation from what he’d known in the bad old days — not just the sincerity of his efforts to reconcile with him, but its gleaming new facilities and the general air of professionalism.

An eager trainer in his playing days, Muir responded with amazement to the well-appointed gym.

“If I was playing now, I’d be in here seven days a week,” he says.

I didn’t want to leave.

Most important to Muir and his family was St Kilda’s embrace of them and the many visible displays of pride in the club’s Indigenous players of the past and present.

On the walls of the “Yawa” room, a key meeting place for the nine Indigenous players on the Saints’ current playing list, hang framed photographs of each of their forebears.

It gladdened Muir that Jade Gresham, also a Yorta Yorta man, could see the tradition he was part of. After training, Gresham was one of several players to stop by for a chat.

Building on work done by Nathan Lovett-Murray, Amon, a Quandamooka woman with more than three decades of experience in the education sector, talks of her work with passion and pride. It has made an immediate impact in both the club’s football and administrative departments.

Many small things St Kilda tended to get wrong in the past are now being done right. A voice among the Muir party summarized Amon’s approach well: “ella She gets it.”

“The club has been working really hard to make Indigenous people feel comfortable in our space — to feel welcome and that we honor and respect Aboriginal culture,” Amon says.

“We also want non-Indigenous people to feel comfortable enough to ask questions and investigate our culture, because our culture is their culture.”

The Muir family’s week of reconnection had begun days earlier with a trip back to Yorta Yorta country — an overdue and profound experience they hope is the beginning of a deeper connection to their culture.

“It felt good,” Muir says.

“I just sat there, watching the kids. They had a ball. We showed them all the canoe trees and made a walking stick. I told them stories and we had a smoking ceremony. It bonded them all.”

“We just need to do it more and get more of the family involved.”

Muir’s grandson Jai Walker, who lives in Victoria’s Gippsland region, said he was determined to make it a more regular tradition with his own son, Kaiden.

For Saturday’s game against Hawthorn, St Kilda asked Muir and grandson Nathan to enter the arena shortly before game time to carry out the club’s exchange of cultural gifts.

The crowd’s applause was nice, better still the highlight reel of Muir at his best that played on the stadium’s big screens. St Kilda’s media team had gone above and beyond to create it.

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In a scrappy game, the Saints held on for a two-goal victory. Amid the worst of the fumbling and turnovers, Muir’s main frustration was that he couldn’t go back out into the middle, grab the ball and stride down the wing.

Afterwards, Finnis called it “a particularly heartwarming couple of days”, seeing Muir and his family reconnect with the club.

“At St Kilda we openly talk about the yawa (or journey) that we are on when it comes to reconciliation and developing a culturally safe and supportive environment for all first nation’s people – be they players, staff, supporters and of course former players such as Robbie,” Finnis says.

“It’s small steps and we continue to learn every day. Having Robbie back at the club last week and seeing the pride his family holds in his achievements inspires us to continue our journey with real purpose.”

The fans, too, flocked to Muir’s side. Both at Moorabbin on Friday and on game day, a procession of them sidled up to shake his hand and say thanks. At the footy, they’re Muir’s people. He stops and chats with every one of them.

Seeing the reception for his Pop, Muir’s Ballarat-based grandson Jackson Kanoa wasn’t surprised. In years gone by, he always felt the disconnect between Muir’s media image and the things he’d hear around town.

“When you meet people who really know him, they never have a bad word to say about him,” Kanoa says.

But more than anything, Muir is a player’s man. His right knee of him is giving him hell these days, but on Friday, he wanted to climb the stairs of the club’s new Danny Frawley Center and belatedly pay his respects to a fellow son of Ballarat.

At the top of the new building, Muir broke away from the group and limped towards a ceiling-high portrait of Frawley’s face made from mosaic tiles.

Lost in the moment, the old Saint reached for the tiles that made up his former teammate’s face. When he stroked Frawley’s cheek, it was with the tenderness reserved for family.

The simplistic view is that the All Blacks just have to meet Boks force with Kiwi might and they can secure the victory they so desperately need in the Rugby Championship opener in Mbombela on Saturday (early Sunday NZT).

But coach Ian Foster – more than likely battling to save his national coaching career in these back-to-back contests in the republic – knows better.

After naming a side featuring four changes from the series decider against Ireland, including a minor bombshell at hooker where Samisoni Taukei’aho gets just his second start in the biggest test of his short career, he made it clear that brainpower would be every bit as important as horsepower in this opening matchup.

This is not your typical New Zealand-South Africa test, however.

That’s for the simple reason that the All Blacks are mightily struggling for form, cohesion and confidence, having lost four of their last five, suffered a rare home series defeat in July and not made this visit since 2018 (the Boks, would you believe, haven’t beaten the New Zealanders on their home deck since 2014).

Foster has responded by tweaking his lineup slightly, bringing in the more dynamic power game of the Chiefs hooker, starting Angus Ta’avao at tighthead prop in the absence of Nepo Laulala and Ofa Tuungafasi, moving Scott Barrett back to lock with Brodie Retallick out, and handing a fit-again Caleb Clarke his first test start since his sensational debut season in 2020.

It’s an All Blacks pack with plenty of experience – a combined 387 caps, compared to South Africa’s 449 – but light on runs on the board across the front row.

Ta’avao, Taukei’aho and sophomore loosehead George Bower look set for a brutal examination up front. They’re also a group still searching for a collective might, as badly exposed by the Irish.

A South African journalist asked Foster a slightly loaded question revolving around the Boks being a one-trick pony, but with a very good trick, and his forwards needing to “man up”.

“It’s about the team manning up,” said the coach.

“They’re definitely not a one-trick pony – that’s just a fallacy. But what they do well, they do really well. You don’t become world champions if you’re not proficient in a lot of areas. They’re a great team … but it’s about us not getting too hung up on that and going in with a mindset to play our game.

“There is an edge, we know we can play better, but you do that by honing down and getting excited about playing how we want to play.

“So, manning up? We’ll always man up. That’s not the issue. You’ve got to be smart, you’ve got to be physical and you’ve got to have a pretty good combination of both.”

Foster was also asked about any “angst” the All Blacks took in to Saturday’s first appearance in the town formerly known as Nelspruit.

“There’s been a lot of reflection from our players, on their roles, their performances… it has created an edge in the week, and then you dovetail that with where we are and who we are playing and it’s a great concoction.”

The All Blacks coach didn’t want to get into too much detail around the coaching shakeup.

He’s now hands-on with the attack, and new face Jason Ryan has command of the big men after the mid-year firing of John Plumtree and Brad Mooar.

“You’d probably write it up as just an old voice saying the same old stuff,” he responded a little cryptically to the Kiwi scribe’s question on the subject.

“Much is made of the last series, but we were in the process of putting blocks in place. Did we get everything right? No, but we’ve got a lot of faith in areas where we want to grow our game. There are tweaks in attack we’re working on, but some are just focus points we didn’t get right in the last series.”

In terms of Taukei’aho’s dramatic promotion, with Codie Taylor playing the price for an off-key July with omission (Dane Coles comes off the bench), Foster said the 24-year-old Tonga-born hooker had earned this crack.

“He’s uncomplicated. We don’t believe he gets over-awed on big occasions and he’s been a big mover the last 12 months. Physicality is not his only purpose, but it is a key strength.

“We’ve got three good hookers. Dane has an energy about him and we feel his experience of him in that latter part of the game is going to be key.

The pack selection, added Foster, had been a mix of turning to established combinations (Taukei’aho and Ta’avao are Chiefs team-mates, Barrett and Whitelock are second-row regulars for franchise and country) and rewarding form.

“We had a good look at Akira [Ioane]. We liked his growth last year. He came in for the third [Irish] test, and we felt he did some really good things. He’s a big, physical man, but he’s going to need to be.”

And Clarke’s return was a no-brainer.

“We need to get a ball in his hands, and we need to get him involved. If that happens there will be more good moments than bad ones.”

Not so much time to man up, as play well.

All Blacks: Jordie Barrett, Will Jordan, Rieko Ioane, David Havili, Caleb Clarke, Beauden Barrett, Aaron Smith; Ardie Savea, Sam Cane (capt), Akira Ioane, Scott Barrett, Sam Whitelock, Angus Ta’avao, Samisoni Taukei’aho, George Bower. Reservations: Dane Coles, Ethan de Groot, Tyrel Lomax, Tupou Vaa’i, Shannon Frizell, Finlay Christie, Richie Mo’unga, Quinn Tupaea.