ABSTRACT
Sport is one of the few avenues marking positive achievements for Aboriginal Australians. Within Australian Rules Football (AFL), Aboriginal players are represented from the bush league through to elite levels. Grassroots circumstances, particularly all-Aboriginal AFL clubs, provide the greatest opportunity to foster wellbeing, maintain kinship, and celebrate cultural pride for Aboriginal players and supporters. Sport potentiates as a critical space of transition into adulthood for young Aboriginal men, given the demise of Aboriginal ceremonial rites. This chapter explores the transformation of fortunes for an all-Aboriginal football club through Vogler’s (2007) heroic template. This journey opens up an understudied possibility of heroic wellbeing that entails cultural persistence, collective agency, and healthy resistance for marginalized sub-groups.
