Latest news with #Kickett
West Australian
01-07-2025
- General
- West Australian
Emma Garlett: With its roots in mourning, NAIDOC Week is now a celebration
Today, NAIDOC Week is one of the most significant events on the Australian calendar. Around the country, we gather to celebrate the strength, courage, leadership and resilience of First Nations people throughout our history. We honour our elders and champion our youth. We hold walks and art exhibitions, family days and award ceremonies. There are festivals and sporting events and school assemblies. NAIDOC Week has its roots in an act of protest by Indigenous activists in Sydney, who held what they called the Day of Mourning back on January 26, 1938. From those beginnings, NAIDOC Week has grown into a week-long festival to not only mourn what we have lost but to commemorate our achievements and culture. Here in Perth, we'll hold the NAIDOC National Awards, celebrating the best of Blak excellence. It is what it is today in our State because of the hard work of our elders, including Glenda Kickett. Dr Kickett has spent the past 18 years on the NAIDOC Perth Committee, 17 of which she has been its chairwoman. She's seen the event grow from humble beginnings. 'When we started there wasn't any NAIDOC Week. We had our first ceremony in Forrest Place with a tiny tent. over the 18 years I have seen it grow so much,' she said. '(Today) there are so many events across Perth and WA. It is not just Aboriginal people it is non-Indigenous people getting involved.' This year's NAIDOC theme is The Next Generation: Strength, Vision & Legacy. Dr Kickett said it was essential that we have a pipeline of talent; young leaders who can celebrate the work that has been done already and build upon it. Leadership programs such as Miss NAIDOC and Mr NAIDOC helped to bring some of those young people to the fore, giving them the platform they need to strive for progress into the future. NAIDOC Week 2025 begins this Sunday and runs for eight days. And as important as it is, and as entrenched as it has become on the Australian calendar, Dr Kickett says NAIDOC Week isn't the be all and end all. 'We should be celebrating all the time, not just on NAIDOC week,' she said. As NAIDOC Week continues to grow, it is a powerful reminder of how far we have come, as First Nations peoples and as an inclusive Australian country. It is an opportunity to uplift the next generation of leaders and to bring the entire community together to learn, yarn and celebrate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history and achievement. Emma Garlett is a legal academic and Nylyaparli-Yamatji-Nyungar woman
West Australian
27-05-2025
- Sport
- West Australian
West Australian great Derek Kickett joins push for AFL draft age to be lifted
West Australian great Derek Kickett has backed a push by the State's peak football body to lift the minimum AFL draft age. Kickett, who made his WAFL debut for West Perth at 21 and played his first VFL game for North Melbourne at 26, advocates lifting the current age to '20' or even '22-23'. As revealed by The West Australian last week, WA Football has contacted the league to lift the draft age by 12 months to provide prospects with a clean run at their last year at school, get a head start on alternative career pathways and develop their life and football skills before joining an elite program. 'WA Football is not a recreation sport like when I played. Now football is a business, so if you muck up in your workplace you get the sack,' Kickett told Emma Garlett on The West Australian's YouTube channel, Paint it Blak. 'In my day it was hard, but getting into the AFL now, it's even harder and it's a challenge because you have got social media everywhere. 'Football players can't hide. Everyone has got a camera. They have to be on their best behaviour. 'It's challenging. The kids get drafted now, and I say kids because they are 18 years of age. 'If it was my child, I'd say don't draft the kids until they are about 20, 22,23. 'But they draft them at 18 … and they are on big bucks and they are under a lot of pressure to perform and stay in the good books.' Kickett went on to play 259 games and kick 419 goals in a career that spanned 14 seasons across seven WAFL, SANFL and VFL-AFL clubs. The West revealed WA Football's repeated approaches to the AFL had been met with resistance over fears they would lose the skilled athletes to other sports. West Coast legend Glen Jakovich, who played his first AFL game with the Eagles at 18 and was 17 when he made his State of Origin debut, told The West Australian social media pressures and expectations meant the environment was different to when he was breaking into the elite competition. 'The young players coming through now you can see they need more personal development not only in their football but their life,' Jakovich told The West Australian. 'They're going straight into a high-octane, highly stressful environment playing professional football and the reality is most of these guys have got minimal life skills. 'I don't think they're mentally attuned to the community expectations. 'They haven't got a job yet, they haven't lived a life and I've always been an advocate that these guys need to get some life skills.' Jakovich has worked as a development coach in the AFL's elite academy program and said looking back the 'kids were in no way ready mentally for what they were about to get into'. Jakovich was a WAFL regular at age 16, had played his 50th game by 18 and at 19 had won two premierships with the West Coast Eagles. He retired mid-season in 2004 as the then Eagles games record holder with 276, won four John Worsfold medals and is an AFL Hall of Fame member. WA Football would not provide an official comment, but is believed to also be concerned over the disruption to schooling, the impact of shifting young men and women across the country and the growing risk of mental health challenges, particularly for youth. It is also understood WA Football believes pushing the draft year back by 12 months would decrease the selection risks of recruiting players who never play an AFL game. Players are eligible to be drafted if they turn 18 by December 31 in the same year. Fremantle legend David Mundy said last year the draft age should be lifted from 18 to 21 to help players with their life after football. 'I'm firm in the belief that the draft age should be raised - and raised as significantly as to 21 through a staged process over multiple years,' Mundy told 6PR. 'I feel like if you raise the draft age by that much, that's significantly, then young men leaving high school at 17 or 18 years of age can go in and find a trade, do their trade apprenticeship over the three years, enter university, get TAFE degrees - continue their education. 'If you get work experience, it can almost set their life direction outside of sport, whilst still developing and playing football they want to play, wherever they want to play it. 'But they get that three years of physical development, of career development and then they enter into the AFL system.'
