Players, parents, and Raiders fans, this is your last chance to get one of our limited edition indigenous jumpers. To order one, please fill out and return the order form with your credit card details to our Secretary. Orders close at 9 AM this Saturday, 24 July, so time is running out!

If you’re new to this story of our jumper, here’s a clip about how we created the artwork for our jumpers: https://fb.watch/4Kzm-FOBe9/.

The Victoria Park Raiders Junior Football Club is proud to acknowledge that we play our footy at Higgins Park on the traditional lands of Whadjuk Noongar Boodjar. We pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging and thank them for their contribution to our great game. 

Last weekend we celebrated NAIDOC Round, embracing the history, culture, and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Thank you to Elder Brett Collard for performing Welcome to Country and providing a smoking ceremony. 

The message for NAIDOC 2021 is Heal Country. For Aboriginal people, Country is more than a place, it is inherent to life. Country is not just a place away from the city, or a reference to a landmass. Noongar man and AFL player Neville Jetta explains that Indigenous people are a part of Country. Neville recommends a way to take action to help with healing Country, is to get on Google and find out about the traditional owners of the land you live on. At the Victoria Park Raiders, we want to acknowledge that not just today but every day, we live on, work on, and play our footy on the traditional lands of Whadjuk Noongar Boodjar (our local Noongar Country). If you want to watch Neville Jetta’s chat about NAIDOC week, follow this link: https://www.instagram.com/tv/CRPv3UwDqO4/.

We were incredibly proud to present at the ceremony, our first-ever Indigenous jumper. This jumper represents a collaboration with our broader junior football and local community. It has brought together many groups for the first time and together, we created something special. What started as a relatively small project to create a club Indigenous jumper for our Year 6’s, has grown to include jumpers for 5 teams, almost 250 jumpers and two presentation ceremonies. It has inspired new signage for our Club to include an Acknowledgement of Country, has been the foundation for new friendships and partnerships and the first steps in using our platform to make a change.

The artwork was a collaboration led by artists Kevin Bynders and Noeleen Brockman. They worked with Indigenous Victoria Park Raiders children (players and their families) to create artworks along with West Coast Eagles Indigenous players, Jamaine Jones and Brendon Ah Chee. Kevin took their artwork away and brought it all together to create this fabulous canvas. 

Thanks to the Town of Victoria Park for funding towards the artwork and purchase of jumpers for our Year 6 teams, to Rotary for purchasing jumpers for players in our Year 5/6 girls team and a wonderful anonymous parent who purchased a jumper for all of the girls in the Year 7/8 team.

We hope everyone that has purchased or been given an Indigenous jumper wears it with pride long after NAIDOC celebrations end for 2021. We hope that they are worn in the community, making visible the message that Aboriginal culture is important and is valued. 

At the Victoria Park Raiders, we’re working on doing our bit and have created new banners and signage for the Club that includes an acknowledgement we’re playing our footy on Whadjuk Noongar Boodjar.