Malcolm Cooper (footballer)

Not to be confused with William Cooper (Aboriginal Australian).

Malcolm Cooper
Playing career
Years Club Games (Goals)
1954–1955 Port Adelaide 5

Malcolm Cooper was an Aboriginal Australian Australian rules footballer who played for Port Adelaide during the 1950s, and a social activist.

Early life and education

Cooper spent his boyhood years at St Francis House[1] in Semaphore South, a beachside suburb of Adelaide near Port Adelaide, South Australia.[2] There he was treated with kindness, sent to the local school, and met other future Aboriginal leaders and activists, including Gordon Briscoe, John Kundereri Moriarty, Richie Bray, Vince Copley, Charles Perkins, and others.[3][4]

Football

Cooper was noticed as an up-and-coming player in the junior ranks, winning the "most improved" award for Port Adelaide Colts in 1953.[5] He is considered the first Indigenous Australian to play senior football for Port Adelaide in the South Australian National Football League (SANFL).[6] (Harry Hewitt did represent the club in an interstate match against Victorian club Fitzroy in 1891 but that was not an SANFL fixture.[7])

Cooper was also the first Aboriginal footballer to play for the Port Adelaide Football Club in a Grand Final, the seven-point loss to West Torrens in the 1953 Grand Final.[8] He played 5 SANFL games between 1954 and 1955.[9]

Social activism

Cooper met and lobbied Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies in 1963 in Canberra as part of a delegation to promote justice for Aboriginal people,[8] and in 1964 founded the Aborigines' Progress Association in Adelaide, becoming its first president.[10] The association was formed in response to perceptions that the South Australian Aborigines' Advancement League of South Australia was dominated by non-Aboriginal members, lessening the voice of Indigenous Australians politically.[11]

Death

Cooper died prematurely of a brain haemorrhage in his twenties or thirties after being flown up to Darwin from Tennant Creek.[1]

References

  1. ^ a b "Alice Springs boys first Indigenous players for Port Adelaide – Alice Springs News – Blacksonrise.com". Blacksonrise.com – Blacksonrise. Retrieved 29 November 2020.
  2. ^ Chlanda, Erwin (18 September 2013). "The Boys who made the Big Time". Alice Springs News. Retrieved 29 November 2020.
  3. ^ Phillips, Sandra (10 January 2022). "Vince Copley had a vision for a better Australia – and he helped make it happen, with lifelong friend Charles Perkins". The Conversation. Retrieved 23 November 2023.
  4. ^ Copley, Vince (12 December 2022). "The Wonder of Little Things". HarperCollins Australia. Retrieved 23 November 2023.
  5. ^ ""Sport" Holes". Messenger. No. 135. South Australia. 29 October 1953. p. 2. Retrieved 20 April 2019 – via National Library of Australia.
  6. ^ Homfray, Reece (13 July 2017). "If you bleed black and white you're in part of the family". WA Weekend.
  7. ^ "The Fitzroy Matches". South Australian Chronicle. Vol. XXXIV, no. 1, 720. 8 August 1891. p. 15. Retrieved 9 April 2017 – via National Library of Australia.
  8. ^ a b Chlanda, Erwin (1 February 2019). "Kids from The Alice: When Malcolm met Menzies". Alice Springs News. Retrieved 29 November 2020.
  9. ^ "List of Port Adelaide's indigenous players in the AFL and SANFL - portadelaidefc.com.au". portadelaidefc.com.au. Retrieved 21 October 2018.
  10. ^ "Port Adelaide's pain over racism after long and proud Indigenous history". ABC News. 23 August 2016. Retrieved 3 November 2018.
  11. ^ Australia, National Museum of. "Collaborating for Indigenous Rights Home". indigenousrights.net.au. Retrieved 3 November 2018.

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