NAIAFA ready to impress at the Championships

The 2010 AFL (NSW/ACT) Cougar Sportswear Regional Championships is helping to bring the best footballers from around the state together for a sports carnival.

With the introduction of NSW/ACT Indigenous Australian Football Association (NAIAFA) this year, the event is quickly becoming one of the best on the calendar.

NAIAFA was established only three years ago but in its short existence has already hosted their own Indigenous carnival, the Jack Atkinson Carnival held in Wagga Wagga earlier this year.

Captaining the team at the Championships is Rodney Craig, who was instrumental in setting up the Association.

“The group we’ve started up has mainly been formed by a group of blokes that have played in NSW Indigenous teams for the last ten years and we’re coming to the backend of our careers now and we don’t want the opportunity to go away so we’ve come up with NAIAFA,” Craig said.

“With the second Sydney AFL team [coming into the competition] we don’t want to be left behind so what we want to do is to promote the game into the Indigenous communities in NSW and the ACT.”

With Team GWS having direct access to players from Northern Territory, there is no better time for Indigenous players on AFL lists to increase in the coming years.

“We’re focused on picking young sides so they can get the exposure to higher levels of footy,” Craig said.

“Just the coming of the second team has promoted that as well, so there is a level of excitement about the game in NSW/ACT now and we don’t want to be left behind with that and we want to promote to our communities just as much as it is promoted into mainstream Sydney.”

The team is being sponsored by the Adam Goodes and Michael O’Loughlin Foundation. Set up by two Sydney Swans greats, GO Foundation is helping to bridge the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.