Malcolm Cooper (footballer)

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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[]

Cooper spent his boyhood years at St Francis House in Adelaide, South Australia.[1]

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.[2] He is considered the first Indigenous Australian to play senior football for Port Adelaide in the South Australian National Football League (SANFL).[3] (Harry Hewitt did represent the club in an interstate match against Victorian club Fitzroy in 1891 but that was not an SANFL fixture.[4])

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.[5] He played 5 SANFL games between 1954 and 1955.[6]

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,[5] and in 1964 founded the Aborigines' Progress Association in Adelaide, becoming its first president.[7] 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.[8]

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. ^ ""Sport" Holes". Messenger. No. 135. South Australia. 29 October 1953. p. 2. Retrieved 20 April 2019 – via National Library of Australia.
  3. ^ Homfray, Reece (13 July 2017). "If you bleed black and white you're in part of the family". WA Weekend.
  4. ^ "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.
  5. ^ a b Chlanda, Erwin (1 February 2019). "Kids from The Alice: When Malcolm met Menzies". Alice Springs News. Retrieved 29 November 2020.
  6. ^ "List of Port Adelaide's indigenous players in the AFL and SANFL - portadelaidefc.com.au". portadelaidefc.com.au. Retrieved 21 October 2018.
  7. ^ "Port Adelaide's pain over racism after long and proud Indigenous history". ABC News. 23 August 2016. Retrieved 3 November 2018.
  8. ^ Australia, National Museum of. "Collaborating for Indigenous Rights Home". indigenousrights.net.au. Retrieved 3 November 2018.
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