Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size The face of Australian soccer is changing. Rapidly. The latest example of that came in the final round of the A-League season when Melbourne City boss Warren Joyce told a nervous but delighted youngster called Idrus Abdulahi to take to the field. Thomas Deng (left), 21, debuted for the Socceroos alongside childhood friend Awer Mabil last year. Credit:AAP There were just a few minutes left as City were on the way to demolishing Central Coast Mariners 5-0 and Abdulahi was given the chance to make his A-League debut at just 15. Yes, that's right, 15. The student is just the latest example of a group of players who are beginning to make their mark at the highest levels of the game: African Australians. If the example of other countries is anything to go by, it won't be long before the children of the African diaspora, many of them refugees who have fled civil war, civic strife, poverty and hardship, are playing a leading role at the biggest clubs in the country and in the national team. Click here to view a full map of the young, gifted Australians from Africa.


The sport has always reflected Australia's shifting population demographic, particularly the wave of post-war immigration from eastern and southern Europe. In those decades - from the 1950s until around 2010 - Australian soccer was dominated by locally born players of Greek, Italian, Croatian and Serbian background, with some Australians of British or Irish descent adding to the multicultural mix. But in the past 15 years in Australia there has been a sweeping change as the children of African refugees mature and develop into teenagers and young men. In this current 2018-19 A-League season, eight of the 10 A-League clubs have Australian players who are either African-born or are of African descent. Only Wellington Phoenix (who do, incidentally, have two of the few players of Asian background in Sarpeet Singh and Roy Krishna on their books) and Adelaide United (who do have the Senegalese striker Baba Diawara in their squad) do not have Australian players of African background, according to Football Federation Australia's statistical guru Andrew Howe. It's a marked change since the start of the A-League. Melbourne Victory's Kenny Athiu (left). Credit:AAP


In the 2005-06 season, the A-League's first, there was only one player whom Howe, who has decades of statistical data on which to base his findings, could identify as an Australian of African background. That was Brisbane Roar's South African Jonti Richter. The following year it had quadrupled, with Adelaide's Bruce Djite (Ivory Coast/Togo background) and Sydney's Nikolai Topor Stanley (Mauritian background) - who both went on to represent the Socceroos - the best known. By the 2009-10 season the numbers were still fairly small, with Bernie Ibini, the Sydney frontman of Nigerian descent, making his debut. From there it has steadily grown. The following year there were seven players, in 2011-12 there were 10, and this grew to 12 the following season when winger Awer Mabil - who is another to have represented Australia at senior level - made his debut for Adelaide United. The 2013-14 season saw full-back Jason Geria (of Ugandan descent), and another to have earned Socceroo status, make his Melbourne Victory debut along with Kenyan-Australian Rashid Mahazi. Since then the numbers have steadily grown and there are 16 Australian-African players playing at the highest level of the game in this country, according to Howe's analysis.


Men like Victory's Thomas Deng and Kenny Athiu (both South Sudanese) and Elvis Kamsoba (Burundi/Tanzania) having come through in the past two or three years alongside the Baccus brothers Kearyn and Keanu from South Africa, Ruon Tongyik (Sudan), Bruce Kamau (Kenya), and Kwabena Appiah and Kwame Yeboah (Ghana). Not all of these players are big names. Not all of them are regular starters. And some will have disappointing careers. But already several have gone on to play for the Socceroos - Mabil and Deng, who were both childhood friends and teammates in Adelaide, went on to do so earlier this year in an Asian Cup lead-up - while several others either have or are currently representing Australia at junior levels, be it the Joeys, the Young Socceroos or the Olyroos. Deng recently captained the Olyroos in a series of Olympic qualifying matches in Cambodia and is poised to lead Australia's best under-23 players to the Olympic Games in Tokyo next year if they qualify. Not only does the game offer the possibility of untold riches for those who reach the top, its increasing popularity within the Australian community offers a pathway for African players and immigrants to assimilate and integrate. Victory's Elvis Kamsoba (competing against the Wanderers' Bruce Kamau) lived in a Tanzanian refugee camp, where his family built a house out of wood and mud. Credit:AAP The furore over African gangs in Melbourne has been a feature of the news coverage in the past 12 to 18 months and there has been fierce debate, some of it agenda driven, over the social consequences of migration, unemployment and the ''ghetto-isation'' of groups of immigrants.


Which is why it is important to have role models who not just soccer fans but the wider public see as a different face of immigration. It is hard to hate a whole community if the captain of the national team is a member of that immigrant group. It's something Deng, in particular, is always aware of. He has experienced racism since coming to Australia as a child when his South Sudanese family left a refugee camp in Kenya and initially moved to Adelaide, before settling in Melbourne in 2011. But it's not something he dwells on, ''ignoring the odd person who tries to make life difficult''. It is unnerving, he says, ''when you go into a shopping centre and sometimes people give you weird looks as if you are going to steal something'', but he believes that being professional on the pitch and showing leadership can help change the image of African-born youngsters in this country. It won't do so on its own, but it is a step, he says.

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