A group of junior St Mary’s players are about to embark on the experience of a lifetime, heading to South Africa tonight (Wednesday) for a 12-day trip.
Twenty-one players and 12 adults are part of the group that will mark the Saints’ fifth trip to the Rainbow Nation -and first since Covid – as part of the club’s biannual cultural trip.
The 16- and 17-year-olds will play two matches against the South African under-18 team, but co-ordinator Kevin McMahon says the trip is about more than football.
“They’ll run some clinics with Indigenous kids around the different communities; they’ll do a bit of fun stuff – a few waterparks and that sort of stuff,” he said.
“They’ll visit an orphanage and go through the shanty towns, so there’s a whole range of different things that they do to get involved in the community.
“Going to the shanty towns and seeing how they live blows their mind at how lucky they are.”
“We take gifts over. Every kid uses a couple of kilos of their bag to take over footys to give out at the clinic and clothing.
“Footy is the mechanism to bring the two groups together, but footy is second or third (priority) to what the trip’s about.”
Current and former AFL players, including Jack and Ollie Henry, Jackson Nelson, Charlie Lazzaro, Matt Ling, and Brayden Ham, are among those who experienced the trip before reaching the elite level.
“Jack Henry was saying last year it was the best trip he’s been on,” McMahon said.
“And for the adults going, they bond, and you see them stick around the club forever.
“We get the kids involved in all the fundraising; we raise a significant amount of funds to subside the trip, so it’s not expensive.
“Every kid gets the chance to go.”
McMahon says the AFL strongly supports St Mary’s and their work.
“They said we’re the only club they know of that does something like this in Australia,” he said.
“They wanted us to go to a few different countries, but we’ve built a really good relationship with South Africa.
“When they came for the International Cup (in 2017), they played a game here at St Mary’s… so we’ve built up a really good relationship with them.”
X: @krockfootball
