This is not a beautifully written book about the decolonization of Australian sport. This is an ugly book that grew out of the ugly language I grew up with in this country. In this book, I scribble my way out of the schoolyard scrap, just trying to stay alive.
Ellen van Neerven writes in the introduction to their latest book, Personal rating. “I have a score to settle,” they continue.
In this book, they settle the state of affairs – as a Blackfulla, an athlete and also as a former amateur player, a self-proclaimed “armchair enthusiast of the sport we call “the world game”: soccer, sometimes called football. in this country”.
Review: Personal Score: Sport, Culture, Identity – Ellen van Neerven (UQP)
Interweaving race, Indigenous identity, sport, sexuality, gender, class, and country, they offer something no sports historian has.
Showing both a different side of herself and a unique perspective on the sports field, Ellen asks, “What does it mean to play sports on First Nations land?”
Perfect Score, through a mix of memoir and poetry, cleverly invites us to question what it means to play on a “land rich in stories”, on a playing field that is almost always uneven for Blackfullas.
Ellen van Neerven says that Personal Score is ‘I’m scribbling my way out of the schoolyard scrap, just trying to stay alive’.
Anna Jacobson
Prominent and personal black sports moments
The sports field as a venue has provided many iconic moments for the crowd, both in victory and as victims of racist violence that visited us – from spectators, selectors and sports clubs and associations.
Many of us are familiar with Cathy Freeman’s gold medal winning lap of honor with the Aboriginal flag, or Donell Wallam’s winning goal on his debut for the Diamonds. And with the myriad, yet memorable, challenging stances of Aboriginal men against racism in both rugby league and Aussie rules.
Van Neerven does not visit those well-known iconic moments. Instead, they take us through the private moments they experienced as a footballer and as a queer non-binary Blackfulla growing up in Brisbane.
Van Neerven reflects on the humiliating interpretations of their bodies, of appearing too “masculine”, of second-hand uniforms and of being ethnically different. All the while, at every moment, they think about their own relationship with the country on which they competed.
They reveal the intimate relationship our bodies have with Country, and the importance of sport as an expression of embodied sovereignty.
Van Neerven takes us to the everydayness of the battlefield that is the sports field: from the changing cubicles, through nightly training sessions to one’s own backyard. And they share their deepest insecurities.
There’s an honesty and an intimacy to this text that I’m not sure we deserve.
Van Neerven takes us to places that I’m sure have long been preserved as memories, as trauma, as feelings of guilt and incongruities, as questions about oneself. They share the concessions they’ve made, from shaving their body hair to their silence on Indigenous issues.
But like the best Blackfulla lyrics, Van Neerven regain their strength by reclaiming their own story, much like Nicky Winmar did when he defiantly stood up to claim, “I’m black and I’m proud”.
Strategic survival on the sports field
Well, not me to get football, and I don’t understand the passion people have for it either – but van Neerven makes me wish I did. When I read their story, I felt like I might have missed something by not loving the game the way they do. The iconic football names and events had eluded me, but Van Neerven’s clever use of sporting analogies to chart their personal journey of acceptance and resistance so clearly appealed to me as a black reader.
Van Neerven most powerfully demonstrates their skills – as a writer and football player – in the ‘Skills’ chapter. They poetically guide us through every technique, from controlling the ball with their chest, to chipping the keeper, to taking on a player using the famous ‘Cruyff turn’ move. Each skill is juxtaposed with the parallel life lesson it taught them: bind their chests, dispel self-doubt, and take on the world.
The skill of heading the ball, as their father learned by “kicking balls at my face until it gets dark,” clearly speaks to Blackfullas’ experience – regardless of their sporting code – as we watch the endless barrage of racist experience violence and humiliation .
Van Neerven contrasts the technique of heading the ball with the heading of a player.
This is how you lead a player…
If they slander your people
chin down
forehead first
all your strength
Van Neerven draws parallels between heading a football and Blackfullas’ experience.
Carlos Felipe Ramirez/Unsplash, CC DOOR
Perfect Score offers something crucial to black readers whose bodies have been misread in all sorts of violent ways: a space to perfectly exist. And van Neerven honors black theories throughout the text, as they give meaning to survival, sovereignty and sports fields.
It’s not just the players that Van Neerven deals with – they take us to the people who form the backbone of local sports clubs and protect them from floods and fires. Such as Sterling McQuire, a man from Darumbal and South Sea Islander, former player and groundskeeper of Pilbeam Park, home of the Nerimbera Magpies Soccer Club in Rockhampton.
He states:
here in Pilbeam Park – that may be only a small piece of land, but I take care of the land (…) Nerimbera, it is a Darumbal name: I am where I am supposed to be.
With Perfect Score, van Neerven reminds us that for Blackfullas – before and after 1788 – sport was never just for recreation. It’s a calling, as McQuire so forcefully points out. A responsibility that forces us to compete for and care for our people and our country: a country that also tells an ugly story of fires, floods and colonial violence.
Although van Neerven describes her book as “ugly”, their story is not ugly. It’s a beautiful story about Blackfulla’s love – for sport, for Country. Most importantly, it’s a story about finding love for ourselves.
Ellen van Neerven will appear Melbourne Writers Festivalwhere they are curator of the Great Debate: Sports vs. Literature on May 6 and at Brisbane Writers Festival on May 11 and 13.