AY Honors/Aboriginal Lore/Answer Key

Marn Grook (also spelt "marngrook") is an Australian Aboriginal ball game, which had an important influence on the modern game of Australian Rules Football, most notably in the spectacular jumping and high marking (catching of the ball) exhibited by the players of both games. Jumping to catch the ball in Marn Grook is called "mumarki" (which has similar phonics to the English word "mark"), an Aboriginal word meaning "to catch" which results in a free kick.

Meaning "Game ball", Marn Grook was a traditional game played at gatherings and celebrations of up to 50 players by the Djabwurrung and Jardwadjali people of western Victoria.

In a 1878 book by Robert Brough-Smyth, The Aborigines of Victoria, Brough-Smyth refers to a man called Richard Thomas, (Aboriginal Protector) as saying in about 1841, that he had witnessed Aborigines playing the game:

The men and boys joyfully assemble when this game is to be played. One makes a ball of possum skin, somewhat elastic, but firm and strong. The players of this game do not throw the ball as a white man might do, but drop it and at the same time kicks it with his foot. The tallest men have the best chances in this game. Some of them will leap as high as five feet from the ground to catch the ball. The person who secures the ball kicks it. This continues for hours and the natives never seem to tire of the exercise.

Tom Wills, who invented Australian rules football, was raised in Victoria's western districts and regularly played with local Aboriginal children. He recalled watching a game in which they kicked a possum skin about the size of an orange stuffed with charcoal. The game was played between large groups on a totemic basis — the white cockatoos versus the black cockatoos, for example — with the greatest honour going to those who could leap or kick the highest.

In 2002, in a game at Stadium Australia, the Sydney Swans and Essendon Football Club began to compete for the Marngrook Trophy, awarded after home-and-away matches each year between the two teams in the Australian Football League. However, the games are played under normal rules of the AFL, rather than anything approaching Marn Grook.