Gabrielle McBride
Warriors Patrick Cunningham and Eric Monroe at scrimmage.
Jason Wilhelm and Nafla Poff met each other in the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport in 2014 on their way to Australia for an international Australian rules football competition. Now, they are both living in Madison and have started a local team with the goal of joining the United States Australian Rules Football Association.
“It’s not really the type of game that you can walk up to somebody on the street and say, ‘Hey, do you want to play?’” Wilhelm, 29, says of the contact sport nicknamed “footy” — a combination of football and soccer with similarities to rugby that dates back to mid-19th-century Australia. Players are 18 to a side and can run with the ball, kick it or “handball” it (sort of like a volleyball serve) to teammates, but most points are scored by kicking the ball, similar in shape to a football, between two tall goalposts. One more thing: Tackling is allowed, but nobody can wear pads.
For years, Wisconsin’s primary Aussie rules football club was the Milwaukee Bombers, and most serious players from the Madison area belonged to that team. Today, the Bombers are no longer a powerhouse, Wilhelm says, so earlier this year he and Poff decided to start the Wisconsin Indomitable Warriors, a Madison-based footy team. It’s coed, and the group only practices and scrimmages together; they don’t compete as a team yet. (Wilhelm will compete on a team from Dallas and Poff on a team from Minnesota for the USAFL National Championships in Florida in October.)
Practices are held at University Bay Fields on Sundays at noon and at High Point Park on Mondays at 6 p.m. They’re free and open to anyone. Wilhelm and Poff have personally offered to teach newbies the skills necessary “to make it through the practice.”
“We’ve been much more successful than we thought we’d be,” says Poff, 27, a Madison West High School graduate who competes in the male-dominated sport wearing a hijab. As many as 40 players have shown up. A typical practice includes 12 to 19 people.
Local players for the Indomitable Warriors range in age from 13 to mid-60s, but the average footy player is between 21 and 35. According to the USAFL, there are 36 men’s teams and 12 women’s teams in the country.
Anybody interested in what footy looks like in action can check out a men’s scrimmage on Sept. 10 between the Minnesota Freeze and the Chicago Swans. A time and location has yet to be determined, but updates will be posted on the Indomitable Warriors Facebook page.
