Chewin' the Fat – Kris Miller column July 4

I ALWAYS look forward to NAIDOC Week to see the Aboriginal players in the WAFL acknowledged and for extra attention to come onto the competition, and throughout my career I've always enjoyed playing with and against some great Indigenous footballers.

South Fremantle has a strong history with Aboriginal players, particularly from Darwin and the Tiwi Islands, and that history is a lot richer than at East Fremantle.

Aboriginal footballers have definitely been embraced more at South Fremantle than East Fremantle purely because the history of the champion players that have played at the club. So many of South Fremantle's champion players in history are Indigenous probably more so than just about any other club in Australia. It's just phenomenal.

Whenever South Fremantle's best players in history are ever mentioned at least half of them would be Aboriginal players in their list, which is just phenomenal for the fact that there has always been a minority of them, not because they haven’t always been awesome players.

An occasion like NAIDOC Week is obviously a good thing. I think it means a lot to all the Aboriginal players. To me honestly, they are just another teammate or opponent and that's how I have always seen it. Some of them obviously have amazing skill sets that other players don’t have, and a lot of them also don’t have some skill sets that other players do have.

I think games like this weekend mean a lot to the Aboriginal players. I too enjoy playing in it because it is another game where there is a focus on the WAFL competition and that has to be a positive.

Toby McGrath and Keren Ugle would have to be the two proudest Aboriginal players I've played with but they are all proud of their heritage and so they should be. Some of them highlight it more because they are more up front about it and confident in their abilities so you notice it from different players like Toby and Keren who were around for a long time.

I don’t think that makes them any more or less proud than someone like Dion Woods who only played 20 or 30 games. I think that pride was equally share amongst them all.

Dwayne Simpson was another one who stands out as an Aboriginal player with a lot of talent. He was at Sydney and Fremantle, and I spent some time with him at East Fremantle and he was an extremely talented all-round sportsman. I played colts with him and then a bit of senior footy when I came back from Sydney, and he was an extreme talent.

I played in the colts premiership with Roger Hayden and he well and truly exceeded where I thought he would end up. He was always a fantastic bloke and a good player, but he took the most of his ability to end up having a great career. To me he really stands out in terms of someone who no one really thought much of, but he turned himself into a brilliant player.

I played with Jeff Farmer at South Fremantle and he was an amazing player, and an amazing person. He was a different person and he wore his heart on his sleeve, and he was someone who copped a lot of criticism from opposition clubs particularly in the AFL but seeing how he handled all of that at the end of his career and thrived on.

Toby McGrath was a sensational player and leader at South Fremantle. He was just such a hard player and Keren Ugle was extremely talented as well.

Toby would be the one who I played the most games with. I played over 100 games with him so in terms of longevity he was the Aboriginal player I played the longest with and had the most to do with, but there were a lot of others who I really enjoyed playing with over my career.

Dwayne Simpson and Roger Hayden were probably the first two in Perth that I played with after playing alongside quite a few Aboriginal players in Kalgoorlie. One of the best that I played with there was a bloke by the name of David Stubbs who still plays for Railways in Kalgoorlie where he is the games record holder now. He was another extremely talented player who could have gone on a bit, but his work and family restricted him basically.

In terms of Aboriginal players I have played against in my career, I played State Schoolboys with Garth Taylor so I knew him for a long time and then ended up playing a lot of against him, and he was always talented.

In 2010, Andrew Krakouer probably played the best year of football that I have played against. He was phenomenal that year in everything that he did regardless of being Aboriginal or not. That was the best year of football that I have played against with Matt Priddis at Subiaco back in 2006 probably a close second. Krakouer had that electrifying, fast twitch fibre talent that made him amazing.

Allistair Pickett was a sensational player too and two Sandover Medals show that as well as his four premierships. He was more of an impact player and he didn’t always get big numbers, but his 15 touches would really hurt the opposition where some other guys were more accumulative players and would hurt you just by how much of the ball they got.

Pickett and Krakouer were two of the better Aboriginal players I've come up against and Darren Bolton from Peel was quite a good player, and was hard at it. He probably hit me the hardest that I have ever been hit.

To be honest, there hasn’t been any real change with regards to how Indigenous are viewed or treated in the time I've been playing. When I first came down to East Fremantle to play colts in 1998 there were guys like Gary Dhurrkay playing for East Fremantle and they were no different to anyone else.

There really hasn’t been any swing in momentum towards Aboriginal players in my time either way. They have always been completely accepted just as another player. I first came to Perth in 1998 so by then all the stuff with Nicky Winmar and all of that was well before that so it had come to a head well and truly before I started playing.

By Kris Miller