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Aussies bank on ARF skills for success on kabaddi mat
MUMBAI: The Australians are loathe to being called underdogs, be it any sport. But calling the Australian kabaddi team that would not be an understatement given
MUMBAI: The Australians are loathe to being called underdogs, be it any sport. But calling the Australian kabaddi team that would not be an understatement given their 54-20 defeat against India in their Kabaddi World Cup opener on Saturday.
The result was never in doubt, considering the Indians have won the past two World Cups with ease. The Australians, on the other hand, did not even have a team until a couple of months ago.
Not surprisingly then, that when the Australian Kabaddi Federation decided to put together a team for the World Cup a few months ago, it banked on a simple plan to make up for the decades of inexperience: hire Australian Rules Football (ARF) players who have recently retired from the Australian Football League (AFL).
The current Australian team in India has three former AFL players — captain Campbell Brown, Adam Schneider and Stephen Milne — apart from four others who play Australian Football to keep fit.
Brown, a raider for Australia, used to be a defender who represented teams like Hawthorn and Gold Coast Suns before his career ended abruptly in 2013 for breaking his teammate’s jaw in pre-season.
Milne was one of the best goal-kickers a few years ago, who played for St Kilda for 13 years before retiring in 2013. Schneider, who played for Sydney Swans and St Kilda, quit last year. While Milne and Schneider were confined to the bench on Saturday, Brown claimed six points.
SPEED AND AGILITY
“There are many attributes we learn in Australian Football that come handy in kabaddi. Things like speed and agility are key to both sports. The tackling skills we learnt as players will also help here. ARF is a 360 degree game, just like kabaddi. You need peripheral vision to evade tackles when raiding,” Brown told HT a day before the India match.
“We’re very fit. On an average, you run between 12 and 16 kilometres in an AFL game. That’s why our pre-season training lasts up to six months. We do a lot of running, swimming, boxing, cross training and gym work apart from Pilates and yoga,” he added.
Brown hopes his and his team’s exploits in India will inspire more people back home to take an interest in the sport.
“It’s going to be televised in Australia and we’re hoping after this tournament a lot of people will be asking about kabaddi and will want to play. We’re going to give it our best shot and compete as hard as we can.”
For now, Brown and his teammates are eyeing a few upsets in the World Cup. “Yes, we haven’t been training together very long but anything’s possible.”
