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Playing rough runs in family
By Greg Meachem - Red Deer Advocate
May 24, 2011
To the uninitiated, the sport may resemble a form of on-field anarchy, but Australian rules football actually contains the elements of several well-known competitive activities.
“What I like about it is that it combines aspects of a lot of different sports,” said Red Deer native Caitlin Kidd, 27, a member of Canada’s Australian rules football national women’s team, the Northern Lights.
“There are bits of basketball in it, as well as soccer and rugby, and the nice thing is that it’s kind of conducive to any athletic skill. For girls who don’t really play a lot of sports, there’s a position for them to play in this sport.”
You might say that Australian rules football runs in the Kidd family. Caitlin’s brother Matt plays with the Canadian men’s team — the Northwind — after being attracted to the 22-man sport (18 on the field with four interchanges) in 2002, his final year at the University of Calgary.
“I saw a sign up at the school advertising the sport and joined a team in Calgary. I definitely found it to be different as well as highly intense and fast-paced,” he said. “I grew up playing hockey in the winter, so now I had an intense, fast-paced game for the summer as well. I didn’t know a whole lot about the sport back then. I didn’t really have any idea what it was about.”
The Kidds both graduated from Lindsay Thurber Comprehensive High School (Caitlin in 2001, Matt five years earlier) and played rugby with the Red Deer Titans Club. It just so happens that Australian rules football — played on a cricket oval while featuring skills such as running, tackling, kicking, leaping catches and the ability to bounce the ball — is often mistaken for rugby, and is every bit as rugged and physically demanding.
Caitlin, who earned a rugby scholarship to the University of Lethbridge where she was enrolled in the social work program and is now a team leader at Calgary’s Our Lady of Lourdes school — a congregated setting for behavioural students — played her first game of Aussie rules football in 2007.
“I had played rugby for 10 years and my brothers (Matt, Josh and Shane) were playing on (Australian rules) teams in Calgary and Red Deer and they just kind of encouraged me to give it a whirl,” she said. “It’s not a high-profile sport here. It’s just kind of getting out there now, especially on the women’s side. The men have done a better job in building the sport by recruiting Australians to come over (as coaches).”
The women’s game will gather more exposure in August when the Canadian national squad competes in the International Cup in Melbourne and Sydney, Australia. The two-week event will also include national teams from Ireland, the United States, Italy and Papua New Guinea, as well as a team consisting of non-Australians living in the country.
“This will be the first time women’s teams will compete in the International Cup and that should help us get a little more attention,” said Caitlin. “Our club team in Calgary grows a bit each year. We get a few more players.”
Caitlin’s Calgary club team is the Kookaburras, who play in a league involving another Calgary squad and one from Edmonton. The team has travelled south of the border the past several years to compete in the U.S. nationals.
About half of the Canadian women’s team consists of Calgary players, with the rest coming from Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. The Canadian team is relatively new, with the squad’s first major event being the 49th Parallel Cup versus the United States last year in Toronto.
Australian rules football has a much stronger foothold in Canada in the men’s division. Four to five competitive teams exist in the B.C. lower mainland, with Ontario housing 15 teams and Alberta holding another four — three in Calgary and one in Edmonton.
Matt Kidd plays for the Calgary Kangaroos, who also play the B.C. teams in weekend games. The Kangaroos will travel to Kelowna for a series of matches the first weekend in June.
“The league in Ontario is the largest in the world outside of Australia,” said Matt. “We’d like to eventually get to that point in the West, but it’s a little more difficult with a smaller population, although Vancouver is on their way to doing it with the teams they have there.”
The 32-year-old sales manager for Universal Handling Equipment of Red Deer is the lone Alberta player on the national team, which is based in Toronto and will also be in Australia for the International Cup in August.
“I’m one of the older guys on the team now,” said Matt, a member of the Northwind since 2004. “There are other players from Alberta who are likely good enough to play with the Canadian team but don’t try out due to the cost of competing in the international events.”
The Kidds estimate their participation in the International Cup will cost them roughly $4,000 apiece. For Matt, this will be his second appearance in the prestigious event after competing for the first time in 2005.
“It can get expensive. Our Calgary team also travels and that comes out of our pockets as well,” said Caitlin. “We try to do some fundraising as the Canadian national team, but it’s difficult when the players are spread across the country.”
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