CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | Contact
A photo of a young boy dressed up as Rugby League immortal Wally ‘The King’ Lewis – complete with a bald head – for his Brisbane school’s ‘book week’ has gone viral.
The picture of the youngster was seemingly shared online by his father, who has admitted to shaving the boy’s head to make him look more like the Emperor Of Lang Park.
In just seven hours since being posted to the Euphoric Queenslander Memes facebook page, the photo of the young boy has been commented on 800,100 times and received more than 1.2m likes.
This comes after a similar snap of a Perth child dressed up as current Eagles player Nic Naitanui, which made headlines last year after the boy’s mum used blackface to create a likeness to the Fijian-born star – as well as another controversial photo of another Perth child dressed up as a drug-addled Ben Cousins.
The dad responsible for shaving his son’s head to look like Wally Lewis’, Shane Welcke, says his son wanted to initially go as his favourite former Brisbane Bronco’s player Palmer Wapau, but the two of them decided against the idea of blackface.
“I’m not going to paint my kid black. Fuck that” said Shane.
“You’d have to have rocks in your head to paint your kid black. It’s offensive and just flat out fuckin’ stupid. What’s going on with these AFL cunts?”
The son, Tim (10) says he decided to attend book week dressed as his dad’s favourite player of all time – but agreed that he would have to shave his head to make sure people fully understood who he was.
“Dad has posters of Wally Lewis everywhere,” says an ecstatic Tim.
“I was so excited when he shaved my head… And we won!”
Tim Welcke book week outfit has been voted ‘Best Costume’ ‘ in all of Queensland, and it looks like the haircut is here to stay.
“He wants to keep, but I don’t think the missus would like it being a permanent thing,” laughs dad.
“But fuck me, I’d love him to keep it. Long live the king”
Organisers of Book Week have once again requested that Australian families adhere to the actual concept of book week and stop dressing their children up as current and former sports stars.
