CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
Yawannagokhunt, a two horse country town east of Betoota has this week maintained their bizarre footballing statistics:
An average first grade footy side, and an undefeated 2nd grade side.. and not enough blokes in town to pull together a third grade side.
This is the case for both the Yawannagokhunt Stinkbeetles RLFC and the Yawannagokhunt Cut Snakes rugby club, as their respective seconds sides absolutely dominate the Outer Barcoo comps – with some matches blowing out by 30 to 40 point margins.
Yawannagokhunt’s staggered on-field performances are rather odd but not particularly rare across regional Australia – as this phenomena is usually directly linked to local industry.
With everyone rallying to the local ovals each weekend to support our mighty twos, it’s a joyous time in town, and one that was almost unimaginable a couple years ago.
With very few young people deciding to settle Yawannagokhunt, and every other bloke glued to their iPhones, community sport had taken a real hit in the region at the back end of the 2010s.
That was until the local abattoir picked up the phone to Canberra.
With their backs against the wall, and not enough good men around to pick up a broom, the abattoir had no option but to take part in the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility scheme (PALM) is a diplomatic memorandum of understanding between Australia and 9 other pacific nations.
PALM enables eligible Australian employers to hire workers from participating countries to fill specified roles in rural and regional Australia, and agriculture sector jobs nationally. The countries involved include Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, PNG, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.
With twenty jobs available on the abattoir floor, and a some fruit farms down the creek, the decision of local employers to take part in the PALM programme now means that Yawannagokhunt’s footy clubs are fucking stacked with a new injection of talent.
But only second grade, because shift workers can’t necessarily make every training session, and that’s a prerequisite for a start in first grade. Always has been.
Either way, with over thirty versatile and extremely fit 20-year-old Fijians on hand, it looks like there’s gonna be a bit of silverware in the clubhouse this year.
