Parramatta Eels are doing more than just playing football

Parramatta Eels are doing more than just playing football.  While in Darwin the club has taken the opportunity to announce their commitment to the NO MORE campaign and taking the issue of family and domestic violence seriously at a club level.

The issue of violence against women continues to be a difficult area to get traction and make change.  In Australia one woman a week dies because of family violence, one in six women experience domestic violence from their partner.  “These figures have to worry us, the effects of violence not only hurts women, but has terrible impacts on children and the broader family,” says sports broadcaster and NO MORE Campaigner Charlie King.

CatholicCare NT has long been calling on government and the wider community to take a much stronger stand against family violence and have supported Charlie in establishing the NO MORE campaign encouraging sporting teams to link arms and make a strong statement that men do not accept the high levels of family violence.  Many Northern Territory clubs have supported the campaign from all corners of the NT.  And now rugby league has come on board with the Parramatta Eels committing to the campaign. The Eels and the Canberra Raiders will link arms ahead of tonight’s match.

Sport is often associated with promoting cultures that negatively impact on women.  This includes male dominated behaviours, peer pressure and group norms that promote negative and sometimes violent behaviours. Charlie King who knows club cultures well goes on to say “community norms play an important part in whether violence is tolerated, where there is a high level of disapproval towards violence and support is available for victims, behaviour towards women can change.  Strategies to change player behaviour need to be driven by the clubs and through each club developing club specific responses to violence.”

The NO MORE campaign is now supporting clubs to move from awareness raising to making stronger commitments to change attitudes towards violence by encouraging clubs to develop domestic violence action plans.  Parramatta CEO Scott Seward is enthusiastic about the club endorsing the initiative and has announced that the Eels will be the first national club to launch a DVAP.

“We will prepare our domestic violence action plan and commit our club to taking a strong stand against family violence. The Parramatta family, including players and supporters is more than 500,000 and we will be ensuring they are all aware and supportive of the initiative,” he said.

He also called on all other NRL clubs to follow suit. “I would like to see every NRL club write their own domestic violence action plans, in fact I think every club in Australia should come on board. It’s time we all took a stand,” said Mr Seward.

NTRL General manager John Mitchell says the NTRL will follow the lead of Parramatta.

“I will be talking to all the rugby league clubs in the NT about it. We do need grass roots clubs to be a part of it,” he said.

This follows AFL clubs locally taking on the initiative. AFLNT CEO Tony Frawley has also committed to the idea of DVAPs. “One of our NTFL Clubs has already completed a domestic violence action plan and I know Territory Thunder is developing theirs. We have met with club presidents and discussed the idea with them and I know they are looking at ways of doing it,” he said.