Students from St Spyridon College at Unley visited Adelaide Football Club on Tuesday to watch training and meet the players ahead of 2016 Toyota AFL Multicultural Round this weekend.

The students have recently completed Adelaide’s new six-week Multicultural Program which is designed to teach children with diverse backgrounds more about Australian Football.

Kicking off on Thursday, Multicultural Round highlights the contribution different communities have made to Australian Football, while highlighting the extraordinary power the game has in uniting all people of all backgrounds.

The Round will see all nine matches broadcast in one of seven languages available on AFL.com.au and the AFL Live App, with the Crows’ clash against Carlton at the MCG on Sunday to be called in Italian.

In addition, during the Round the following will occur:

  • The AFL Umpires will have the word ‘UMPIRE’ translated into one of six languages and printed on their uniform
  • Orange flags will be used by the AFL goal umpires at all matches signifying harmony
  • The Sherrin match balls with have the word ‘WELCOME’ printed in six different languages
  • Bi-lingual ’50’ will be painted on each of the 50m arcs at all of the matches across the round, correlating to the language theme for the game
  • Umpires will have ‘UMPIRE’ translated into one of 7 different languages, with the Crows’ clash with Carlton to be in Italian

Adelaide’s Multicultural Program, launched in May 2016, engages kids both through physical skills sessions and in the classroom, where they find out more about the game and are asked to be creative in developing their own football teams, including a name, logo, colours, guernsey design and more.

They also have the opportunity to build their very own football club where they assign each other roles including team managers and umpires.