Family & football

DAVID Wirrpanda was just 15 years old when he moved away from everything and everyone he knew to play football for the West Coast Eagles.

It was a gutsy move for a young indigenous boy from Healesville, Victoria, but football was in Mr Wirrpanda’s blood; and it was more than a game, it was a chance for a better future for his family and his people.

“As far back as I can remember I just looked at football as an opportunity to assist, the best way I possibly can, financially,” Mr Wirrpanda told WA Business News.

“I remember going down to play and I signed with the Healesville Football Club Under 11s.

“The coach was pretty keen to keep me there but I wasn’t too happy playing, it didn’t do too much for me.

“I remember the coach came back to my house with a new pair of boots and $50, that was a lot of money for a nine-year-old kid”

But it was a trip to Melbourne to see his cousin, Sean Charles, play his first game for Melbourne at the MCG that ignited Mr Wirrpanda’s passion and gave him a glimpse of what he could achieve.

“We just couldn’t believe there were 70,000 people and he was playing at the MCG. I remember the feeling and from there it kind of grew, I thought I would love to have that feeling and share it with my family,” he says.

Seventeen years after leaving Victoria to join the West Coast Eagles, Mr Wirrpanda is still a familiar figure at Subiaco Oval, but he’s behind a desk at the David Wirrpanda Foundation these days and it’s disengaged indigenous kids that are his most formidable challenge.

In just seven years the foundation has grown into a thriving business supporting 31 staff, with offices in Perth and Wickham (north-east of Karratha) running community programs in WA, Victoria, NSW and the ACT.

The David Wirrpanda Foundation runs five programs, including the Troy Cook Health and Fitness program and the Dare to Dream Girls Group, all focused on addressing key social issues for disaffected indigenous youth.

Education and health are central to its work, as is providing role models and career pathways for indigenous children.

The foundation builds on Mr Wirrpanda’s strong links to his Aboriginal heritage in Victoria and East Arnhem Land.

Long before he played AFL, Mr Wirrpanda knew he had a responsibility to his people.

As a child he bumped along in the family car with his father – a powerful Djapu man from East Arnhem Land – to meet face-to-face with politicians and demand a better deal for his people.

“I grew up in the back of a car going to meetings watching my old man throw cups of tea at white fellas who had just denied us our land,” Mr Wirrpanda says.

“I thought ‘this is not a life and there has to be easier ways than getting into a car and driving to Canberra to make a statement’.”

But it was the women in Mr Wirrpanda’s family, his mother, Margaret Briggs Wirrpanda and grandmother, Geraldine Briggs, and their work with the indigenous community who instilled in him the importance of education and provided an imprint for what would become the foundation.

His admiration for the work of these women is echoed in his sobering assessment of the Aboriginal people and his heart-felt support for the foundation’s Girls Group.

“Women are just so important, if we are going to save the Aboriginal culture and Aboriginal people we have to do it for the women,” Mr Wirrpanda says.

“The Girls Group program is the most important one if you ask me.

“The mindset of these girls before we developed the program was that they thought for them to go on and have a good life or make money they had to have a kid.”

And it underlines that the foundation isn’t just about sport, it’s about providing the skills, tools and role models for these disengaged kids to forge their own pathway, whether that’s in business, art or sport.

“With everything we do at the foundation, I see that every day in my own family,” Mr Wirrpanda says.

“We have one family member who completed VCE, (Victorian Secondary Education Certificate) one family member, and we all threw in for him to go to Scotch College.”

Mr Wirrpanda single-handedly wrote the constitution for the foundation and started planning for its launch along with his exit from AFL.

One of the first hurdles was attracting funding for the programs.

“I looked at a couple of government bodies ... I had no idea what I was doing and I thought the whole process was too hard, Mr Wirrpanda says

“We are dealing with really disengaged people, we are talking to girls who are sexually abused and sexually active at eight years old and you want me to bring you key performance indicators.

‘‘To me that was offensive.”

The David Wirrpanda Foundation draws the majority of its funding from the corporate sector and private donations, however it is also supported by Lotterywest and Commonwealth grants.

Mr Wirrpanda recognised from the outset that strong corporate governance was a vital key to the success of the foundation. With that in mind, he used his strong links to West Coast and the business community to attract an impressive board, including West Coast Eagles chief executive and managing director Trevor Nisbett, Incremental Petroleum chairman and West Coast Eagles director Chris Cronin, and Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu partner Michael McNulty.

Mr Wirrpanda’s work with these kids is a 24/7 commitment, which he manages to fit around his commitments to his commercial property developments, his radio work with Mix 94.5, and his family.

He has two sons to model Shannon McGuire and is busy building a new home for them all.

He emails and writes to the kids in Wirra Club and their individual stories often haunt him as he tucks his own two little boys into bed at night.

“It’s hard to separate your emotional ties from reality but that is just something you have to do,” Mr Wirrpanda says.

“A lot of people might think its pressure but it’s the best pressure I have ever felt because you are changing lives.

“I used to be terrified of kicking the ball in from fullback; this is a walk in the park.”