Prison, pride and Parra: Widders’ community-action call

Jasper Bruce | April 21, 2023

Eye-opening trips to the Don Dale Youth Detention Centre and the troubled town of Alice Springs have led former NRL star Dean Widders to call for players to engage more with the community. 

Alcohol-related assaults in Alice Springs increased by 63 per cent across the 12 months to March 2023. 

The spike coincided with the Northern Territory government’s decision to repeal laws – since re-implemented – restricting the purchase of alcohol.

Ahead of Parramatta’s annual NRL fixture in Darwin on Friday night, the club’s NRLW coach Widders and Eels great Steve Ella led a trip to Alice Springs.

They visited schools, a local boxing club and the Larapinta Indigenous Town Camp, as well as hosting a rugby league training clinic.

“We wanted to get there and show some love to the people who love rugby league there and give a bit back to the community,” Widders said.

But it was a subsequent visit to the notorious Don Dale in the suburbs of Darwin that proved most eye-opening for Widders and current Eels players J’maine Hopgood and Reagan Campbell-Gillard.

The prison was the subject of a damning ABC report in 2016 that triggered a Royal Commission into youth detention in the Northern Territory.

“They were the worst conditions I’ve ever seen,” said Widders, who has been working in remote communities for more than 20 years.

“I’ve been to jails in NSW but this thing over here is like it’s from the ’70s. It’s disgusting, and there’s kids in there. 

“They’ve had tough lives and their communities are dealing with a lot of issues and barriers. It isn’t easy for them to see answers.

“It would probably be the same for me, if I lived a life that was in despair with a lot of tough circumstances and I couldn’t see a way out of it.

“You turn to crime and violence and drugs and alcohol to mask the pain. 

“You see the hurt and despair in their eyes, and as an Aboriginal man I find it hard.”

Data released by the NT Office of the Children’s Commissioner revealed that in the financial year 2021-22, an average of 95 per cent of children incarcerated in the territory were Indigenous.

Indigenous children make up little more than 40 per cent of the NT’s total youth population.

Eels recruit Hopgood, a Gureng Gureng man, volunteered to visit Don Dale and convinced Campbell-Gillard to join him.

“With it being such a large population of Indigenous kids in there, you’re always trying to give back,” Hopgood said.

“They were shy at the start but as we kicked the footy around or played a bit of basketball with them, they sort of opened up a bit more to us.

“If you look at it one way, they’re in there for doing something that’s not right. But at the same time, you feel sorry for them. 

“Just talking to them, none of them are bad kids. They were good and kind and respectful to us.”

Hopgood and Campbell-Gillard are among the form forwards in the NRL.

But the Don Dale inmates were just as excited to see Widders, who regularly appears on Indigenous television network NITV and is name-checked in the lyrics of Big Noyz’s NRL-themed hip-hop track Run The Ball Up.

“They didn’t know I played footy but they knew I was on TV,” Widders said with a smile.

Widders, an Anaiwan man, said it was important not to underestimate how positive an impact Indigenous sportspeople could have as role models.

“You go out there in the (Indigenous) community and ask any kid or any person, ‘What’s your community about?’, they’ll just talk about all the despair and all the negativity,” he said.

“So these kids are never going to feel good about themselves.

“The respect and appreciation of culture and shining a positive light on who we are as a people, as Indigneous people, is a small thing.

“It’s not the answer, by any means, but it slowly turns the lens that some of these communities use to look at themselves.”

For that reason, Widders wants to see more players following Hopgood and Campbell-Gillard’s lead.

“As a game, we’ve got to do more,” he said.

“I remember years ago we had players like Preston Campbell and David Peachey constantly giving back to their community,.

“We’ve still got a few of them.

“(South Sydney players) Latrell (Mitchell) and Cody (Walker) will turn up to everything, they put their hand up to do stuff all the time. 

‘We’re the only place were Aboriginal men have a platform, where the statistics are higher than average in a positive way.”

“We have to keep giving back to our community. Our game is built on people who give back.”