I was only eight in 2000 when my family and I first came to Australia. My parents tried unsuccessfully to move us to Canada before eventually migrating to Perth, and the result was that I was an eight-year-old Asian kid going to school in Australia with a Canadian accent, completely clueless about Australian life. The sarcasm, the larrikinism, and the love of sport - the culture - that many young men in this country are expected to grow into was a world so far apart from both the quaint sincerity of Vancouver Island and the ambitious and relentless pace of Singapore that had been my previous life.
I was as odd to this world as it was to me. In the classroom, it was assumed I was smart because I was Asian. In reality, I was perpetually confused by the expressions and phrases used around me. I was simply good at following orders and keeping quiet until the day was done.
On top of that, I had a unusual body. I’m not a tall man by most measures, let alone rugby players. I stand at 179 centimetres, but I haven’t grown since I was thirteen. So not only was I an oddball, I was also a giant, struggling at that age of development where my limbs were suddenly so long I didn’t know how to use them. I lacked the coordination to throw, kick, or hit with an implement a ball of any size or shape (I largely still do), and so where most kids found friends and a sense of belonging in either the classroom or on the sporting field, I only found that I belonged in neither.
I fell in love with this game then and there. It made sense of my body and gave me a place in this foreign world.
And then in 2003, the Rugby World Cup came to Sydney, and the excitement spread west. On the oval at lunchtime, I saw classmates in a rectangle of cones holding an oval ball in their hands, running at and tackling each other with delight. I saw a use for my body.
In 2004, I played my first real game of rugby union. I ran onto the field with no knowledge of the rules except to pass backwards, but for the first time in my life things made sense. I didn’t have the skills of our halves or the speed of our wingers or the athleticism of our loose forwards, but that didn’t matter. I had height that belonged in lineouts, scrums, and rucks and their fringes where locks live. There was a place on that field for everyone so long as you loved the game enough to get up after you got hit. In that unintuitive way, there is an inclusivity written into rugby.
Eugene Yang with his rugby team. Source: Supplied
I fell in love with this game then and there. It made sense of my body and gave me a place in this foreign world. For the next ten years, I grew from the friends and the confidence it gave me, both of which shaped who I am now. Even with a ruptured ACL, a heightened chance of arthritis, and boots in the closet that will never be used again, I will always be thankful for rugby and I will never regret it, clicking knee and all.
If discrimination from an idol - whether intentional or not - discouraged me from playing this game in my youth, I would have stopped.
I would say to Israel Folau that in much the same way that you found yourself through God, I found myself through rugby. These are rites of passages, ways of finding meaning in our lives. Just as you feel you should never be barred from your exploration and expression of God as a way of understanding the world, I feel that no one should ever be held back from that process through rugby, and so do a lot of other people. If I was denied this path, if discrimination from an idol - whether intentional or not - discouraged me from playing this game in my youth, I would have stopped. I would have returned to the confusion without another way out, and be a different person today.
What's seems missing from Israel's perspective is a recognition of the effect that his message can have on people, that it can be a means of excluding people from the fundamental experience that makes sense of their lives, at the time when they need it the most.
I hope a resolution works out between himself and Rugby Australia, and I hope that he will be the one to find it. If he does, I hope that he will be driven by a love for this game and everybody who needs it, as well as for God.
