Sophie loves footy and dreams of making it to the AFLW one day.

But at 13, she's already experienced racial vilification on the field.

Sophie's dad's side of the family is from Mutitjulu, the community at the base of Uluru, and her mother from the Tiwi Islands. Sophie was born in Alice Springs and grew up in Darwin.

It was during a recent junior league game in Darwin when Sophie was called a racist name.

The umpire didn't hear – but Sophie's teammate did.

They tackled the player who made the comment "really hard."

"And then she went off the field because [my teammate] got angry when she was being racist and swearing," Sophie said.

Sophie said swearing was already pretty common at her junior footy games, but racist language was not.

She said she did tell her coach, but "other than the tackle" nothing happened because it was already the last game of the season.

"Some of the other girls got angry at her and didn't shake her hand," Sophie said.

"The coach just said 'it's alright, because we won anyways'," she said.

It hasn't kept her away from the footy field.

"I don't let it define me or change my love for the game," she said.

Sophie knows what was said to her was wrong. That's why she wants to share her story.

"We should be living a good life in the future — not living in the past with all the racist slurs and everything."

She said the girl who called her that name probably felt angry because her team was losing, or maybe didn't understand what the term meant.

"Some of them girls that swear like that think it's only swear words — not being racist," she said.

Sophie is now playing footy and attending boarding school in Melbourne and dreams of playing football professionally one day.

"To get to the AFLW I just gotta take the slurs and keep going on with it," she said.

Young players 'going to change the league'

Vilification and discrimination is prohibited across all levels of Australian football, whether at professional or community leagues.

That includes vilification based on disability, gender, sexual orientation or race.

Seventeen AFL fans were issued lifetime bans in response to incidents of racial vilification during the 2023 professional men's AFL competition.

The first reported instance of racial vilification in the AFLW is also under investigation by the AFL, after Carlton defender Mua Laloifi was racially abused during the Blues' clash against Essendon in round nine.

Former AFLW star Akec Makur Chuot said footy should be a place for belonging and connection, not racism, and commended Sophie for her courage in speaking up.

The South Sudanese defender played 38 games for Fremantle, Richmond and most recently Hawthorn, having retired from the club at the end of the 2023 season.

She said speaking up about vilification took courage – and that it was not just professional players like Adam Goodes or Eddie Betts who could use their voice. Young fans, junior players and bystanders had a role to play too, she said.

"To have a young woman like Sophie who's speaking up and saying, 'I'm proud of my blackness, I'm proud of my culture and my people', you know, that's just wonderful," she said.

Meanwhile, Makur Chot said she often found herself wishing the approach to racism in sport was more proactive, something the AFL said it was working on. 

"The AFL strongly condemns racial vilification in the football community, including players, staff and their families, across all levels of our game," said Tanya Hosch, the AFL's manager of social policy and inclusion.

"While we know that we cannot eradicate racism alone, we will continue to evolve our policies, educate people and use our influence to increase actions against acts of racism, while further protecting our people who have been impacted by this harmful behaviour," she said. 

Last year the AFL rolled out new vilification training that has been completed online by by more than 20,000 community football coaches, following its review of vilification rules.

It also introduced new systems to help community football leagues manage complaints, and this year has overseen conciliation of player complaints in every jurisdiction, including the NT.

Australian research led by University of Melbourne Professor Karen Farquharson found racial vilification was common in Australian junior sports.

But Professor Farquharson said more data was needed to better understand the scale of the problem and find the best ways to prevent and address it. 

Jamal Elsheikh is an anti-racism advocate and a Victorian finalist for the 2024 Australian of the Year local hero award.

He provides racial literacy training to sports clubs as part of an initiative called Reflect Forward.

He said dealing with racism in junior and community sports could be complicated, and it was important to make sure players, umpires, coaches and parents had the resources to deal with it before it happened.

"They're often not really sure about what to do if something comes up," he said.

He said the formal systems common in junior and community level sports, like tribunals and match bans, had not proved effective in stopping vilification from happening.

"One of the pressure points is, how can they stand up to racism without putting the onus on the person who experienced it?"

He said he believed the best-practice responses should focus on education and the needs of the victim.

"Racism is not about people – it's not like there's a racist person to stop, it's about attitudes and really a culture," Mr Elsheikh said.

"These are comments passed on from generations, or spoken at home, or sometimes even online.

He commended Sophie for her generosity in speaking out.

"We need less tribunals and more conversations like this," he said.

Footy a stage for positive representation

Sophie said footy was a place where Aboriginal leaders like her favourite player, Shai Bolton, got a chance to "represent Indigenous mob" centre stage.

That's another reason she wants to make it in the AFLW.

"I want to be a professional footy player just like him but playing for AFLW representing the strong women in my community," she said.

She said the modern game of AFL had deep roots in Indigenous culture.

"I've been told how footy was made, and I done research on it, it started from us — and then other people started playing," she said.

She's referring to the game of Marngrook – a traditional game understood to have originated from the Djab Wurrung community, near the Gariwerd/Grampians in north-western Victoria. 

The game is now recognised by the AFL as an official influence on the modern code.

But she realises not everyone understands the history — and thinks that's one reason racism can end up on the football field.

Sophie is the granddaughter of Bob Randall, a famous Aboriginal elder and songwriter who was taken from his family as a child but managed to find his way home when he was 20 years old.

Randall died in 2015, but Sophie remembers spending time with him at Uluru when she was young, and learning about her family's history.

Bob Randall's popular 1970 song Brown Skin Baby details his experience as a member of the Stolen Generations.

The subsequent ABC documentary of the same name is recognised by the National Film and Sound Archive as one of the first times the Stolen Generations was publicised the Australian media.

"When I'm feeling low, I play his songs and it's as if he's right here with me," Sophie said.

She said speaking up was important – and urged others to do the same.

"You can feel more relieved that you got that off your chest." 

The ABC's Takeover Melbourne program gives a voice to young people across Greater Melbourne. If you would like to find out more about Takeover Melbourne, go to the Takeover website.