Essendon great Michael Long will perform a song by Indigenous music legend Archie Roach at half-time during the Dreamtime at the MCG game on Saturday night.

Long is slated to sing Roach’s The colour of your jumper - the song celebrating Nicky Winmar’s famed stand against racism in 1993 – in an ensemble including Mo’ju, Radical Son, Bumby and Roach’s son Amos Roach, in a game against the Tigers that is expected to attract more than 80,000.

The colour of your jumper was written by Roach as a tribute to Winmar’s famed stand at Victoria Park. Roach passed away last year and was given a state memorial in Victoria.

Long, thus, will be singing a song that references a fellow Indigenous AFL great, whose lifting of his jumper in the face of racist abuse was the forerunner to Long’s stand in the Anzac Day game of 1995, which resulted in the game’s first mediation (with Collingwood’s Damian Monkhorst) and the introduction of a vilification rule.

Roach performed The colour of your jumper in the Dreamtime game in 2013.

The performance by Long coincides with the Bombers officially backing the Indigenous Voice to Parliament for the upcoming referendum, as the club seeks to re-establish its credentials as a leader in the AFL for Indigenous Australians.

Under new chairman David Barham, the Bombers have just announced the formation of a First Nations Advisory Council chaired by former player and new club board member Dean Rioli and including fellow ex-player Che Cockatoo-Collins and other experts in the Indigenous space.

Essendon’s wish to re-establish the Bombers as a leader in the Indigenous relations - the club having been a pioneer when Long and Gavin Wanganeen emerged as stars in the 1993 premiership season – has been helped by the recent recruitment of the father-son twins, the Davey brothers, Alwyn junior and Jayden, along with Wanganeen’s son Tex (recruited before the 2022 season) and rookie Anthony Munkara from the Tiwi Islands in the NT.