Justin Hodges still making a big impact with Beyond the Broncos Indigenous mentoring program
TWO years after his retirement from rugby league, free-running backline flyer Justin Hodges is still making a big impact for the Broncos and Queensland.
QLD News
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JUSTIN Hodges is on the move again. His rugby league career was a hard act to follow but on this bright, cool winter’s morning, as he motors down the Pacific Highway in a white Hyundai van, Hodges is hoping his new run for the Broncos makes a lasting impression.
Two years after he retired, the free-running backline flyer is still making a big impact for the Broncos and Queensland as he and Bo de la Cruz, a former National Indigenous Sportswoman of the Year, drive towards Lismore in northern NSW. From Brisbane, they have a two-and-a-half-hour journey ahead of them, a full day speaking to students at four schools about health and wellbeing and the importance of education, and then another two-and-a-half hours home.
The two sports stars represent the Beyond the Broncos Indigenous mentoring programs, which aim to improve school attendance rates in a vast area covering Southeast Queensland, northern NSW and out to western Queensland areas such as Charleville and Cunnamulla.
Hodges, 35, admits academic learning was the last thing on his mind when he was a schoolboy at Trinity Bay High in Cairns in the state’s far north. His focus was on playing football and the only homework he did involved breaking tackles. “To be honest, education wasn’t important to me back then,” Hodges says as the Hyundai hugs the white line on the highway heading south. “I wasn’t a kid who enjoyed school. I found it boring. But I was fortunate that I was able to make a career out of rugby league because, in those days, football clubs were only interested in how good you were as a player. It’s much different now. The NRL has a rule for young players that unless you’re working or studying, you can’t play.”
Hodges says he would have received “a very bad report” if he were at school now. “Education is the key and we want to help kids reach their full potential, whether it’s to be a doctor, a lawyer, the CEO of a big company or whatever they want. We want them to have those opportunities. But they have to realise that education is the driver.”
Hodges and other former Broncos such as Scott Prince and Jharal Yow Yeh bring star power to the club’s community work. In May, the Federal Government announced it was investing a further $5 million to support 1000 more places in the Beyond the Broncos Girls Academy for indigenous youngsters. The program encourages increased school attendance while building leadership skills and developing career pathways to further education and employment.
The Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Nigel Scullion, 61, said the funding would also provide continued support for the 300 existing places. “Investing in the future of women and girls has a significant benefit not only to them as individuals, but also for their family and broader community.”
With the Women in League round of the NRL competition this week, Brisbane Broncos chief executive officer Paul White says the announcement was a “wonderful affirmation” of the Girls Academy program. The Beyond the Broncos programs have been running for seven years, White says, and have grown from mentoring just 40 indigenous students at a handful of schools across south Brisbane and Ipswich in 2010 to potentially reaching more than 2000 by 2019.
“We’re very proud of what the Beyond the Broncos Girls Academy is doing to empower young women, both academically and in their general lives,” says White, 51. “Our indigenous community programs employ 17 people full-time, which is a large proportion of our workforce.”
Before taking the reins at the Broncos, White spent 17 years as a police officer, working throughout country Queensland, and he realises that many of the students being mentored under the Broncos scheme “come from backgrounds of fairly high disadvantage”. “For many, if they didn’t have access to these types of intervention programs, they might not have had the chance to complete their secondary studies,” White says. “On a most basic level, education is fundamental for what happens in life with access to jobs and study and then, long-term, these kids become parents themselves and educate their own children.”
White says of the 300 students in the Beyond the Broncos Girls Academy last year, “100 per cent of them completed their Queensland Certificate of Education”.
“Our work is not just about closing the gap of disadvantage, it’s also about breaking the cycle of truancy and poverty,” says White, who adds he learned the importance of that from an early age. He says his parents were “givers – very community-minded people”. His mother, Marie, would welcome indigenous friends into their home and he recalled a boy at Rockhampton once telling her, “This is the first time I’ve been allowed to come to a white man’s house.” Marie replied that he should “keep coming”.
A day after their trip to Lismore, Hodges and de la Cruz, aged 36, are joined by another former Bronco, Jharal Yow Yeh, 27, for a Beyond the Broncos touch football competition. The day off for the students is to reward them for going to school. About 150 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander kids from Brisbane are taking part at the Des Connor Fields in inner-northwest Ashgrove. Rock music pumps from speakers in the final game of the day as the schoolkids shoot and shimmy along the grass, playing against Hodges, Yow Yeh and de la Cruz, a dual international in both Touch Football and Rugby Sevens.
Hodges scored 73 tries for the Broncos and five for Queensland over a 15-year career span and he’s making the hard yards still, even though he admits the knees aren’t what they used to be.
Taylor Anderson, 17, a student from Wavell High in Brisbane’s north, says the kids at her school get excited each term when the Broncos program makes a visit.
“It’s certainly helpful for a lot of the kids,” she says. “It’s lifted attendance rates, and part of the program is a reward system where kids are given prizes at the end of term for their attendance. Last year everyone got a hoodie, so it gives kids that incentive to come to school.”
Anderson says there are many reasons why indigenous kids skip classes and the program addresses those issues. “They might not like the school environment,” she says. “They might not be good academically and they’re embarrassed. Or they might have trouble at home – but this program gives them an incentive to go every day and work towards a goal.”
Kaytlin Mace, 16, from Mitchelton High in Brisbane’s northwest, says the program teaches “different pathways to the future”. “The rewards and the sports days organised by the Broncos give everyone something to look forward to each term,” she says.
The day out of the classroom proves a big hit in nearby Ashgrove. There are NAIDOC (National Aboriginal and Islanders Day Observance Committee) events and a lesson in basket-weaving but the biggest cheer comes with the arrival of other Broncos players James Roberts, Jordan Kahu, David Mead and Jonus Pearson, who sign autographs and shake hands with the kids.
Roberts, 24, is surrounded by students when he arrives. “I never really had anybody come to my school from the NRL on their days off giving us support, so this is a great initiative,” he says. “I look forward to doing more.”
Bo de la Cruz says the Broncos Girls Academy is expanding from 300 girls in 15 schools this year with plans to include another 1000 from areas as diverse as Caboolture, north of Brisbane; Kingscliff, near the Queensland-NSW border; and Charleville, Cunnamulla, Ipswich and Toowoomba to the west.
At each of the schools involved in the program, there is a support officer for the indigenous students. Hodges and Yow Yeh devise workshops and go out to every school, every term, to give presentations on a different theme.
“Last term it was culture,” de la Cruz says, “this term it’s health and wellbeing, and the next term it’s respect for relationships – these are things that generally aren’t taught at school but are crucial for life.”
When the Girls Academy started at its most disadvantaged school (which can’t be named) in July last year, attendance for the indigenous girls was 73 per cent; 12 months later it is above 90 per cent. De la Cruz says success in attendance will lead to success in achievement and employment. Broncos figures show that in the first 12 months of the program, the number of girls attending school more than 90 per cent of the time has doubled in three of the 15 schools. Almost 10 per cent of students have improved their attendance by more than 10 per cent, several by 15-20 per cent.
Yow Yeh has been involved in the Broncos program since 2012, when a compound fracture of the lower right leg hastened a premature end to his playing career. “At first our program was a school-to-work transition program but it’s grown from there,” he says. “Attendance rates have been rising every year. The problems of distraction and temptations for young kids these days applies to everyone, not just indigenous kids. Every term, we’re driving the importance of schooling – we drive it and then the kids make it their own. We’re now talking about having camps if the kids put a good semester together. They’ll get to wear the Broncos logo and represent the brand.”
Each week, Hodges mentors about 25 kids at Glenala High in Durack, in Brisbane’s southwest, and a similar number at St Peter Claver College at Riverview in Ipswich, 45km west of Brisbane. “I sit down one on one with them and we’re friends,” he says. “Sometimes they tell you things they don’t tell other people – about what’s bothering them, or the problems they have at home. The first objective with our programs is always to give the kids time. We’ll go in and make sure they’re relaxed, having a bit of fun, and we’ll find out some information about them to try to help them succeed in life.”
Hodges left school at 16 after signing a four-year contract with the Broncos as a development player. He worked as a storeman for six months but provides many more opportunities for school-leavers now under the Broncos program. “We organise work experience for the kids with some of the companies that back the Broncos, but our main aim has always been about trying to get kids to achieve (better than) 90 per cent school attendance. If they do that, obviously they’re learning and getting a better education for the transition from school to work, university or whatever it will be.”
The Broncos have also provided 20 supporter tickets for young students from St George State High School in southwestern Queensland to watch the match against the Dragons at Suncorp Stadium on August 18. It is part of the St George Youth Engagement Program to build self-esteem among school students. The group consists mostly of indigenous youth who struggle with traditional schooling environments and come from dysfunctional family structures.
Paul White says he’s not just proud of the Beyond the Broncos program, but inspired by what former Broncos and others are achieving through it. “I see how far they’ve come as young men in the last few years,” he says. “We’re getting support for the program from big business. Most large corporations want to do more in this area but don’t know how. But because we are in that ground level and community level, it’s easy for good businesses to support our programs.”
White says working as a country policeman gave him a “preventative” mentality. He came to know the problems that poverty created, the hungry bellies that fuelled petty crime. In Mount Isa, in the state’s northwest, he set up a boxing program and a touch football program with a barbecue at the end. “I was always looking for outcomes other than just arresting people,” White said. “I never saw the amount of arrests we made as being a positive indicator, but a rather a negative one. I learned a lot about the indigenous community and about the disadvantage that some young men and women face.
“One of the things I love most about my role now at the Broncos is that we get to put back into the community. In many ways, through our indigenous programs, we get to change people’s lives.” ■
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