SA content creators Marmalade detail their rise from Div 12 Ressies battlers to social media kings
From lunchtime league battlers on suburban footy fields to the bright lights of Australia’s biggest sporting events, an SA-born social media juggernaut has enjoyed an epic rise to fame.
The loveable lads from an SA-born social media juggernaut have detailed their epic rise from a couple lads kicking a footy around Adelaide to national sporting identities on the biggest stages.
The local footy battlers turned social media stars Checkers, Srey and Jim have made the big time through their social brand Marmalade, and this week reflected on the two years since they left Adelaide for the bright lights of Melbourne.
The boys reached the lofty fame and fanfare not as AFL stars, but by playing park reserves football in Adelaide – or Div 12 ressies, as they call it.
The names Checkers and Srey have become as famous to young football fans across the country as Blues star Patrick Cripps or Collingwood’s Nick Daicos.
The Marmalade boys became the face of AFL’s Gather Round, were guest stars at LIV Golf and recently were invited on the field of the Wallabies and British & Irish Lions rugby test match in Brisbane.
They are prominent figures at AFL games in Melbourne and Adelaide with many of their 155,000 followers on TikTok stopping the boys for photos.
Checkers told The Advertiser the group started its content creation journey during Covid in late 2020, with cheeky videos kicking footy over Adelaide landmarks and convincing SA identities to simply “kick a torp’.
But, it was a decision to upload some videos of the group playing local reserves footy for the Lockleys Football Club which launched the group into the national spotlight.
The videos, in the style of vlogs, detailed the heroics, the trials and tribulations of B grade football.
They have fun, drink far too much chocolate milk and celebrate all the glory of lunchtime league footy.
But it’s not just self-deprecating humour – it is celebrating the grassroots footy culture and clearly easy for footy fans to get behind.
Checkers said the first Div 12 Ressies video was uploaded at halftime of a match in suburban Adelaide and by the end of the game it had 200,000 views and the videos quickly started averaging 8 million views every weekend.
The Marmalade boys gave the fans more of what they wanted, promoting the “Biggest ressies game ever” at Lockleys, generating a crowd of 5,000 people.
It was soon after, in July 2023, Checkers and Srey moved to Melbourne to take their content creation to a bigger footy market.
Checkers said the group had not made a single cent from social media when he and Srey decided to quit their jobs and focus on the videos full time in a new city but relished the chance to collaborate with childhood heroes and meeting people they looked up to.
And the boys are never far from home, returning for every Showdown and the big sporting shows Adelaide attracts.
“Peter Malinauskas must be trying to bring us home because he keeps bringing all the bloody live sport to Adelaide,” Checker said.
“As soon as we left, SA got Gather Round, LIV Gold, brought back V8 car racing … we went to chase the videos in Melbourne and he brought them to Adelaide.
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Originally published as SA content creators Marmalade detail their rise from Div 12 Ressies battlers to social media kings
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