Jew Crew girls take out the cup

March 22, 2016 by J-Wire Staff
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The Jew Crew did us proud competing in the AFL Unity Cup in Melbourne with the boys winning 4 out of their 5 matches and the girls winning all four matches making them the Unity Cup Premiers  for 2016. 

The Jew Crew

The Jew Crew

Unity Cup veteran, Joel Kuperholz, co-creator and manager of the MUJU Peace Club with two Premierships to his name, coached the girls.

“A great line up of Jewish girls, some incredibly talented players like Amy Silver and Rebekah Halprin joined forces with other girls who were willing to get out of their comfort zones, meet new people and have a go at something new”,  Joel commented.
The Jew Crew girls played a tough game against ‘Kickstart Indigenous’ winning by a couple of goals. Unfortunately for the ‘Bharat Bombers’ who only scored one point against our Jew Crew girls, our girls set a new high score with over 12 goals in 16 minutes! Then the cross cultural team from Geelong, who’d caught the bus to town at 7.00am went down by 37 points to the Jew Crew and lastly Werribee Football Community Group also made up of players from Africa, Asia and India were easily defeated by a few goals by our Jewish sports girls.

Showing off the trophy

Showing off the trophy

Our Jew Crew boys suffered their only defeat for the day when they lost their first game to Newport Mosque first up. The Jew Crew knew it would be a tough match as the Newport boys were some of their old MUJU partners with plenty of size and experience on their side. Our boys played valiantly, losing by just one goal in the end. The second match, against the reigning premiers, Team Africa, was also a tough one but a goal by Jordan Sandler right on the siren, secured them the match. The Jew Crew played hard against ‘AFL Goldfields’ from Riddle with a team made up of boys from the Polynesian and Pacific Islands, securing a convincing win by over 3 goals. The winning streak continued with another strong win over ‘Masala Football Club’ a multicultural team from City of Casey and then their last game against Goldfields again. The Jew Crew boys made valiantly and determinedly finishing up second overall for boys Division One. The Newport boys were undefeated, so they took the Premiership this year.

The cup

The cup

Team Manager and creator of the Jew Crew and coach of boys team, Ryan Kuperholz was full of pride and praise for his boys, ‘Due to the nature of Unity Cup this year being based on wins, points and percentages, some teams packed up and left after scoring a couple of defeats, knowing they couldn’t win. Our boys did the opposite; despite their one early loss, they re-grouped played hard and demonstrated pride and sportsmanship with great play, excellent wins and a strategy to come back next year and do it all again!’

The Unity Cup is co-hosted by AFL Multicultural Program and the Australian Federal Police to promote harmony and inclusion between Melbourne’s diverse communities and positive relations between the police and some at risk minorities. This year, due to a new partnership with AFL Victoria, the Victorian State Government Office of Multicultural Affairs and Citizenship provided funding to ensure each team got a fresh set of football jumpers. Ryan asked for community input via J-seek on Facebook and a few talented artists collaborated with Ryan to design their versions of a modern Jewish footy Guernsey. Ryan then posted the best four on J-seek and asked the community to vote. A few hundred people posted their preferences and overwhelmingly favoured the one the team are now wearing which was designed by year 12 student, Jayden Beville.

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