On a normal Wednesday night, the Cherbourg sports complex would be deserted after 8 p.m. The gym would be closed. The basketball court would be empty. The last boxing session of the week would have ended an hour earlier.
Tonight, June 8, however, is not a normal Wednesday. More than 1,100 km south, one of Cherbourg’s favorite children will be on the rugby league’s biggest stage for the first time, and the sports complex he knows so well will open its doors to an indigenous community riding a wave of Selwyn-inspired emotions. Cobbo’s incredible rise from the beginner Brisbane Broncos to the sense of home state.
“It wouldn’t normally happen, but they’re doing it for Selwyn,” says Cherbourg Hornets president Lynette Brown about the decision to invite the entire city to a home party with a big screen, sausages, popcorn and fruit. .
“There’s a big uproar in our community … we have people who normally support New South Wales, but now support Queensland because of Selwyn. Proud is an understatement.”
Cobbo, a 20-year-old winger on Sunday, only made his Broncos debut in May last year. But he has scored 10 tries in 12 games in 2022 and has done so in a way that experts describe him as “the next Greg Inglis.”
Every city in Queensland is proud of its home-grown heroes. Billy Slater and Innisfail. Darren Lockyer and Rome. Allan Langer and Ipswich. But the impact of Cobbo’s selection on the people of Cherbourg is on another level.
Located about 250 km northwest of Brisbane, Cherbourg is home to about 1,300 people, 98.7% of whom, according to the most recent census, identify as indigenous. Founded as a Barambah settlement in 1904, the Queensland government forcibly relocated the aborigines there for several decades.
The city has long had a reputation for producing athletes whose talents were celebrated further afield. They included Frank Fisher, who played against the British touring rugby league teams in 1932 and 1936 and was later named to the Australian Indigenous team of the century. Eddie Gilbert, meanwhile, fired Donald Bradman for a duck at a 1931 Sheffield Shield match, with the best cricketer described him as the fastest bowling spell he had ever faced.
Cobbo scored a try during the NRL’s 12th round match between the Brisbane Broncos and the Gold Coast Titans at Brisbane’s Suncorp Stadium last month. Photo: Darren England / AAP
Now, more than 90 years later, another son from Cherbourg is leaving his mark on the national sports scene, and it turns out that he is Gilbert’s great-grandson.
“Our entire mob was very proud of Eddie Gilbert’s success and now Selwyn is inspiring a new generation,” says Queensland Origin legend Steve Renouf, whose mother grew up in the “bedroom system” of Cherbourg before raising his dozen children 6 km from the road to Murgon.
“I get goosebumps every time I see a child playing because it’s typical of how the Cherbourg mafia plays. Many guys there are very thin, but they love contact. He just loves the ball in his hand.
“When you come from one of these small towns, it gives a big boost to the community for one of them to play an elite level of rugby league … the whole area is just a rugby league. that’s the whole community. “
Ties with Cherbourg’s home state extended to the inaugural party in 1980: the mother of Queensland skipper Arthur Beetson was forcibly transferred to the settlement when she was a child before moving. she moved to Rome with her husband in the 1940s. Beetson was the first of 37 Indigenous players to wear a Maroons jersey: 16.75% of the 221 men who represented Queensland were Indigenous (compared to 3.3% of Aboriginal and islanders in Queensland). Torres Strait of the total population of Australia).
In addition to adding these figures, Cobbo will become the third player in his corner of the world to do so, joining Renouf (Murgon) and Willie Tonga (Cherbourg).
“You have to understand that the rugby league for us is not just for kids to play and be physically active,” says Brown, whose Cherbourg Hornets serve teams from the age of 6 to A-Grade. “It’s also about social inclusion and being part of something.
“For some of the kids, and even some of the men, the footy can be an escape from the everyday problems that people have to deal with and some of the hard things in community life. It’s like football is what everyone appreciates.
“Things are a little different here. Not all families have a car, so Cherbourg City Council supports us with a bus every weekend. My husband is the driver and we will drive to all the children’s homes and play the horn or one of the children will run to tell them to get muddy … we take the Esky with drinks, water, buns and fruit from our pockets.
“It’s all about the kids. All we care about is getting kids in the paddock and if football can be a race for five more kids in our community, we’ll be very happy with that.”