Child’s play
Having overcome childhood literacy struggles, former AFL star and father-of-five Eddie Betts is passionate about inspiring a new generation to be their best selves. He chats to Siobhan Duck about creating change through his children’s books and upcoming T
WHEN Eddie Betts signed with the Carlton Football Club as a teenager, he couldn’t read his own contract.
Twenty years later and Betts has penned not only a bestselling autobiography – The Boy from Boomerang Crescent – but two popular children’s books, which have now been adapted into an inspirational new cartoon series for NITV and Netflix.
“I still pinch myself to this day when I look back on where I’ve come from,” the humble star says.
“To go from being a small black kid from the community who couldn’t read or write, to playing 250 AFL games, writing an autobiography, writing children’s books that will now be characters on Netflix and I still work on Fox Footy as a commentator.
“That kid [I once was] would be gobsmacked
[by] where I am today. It still surprises me. And I am still learning. I still want to improve. I still want to make a difference.”
After his parents split up, Betts spent his childhood shuttling between his mum’s home in Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, and his dad’s place in Port Lincoln, South Australia; leading him to fall through the cracks of the education system.
Despite his innate shyness, when he was drafted in 2004, Betts mustered the courage to ask the club to help him develop his literacy skills.
“I’m so glad that I did ask for help,” he says.
“And that’s what I’ve definitely told these young kids (especially Aboriginal kids), because attendance in schools around communities is really low.
“They see me as an ‘out’ because they hear my story and say: ‘Eddie didn’t go to school because he played footy. I am good at footy too, so I don’t want to go to school!’
“My main message to these kids is ‘Make sure you graduate’, because I was the lucky one. If I didn’t have footy, I had nothing. No job. No education. No nothing.
“I tell them: ‘Go to school. Graduate. Get your education because, if you don’t make footy, you can become whatever you want. You could go to university and become a doctor. You can chase your dreams!’”
Even though footy gave Betts a lifeline, not being able to read or write made day-today life challenging.
He recalls the difficulties of something as simple as reading a Melways while navigating his way around his new hometown of Melbourne.
“That was before Google Maps,” he laughs.
“I could play footy, but when they would write the plays up on the board, I couldn’t read it.
“I couldn’t understand the words. So, I had to ask Carlton for literacy classes, which I was embarrassed about.”
That embarrassment has long since faded, with Betts realising – at the urging of his wife, Anna Scullie, upon his retirement from AFL in 2021 – that he could harness his own experiences to help others.
“She told me: ‘You’ve got a job to do now, whether you like it or not, and that job is to be a voice for your people’,” he explains.
“And she was right. I can’t sit back and watch my people suffer. I’m in a position now where I can try and make change for the next generation of kids so that they do not have to face the barriers that I faced coming through the system.”
Inspired by
Adam Goodes,
Betts has spoken up about the racism he faced during his sporting career. While inroads are being made to better celebrate diversity and our Indigenous history, Betts says there is still a long way to go. “I had a banana thrown at me on the footy field when I was in Adelaide and had all these names getting called at me,” he says quietly.
“And my kids had to live through that. And, after the referendum – we were big on the Yes vote – my kids went to school and had to hear other kids saying ‘My parents voted no’. And I had to deal with that as well.” Betts has come to realise that the best way to create real change is through the next generation.
To share his messages about tolerance and kindness he wrote his first book Eddie’s Lil’ Homies, in a cartoon-style so that kids like himself – who struggle with literacy – wouldn’t feel daunted about picking it up.
Now his stories have been turned into a cartoon, which Betts hopes will allow him to reach even more children. The series also features rap music, which has been penned by Indigenous artists especially for the show, as a means to reinforce the lessons contained within the narrative.
For Betts, rap is just another device to make learning fun for youngsters.
“I do listen to rap music and R&B, I love it,” he says.
“But growing up within the community, my family are just big country music fans. So, I love country music.”
It’s not just Indigenous characters who feature in Eddie’s Lil’ Homies.
“We wanted to make sure the characters are diverse, because that is something that cartoons are really screaming out for,” Betts says, acknowledging that there weren’t any First Nations characters in the cartoons he grew up watching.
“Our books brought a bit of diversity and I think that’s why they wanted to make it into a cartoon series… we have Shanti who’s Indian, Decks who is in a wheelchair and is Vietnamese, Tal who is Chinese, Lachie who is Anglo and Junior, Eddie and Lottie who are Aboriginal. And we have a non-binary character as well.”
Each of the characters is voiced by an actor from the same cultural background. Plus, Junior is played by Betts’ eight-year-old son Billy.
A natural performer – who also happens to be good at footy – Betts says he would support Billy (or any of his other four children) if they chose to follow him into professional sports or a life on-screen.
The only non-negotiable is that they finish school.
“Then they can do whatever they want,” he smiles.
Eddie’s Lil’ Homies will initially be available to New Zealand and Australian audiences on Netflix, but Betts hopes it could eventually stream globally or even topple Bluey as our most popular cartoon.
“That’s the dream,” he laughs.
Eddie’s Lil’ Homies, Friday, February 16, 7.30pm, NITV and streaming, Netflix