Seven cultures honoured in Storm shirt

In celebrating the Multicultural Round in the NRL competition, the Melbourne Storm will be honouring and celebrating seven of the different cultures in its NRL playing group in its 2023 multicultural t-shirt.

Seven artists were commissioned to contribute to the design which represents Australia’s Indigenous people, the people of Papua New Guinea, Tonga, Samoa, Fiji, Cook Islands and the Maori.

Storm CEO Justin Rodski says it’s a unique design that has been well received by the players, members and fans and also features each player’s name and their Storm playing number.

He says the artists involved did some amazing work in honouring each of the seven cultures.

The 2023 Storm players represented by the cultures in the multicultural t-shirt include Nelson Asofa-Solomona, Jahrome Hughes, Will Warbrick, Jayden Nikorima, Reimis Smith, Jack Howarth, Joe Chan (Maori); Xavier Coates and Justin Olam (PNG), Jordan Grant and Reimis Smith (Indigenous), Tepai Moeroa (Cook Islands), Tui Kamikamica (Fiji), Dean Ieremia, Aaron Pene, Sua Fa’alogo and Young Tonumaipea (Samoa) and George Jennings and Eli Katoa (Tonga).

The multicultural t-shirt made its first on-field appearance in the warm-up match before the Multicultural Round match against the Gold Coast Titans on Saturday and was worn again by their NRL squad at training on Tuesday.

It will also be worn in the warm-up to tonight’s match against Wests Tigers at 7 at AAMI Park.

Multicultural Round is an annual celebration of the diverse cultural backgrounds that make up the rugby league community.

In the NRL, players represent 63 different national heritages, with almost a third of players (29%) born outside Australia and half (51%) having at least one parent born overseas. Forty-five percent of players identify as Pasifika, while ten percent identify as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islande.

In other NRL matches, the Dolphins will face the Broncos at 9 tonight, the Cowboys will meet the Titans at 6.30pm tomorrow, and the Rabbitohs will face the Sea Eagles at 8.35pm tomorrow.