Officials blame a ‘miscommunication’ for last minute Welcome to Country cancellation at blockbuster sporting event

By NICK WILSON FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA

Published: 14:52 BST, 25 April 2025 | Updated: 15:45 BST, 25 April 2025

Melbourne Storm has blamed a ‘miscommunication’ for cancelling a Welcome to Country ceremony at short notice, just before an elder was about to deliver the message and Aboriginal dance groups were set to perform on Friday.

Wurundjeri elder Aunty Joy Murphy was set to perform the service at the Storm’s match before she was told just hours before kick-off the Welcome to Country ceremony was no longer wanted, and it was a board decision.

Although the NRL club later reversed course and invited her to proceed, blaming a ‘miscommunication’, the elder and the dance groups were so aggrieved at the ‘hurtful’ and ‘deceitful’ treatment that their performances did not go ahead.

‘There was a miscommunication of expectations regarding the use [of] Welcome to Country at Melbourne Storm events throughout the year,’ the Storm said in a statement.

‘We acknowledge and accept the timing and miscommunication was not ideal and we have spoken to the groups concerned this afternoon.’

‘We were all just dumbfounded,’ Aunty Joy told The Age.

‘We would dearly love to be out there, but they’ve broken our hearts.

‘We want to rebuild our relationship. We want to make them (realise) that this was wrong, hurtful, deceitful and tokenistic.’

Aunty Joy Murphy was told hours before delivering a Welcome to Country at Melbourne Storm’s annual Anzac Day game her ceremony was cancelled

The Melbourne Storm club blamed the last-minute cancellation on a ‘miscommunication’, adding it had issued an apology

The Storm ran an Acknowledgement of Country message on the big screens before their Anzac commemoration.

The Welcome to Country has become a highly polarising issue at major events across the country on Anzac Day . with booing and disruptions at dawn services in Melbourne and Perth.

The Storm denied those disruptions played any role in the initial message to Aunty Joy that her ceremony not proceed.

‘I had no idea. I had been working all day and wasn’t aware, but that was disgraceful this morning. We strongly condemn that behaviour,’ Storm chairman Matt Kevin Tripp told The Age.

Mr Tripp said there was confusion over the booking, as Welcome to Country ceremonies were organised for the league’s Multicultural Round and Indigenous Round games, but not Anzac Day.

Earlier, a prominent neo-Nazi attended a dawn service at the Shrine of Remembrance in the Melbourne CBD on Friday morning and allegedly participated in a chorus of boos when Bunurong elder Mark Brown began his Welcome to Country.

Their booing was drowned out by the rest of the crowd, who cheered in protest as the act was widely condemned.

A spokesperson for Victoria Police told Daily Mail Australia a 26-year-old man from Kensington was directed to leave the area following the disruption. 

Police have interviewed him for ‘offensive behaviour’ and will proceed via a summons. 

Within hours, a lone heckler derailed a Welcome to Country led by Noongar Elder and veteran Di Ryder at a dawn service at Perth’s King Park. 

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese described the hecklers at Anzac Day dawn services as ‘disgraceful’

WA Police have appealed for information following the incident.  

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese slammed those who interrupted the dawn service Welcome to Country ceremonies, claiming they must ‘face the full force of the law’. 

He described the conduct as ‘disgraceful’, adding there is ‘no place in Australia for what occurred’.  

‘The disruption of Anzac Day is beyond contempt, and the people responsible must face the full force of the law. This was an act of low cowardice on a day when we honour courage and sacrifice,’ he said. 

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Officials blame a ‘miscommunication’ for last minute Welcome to Country cancellation at blockbuster sporting event

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