AS the football season heads towards fever pitch, a boy from the western suburbs is preparing to once again assume his role as the country’s leading indigenous voice in football media.

Grant Hansen is the host and producer of the Marngrook Footy Show – Australia’s only indigenous, AFL-based television show.

The Marngrook (which translates to game ball in Aboriginal) show spawned from Hansen’s radio program more than a decade ago and has grown rapidly in the three years it has been aired on Foxtel’s National Indigenous Television channel.

The Derrimut resident said the idea for the show was fairly simple but the reasons behind it tapped into a complicated cultural inequity.

“I was noticing a lot of the football panel shows at the time had no indigenous players on any of their panels,” he said.

“Whether it was Live and Kicking, the Channel Nine Footy Show, the Sunday sports shows - there was two of them on, On the Couch all that sort of stuff and there was not one indigenous person on any of those shows.

“So I thought we need to have our own indigenous program that can give an indigenous perspective on AFL football and also provide some sort of pathway for indigenous players to get into the AFL media.”

The radio program first aired on 3CR out of Collingwood and quickly gained a “big cult following” according to Hansen. Heading in to its fourth year on television the show now boasts a list of guests that reads like a who’s who of Australian Rules football.

Kevin Bartlett, Ron Barrassi, Doug Hawkins and Adam Goodes are just some of the names to grace the show with the likes of Wayne Carey and Chris Grant to debut this year.

The panel itself boasts some big names including Derek Kickett, Ronnie Burns, Chris Johnson and Gilbert McAdam.

Hansen himself used to kick the Sherrin around but he said he has come a long way from his playing days out West.

He began his junior career with St Albans but was soon training with Footscray in the under 19s.

Four years later he found himself at Essendon doing a pre-season but in the end he gave the game up to become a musician.

“Basically I wanted to play at the Bulldogs and that wasn’t going to happen, so being a musician I just concentrated on music and toured around Australia and the world playing music for 25 years.”

The radio gigs came next and Hansen went on to rack up an important cultural milestone. “I was the first indigenous AFL broadcaster. I broadcasted on radio for about seven years. I have been lucky that I have been able to do music and football, my two passions and get paid for something that I love.”

The 45-year-old now puts most of his energy in to running the Marngrook Footy Show which is produced by his own company. He highlighted the differences between his show and other AFL-based programs.

“We don’t demean anybody. We don’t pick on any of the disadvantaged people in society.

“Our humour is just good-natured without being too derogatory or too personal. “It’s a feelgood show - I think people like to be entertained and feel good about the program.”

Hansen is also proud of the women who are an integral part of the show’s line-up rather than being “tokenistic”.

“Females on our show Leila Gurruwiwi and Shelley Ware, they present credible segments, they do the news, injury updates, a tiddas’ tips segments - tiddas means sisters in Aboriginal - you don’t see too many women on AFL sports shows.”

A proud indigenous man, Hansen is also proud of his western suburbs background.

“I could make three million dollars this year and I would still live out in the western suburbs.

“People out here are people, and that’s why I appreciate my upbringing in the western suburbs. You are what you are and I have got no hesitation in saying to people that I am a proud person from the western suburbs.”

The Marngrook Footy Show airs on Thursday 11 March at 7.30pm on Foxtel’s Channel 180 and Channel 31 for Melbourne viewers.