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In their bid to bring Australian sporting culture to Indonesia, the Jakarta Bintangs are taking on a more Indonesian look.

Saturday saw the Australian Rules football club launch its Jakarta Football League, a competition for schoolchildren in the greater Jakarta area. While the league’s initial goal was to promote health and fitness among Indonesian youths, its eventual effect could be much greater — and in so doing make the Bintangs much more than just a sports club for expatriates.

More than 100 budding Australian Rules players descended on the Ceylon Cricket Ground at Buperta Park in Cibubur, playing their first competitive matches after picking up the sport as recently as February.

“The more the kids can get out and play, the more this is going to grow. Then they’re going to tell their friends about this new, strange sport these Australian guys are playing and it’s going to grow from there,” Bintangs development coordinator Dan Delaney said.

“They’re so excited, it’s just so new and different for them. It has aspects from all different sports, whether you bounce it like basketball, the handballing is like volleyball. The majority of them are still growing, but they really do understand the game.”

The league features six teams — Cileungsi, Pasar Minggu, Bogor, Kelender, Setia Budi and Depok — with 18 players per side. It took flight after more than two years of work by Delaney and his predecessor, Chris Bandy.

Saturday’s turnout represents a small first step, given how much effort the Bintangs put into taking their sport to schools around the capital. However, Delaney said the club wanted to start small and build toward something larger, possibly a league with weekly matches rather than monthly.

“The AFL [Australian Football League] does support a lot of overseas development of the sport. Indonesia is quite new, and at the moment all the AFL gives us is balls. What we really have to show to them is how popular this sport is becoming here,” he said. “We introduce the sport to schools every week, and we’ve had more than 15,000 kids go through the program in the last two years.

“One of the biggest things is we have the Australia Indonesia Institute sponsoring us and that’s how we’re able to create this league, but it’s really expensive taking kids to training. There’s a lot of kids who would like to get more involved, but at the training sessions we’re at our limit. We have the Bintangs training at the same oval and we’re getting 80-plus kids, so we really need to start expanding.”

The club provides teams transportation to weekly training sessions in Senayan and Bogor in the form of minibuses. Ideally, Delaney said, it would also be able to cover food, drink, uniforms and shoes.

Even in the early stages of the league, players are showing progress on and off the field. Bintangs coach Matt Jolly described the youngsters as playing “with no fear” and said they were enjoying a chance to “physically exert themselves in a way that’s aggressive but still controlled and fun.”

Daniel Sihombing, 17, plays on the Cileungsi squad, which is made up of players from Yayasan Talitha Cumi. He said the chance to get out and play was also paying dividends in the classroom.

“The other boys have become more confident and have better teamwork. That confidence has helped them with their schoolwork, and it has helped me, too,” he said.

“Before, some of boys weren’t close, but when we became one team in footie, they can speak with each other and have good cooperation. They have more self-confidence and can be friends.”

Much like other sports looking to take hold throughout the country, a lack of funding threatens to keep the Jakarta Football League from growing and reaching its full potential.

Days such as Saturday cost Rp 7 million, which Delaney said was partly why the league began with a monthly schedule. Funding for three full-time staff and visits to schools comes from the AII, while the league itself takes place through sponsorship provided by the Bintangs.

If the league, which still lacks a major sponsor, is to thrive, Delaney said securing funding will be the most pressing issue.

“Today was an expensive day. The kids don’t have the transport to get themselves here. We’re really targeting lower socio-economic classes. We supply food for them, everything for the entire day,” he said. “In Australia, you can set up a league, kids can get their own way there. If they want to eat, their dads will buy them a hot dog or something. There’s a lot of challenges, and sponsorship is the biggest one. The kids are keen. We’ve got the kids, that’s not an issue.”

League play is scheduled to resume on May 1, with another round of matches set for May 28.

Whether the league succeeds in popularizing Australian Rules football in Indonesia or establishes a pipeline of Indonesian talent to Australia’s professional league, there is no doubting its effect on the children of Jakarta.

Meiske Esterrifka, a staff member at Yayasan Talitha Cumi, said giving the youngsters a chance to take baby steps in a new sports could pay off down the road.

“Maybe someday when they go back to their kampung, they can show their family and people in the village that they did not move away from the village for nothing,” she said. “They got schooling and had many experiences, and maybe someday they can be a coach for people in the village.”