The visiting Imalu Tigers are trailing at halftime, but with a roudy stand of fans there to restoke the fires, they get ready to break and get back to the game.

The artists behind the Ngaruwanajirri art collective forage on the island’s beaches for ochre, which is mixed with water to produce white and yellow paint, or fired to produce an earthy red/orange paint. Many have gone to prepare for the island’s big football grand final, but their names identify each painter’s materials.

David Tipuamantumirri and cousin Bruce prop themselves outside the Ngaruwanajirri workshop as they decorate their day’s work using ochre and charcoal paints. David finishes off the eye of a pelican and yells over the whir of a hairdryer he’s using to dry his work, in the 60 per cent humidity of the NT’s Wet; ” It’s a pelican… you know… like Storm Boy. He’s our friend. Flies around, tells you when there’s a storm coming.”

Bruce quietly works on a small carved totem pole, a smaller verison of the totems used in the Islands burial ceremonies, usually an elaborate event on the islands, but marred by an astronomically high suicide rate stretching back into the 1980s.

Even at the Ngaruwanajirri artists cooperative talk of the Tiwis blends into talk of football. Artist Ken Wayne Kantilla’s father David, became the first indigenous Australian to play in the South Australian National Football League, the country’s oldest code. Not half shabby with a football himself, Ken played in the AFL and later did a round in competitive billiards during his college days.

Not a smile to be bought as the Imalu Tigers focus on the game ahead. Footballers sport the same colours as Melbourne AFL team the Richmond Tigers, a nod to legendary Tiwi footballer Maurice Rioli whose brother Willie is coaching the team.

Willie Rioli sets out the game plan to Melville Island team. Melville is the larger and more easterly of the two Tiwi Islands, both of which are just north of Darwin, about 20 minutes in our Cessna 310 or 45 minutes by ferry. In a statement made to the press Willie emphasises that he’s well aware of the importance of the day to Tiwi Islanders. Some grumble that Willie not playing on the field.

Brian Clancy, previously the principal at the Nguiu seconday school and now a development adviser for the Tiwi Land Council says that education has been challenging on the island, but football has provided the most influential role models for the island’s youngsters. Ian Smith, who arrived to work at a new boarding school arrangement on Melville Island says the same. “It’s great to come out and see the whole community come together.”

The Tuyu Buffalos are the all out favorites on their home turf, with young and old sporting their colours.

It takes a stiff upper-lip to show up to this game. The local Tuyu Buffalo team is picked just half an hour before kick off, so some of these players will be bathed in glory, while others will watch on from the sidelines.

The local Tiwi Buffalos take a strong game to a winning finish as fans flood the field.

Local football legend Maurice Rioli was the first member of a losing team to take out the feted Norm Smith Medal as best afield in 1982. Melville Island’s Imalu Tigers have adopted his colours, a nod to just one of many Tiwi football legends.

It’s the final minutes of the game and the Imalu Tigers are down, but the support from the Tiger’s stand is still at fever pitch.

Scorekeeper Demetrius Kerinaiua laughs when asked who he’s supporting. “I’m going for Tuyu” he says, pointing at the panel below a Tuyu sign, which lists the Tigers just as ‘visitors’. He’s sporting a Tiwi Bombers jersey. The Bombers are the Tiwi’s Northern Territory Football League team who won the territory’s grand final the night before. A couple of the Bombers are playing in the game on Nguiu as well, but you’d never know because the play is lightning fast on the field, a style that Tiwi footballers have become famous for.

The Tuyu Buffalo players work through the pride and pain of being picked or left on the sidelines.

Play is lightning fast although well-know Darwin football commentators Charlie King and HG Nelson are calling it as best they can for ABC radio. The grass, which has been fed by the rains of the Wet since November, is brilliant green.

Strolling down Kerinavia Hwy in Bathust Island’s capital of Nguiu, music can be heard at locals celebrate the Tiwi Islands’ football grand final.

After the game, players make a show of good will.

Some excited young fans of the local Tuyu Buffaloes strike a pose outside the mural-painted kiosk at Nguiu’s football oval just before the players take the field. Sister Anne Gardiner says that Nguiu kids play plenty of other sports, notably running and athletics, but “footy is king”.