Rulla’s Shifting Goals
When a cancer diagnosis in 2020 cut his on-field career short, footballer Rulla kelly-Mansell turned to music. These days he’s kicking plenty of goals as one half of the hip-hop duo Marlon X Rulla, but he hasn’t lost sight of the bigger picture.
Words by Walter Marsh
Image by @fenj_
The way Rulla Kelly-Mansell tells it, it was a series of “serendipitous moments” that drew him to the stage. As a Tulampanga Pakana man from Lutruwita, music was everywhere growing up, from the politically conscious singer-songwriters of his parents’ generation, to the rock bands he mucked around with in high school.
“It’s just been something I’ve done in the background, while sport was my main focus,” Rulla says. “I’ve never really treated music like a career, it’s a part of who I am. It’s a release, it’s an outlet. That’s what it was,” he says, before correcting himself: “That’s what it is.”
It was sport that eventually lured him over to the mainland, where he hoped a stint with the Glenelg Tigers might take his football career to the next level.
“Then at the start of 2020, I got sick.”
Confronted with a cancer diagnosis just as the global pandemic took hold, he found himself far from home, isolated, and stuck in hospital for five and a half hours each day.
“Between being diagnosed and going into treatment and surgery, the world went into lockdown – so none of my family could come across from Tassie.”
He wasn’t entirely alone – there was Marlon Motlop. Rulla had met his Darwin-born Glenelg teammate at an AFL camp years earlier, when the pair were both coaching the Under 15s national Indigenous team. As Rulla went through three rounds of chemotherapy, the support of his fellow Tiger became an important lifeline.
“Marlon used to pick me up from home and drive to the hospital every day on my last round of chemo,” he says. “And that’s kind of where the special bond comes from.”
That bond became even more important when the side- effects of treatment eventually called time on Rulla’s playing days after 150-plus games across three state leagues. “I just physically couldn’t do what I used to be able to do,” he says. “I tried playing, I finished treatment in July 2020 and did an eight-week program of training to get back and play a couple of games... but it just wasn’t the same.”
Facing a crossroad, he decided to sink his teeth into music. “There was no expectation, there was no planning. A close friend of mine passed away at the end of 2019, and he was a muso, someone I really looked up to and respected since I was in high school. Once he passed away, I just started writing a heap of stuff. I had no plans with it... then I got sick and everything kind of just happened.”
One night after treatment, he visited Marlon at home to introduce him to mutton bird – a favourite food of Rulla’s from back home. He’d heard Marlon could sing, and the pair ended up having a jam. Later, when Rulla found himself recording some of his new music, his team mate was one phone call away.
“It was the first time I’d ever rapped into a mic,” Rulla says of the session. It took place at home with a friend just before footy training.
“We were getting some stuff done, and my friend Dec said, ‘What about that song you showed me, ‘Black Swan’? You should record that’. So I called Marlon, and I was like, ‘Bruz, you should pop in’. It was an hour ‘til training so he stopped in, we had a camera set up and a recording mic.”
They hit record, and Rulla put the video online the next day. “It went a little bit crazy,” he recalls. “Our third show, we were opening for Midnight Oil – pretty wild.”
Opening for the Oils at WOMADelaide 2021 was just the start. Performing as Marlon x Rulla, the pair followed up ‘Black Swan’ with another uncompromising single, ‘Unceded’. By the end of 2022 the pair had scored national airplay, toured with Xavier Rudd and won an SA Music Award.
“We just write what we go through,” Rulla says of their growing body of work, which touches on themes of mental health, sovereignty and solidarity. “We’re both young Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander men – not as young as we were,” he laughs, “but we just speak what we see.”
Life has thrown a lot at Rulla in the past three years, but it’s left him with some hard-earned perspective on life, health and community.
“Everyone sees the world differently,” he explains. “For me personally, things happen for a reason. And I feel like there’s a sense of responsibility, to stay connected to who we are, and our story, our people. We all have experiences and stories, and I think that’s what people’s magic is. If you had to articulate what ‘magic’ is, to me it’s your own lived experience, your stories. And I feel like there’s a responsibility to share that.
“When I went through the sickness, one of the biggest things you learn is to live outside yourself, and I think it’s such a valuable lesson that’s connected to a fulfilled life. To live outside of ourselves, to not be just about us.”
That lesson hit home again last July, when Marlon and Rulla appeared alongside one of their heroes, the late Archie Roach, in a triple j Like A Version performance recorded just weeks before he passed.
“I’ve known Uncle Archie my whole life, he used to come down and stay with our family, him and Auntie Ruby [Hunter],” Rulla reflects. “One of the most profound messages that he ever passed on to me was that it’s not all about us individually – it’s about all of us together.”
Rulla and Marlon might have hung up their boots, but as musicians they’ve played some of the biggest fields in the game, performing at Marvel Stadium for last year’s Sir Doug Nicholls Round, and then to 60,000 people at Adelaide Oval. For Rulla, the most meaningful part of standing up in front of a huge crowd of footy fans is knowing that there are young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people watching them, and seeing what’s possible.
“It’s really deadly to show people that whatever you want to put your mind to, whatever your passion is, it doesn’t have to just be one thing.
“For two Brotherboys to be able to do all this – well, it just shows that you can do whatever fuels your heart.”
