Thomas Deng doesn’t remember the year his father died. He can’t recall the feeling of leaving Kenya, where his father stayed to continue his work as a doctor assisting disabled children, and joining a growing community of South-Sudanese refugees in Adelaide’s northern suburbs.

Nor does he remember afternoons playing football down discarded Nairobi alleyways with roving neighbourhood kids; rabonas, feints and step-overs shadowed beneath the leering sunset. He heard of his father’s death years later, but to this day, the hardships his family endured in Africa remain a remote topic, bursting with unanswered questions “too emotional” to ask.

The challenges they face today, however, are a different story. Deng has just finished filming a promotion for one of the numerous community organisations he is an ambassador for – domestic-violence campaigners The Line. His wide-set, striking grin provides the video’s click-bait and, standing formidably on the turf of AAMI Park, he gently encourages teenage boys to “never follow” in the footsteps of domestic violence perpetrators.

“Growing up, I thought to be a man was to put on an act and never show weakness,” he says. “Now I think it’s better to show your vulnerability. People respect you more.”

Soon before Deng signed for Melbourne Victory, his aunt’s husband struck his infant nephew in the head during a family argument, leaving the child permanently disabled with a severe acquired brain injury. Deng shudders as he recounts the “assault on the whole family”, detailing the trauma of holding his nephew as a baby and watching him grow into an incapacitated child.

“Seeing my aunty go through this was heartbreaking,” he says. “It’s one stupid decision that ends someone’s life.” His aunt and her family moved to Sydney shortly after, where she eventually escaped the relationship, but the impact never left the Deng household.

Since he earned his first professional contract, before going onto becoming an A-League champion, FFA Cup winner and Socceroo, Deng has resolutely leveraged his status to publicise social issues close to his heart. “It’s our time,” he says. “The right time for someone to speak out and be a voice for Africans in Melbourne. We need to show ourselves more.”

In many ways, Deng is just like any other 22-year-old. He grew up on Spiderman and loves crime thrillers, Kanye West and Kendrick Lamar. He describes himself as “pretty good” at hip-hop dancing and still blushes at the memory of falling over in front of his teammates on his first day of training.

He finds the rigour of professional football difficult and acclimatising to the constant training and travel had to be “drilled” into him. And during his short career, he has faced similar obstacles to every young defender – from game-losing errors, embarrassing slips and own-goals, to getting “dragged off” against Adelaide, his petulance broadcast on national television.

But he has also overcome challenges unique to a refugee. When he was selected for the Young Socceroos in 2015, he had no passport and little proof of identity. He was forced to retrieve signed documents from every school he had ever attended and every football club he’d ever played for, just to become eligible. He even had to receive clearance to travel overseas.

Having overcome this kind of obstacle has given Deng a unique sense of perspective, compelling him to forfeit downtime for a greater cause. Now splitting his time off between numerous volunteer roles and maintaining an active voice in his community, he also regularly speaks to the detainees at Parkville youth detention centre in Melbourne’s CBD, where his older brother, Peter, works.

He grew up among some of the teenagers he visits and during one recent trip, encountered a childhood friend. He believes without his family’s guidance growing up, he could have easily succumbed to the same “wrong decisions”.

“My teenage years were crazy,” he says. “You see a lot of violence, your friends doing drugs, committing crimes. It’s easy to be manipulated because you’re always around the same peer group. My housemates work in youth services and we speak about it every day. They love that I’m talking to kids about their issues because the trouble in our community is a massive problem nowadays.”

As Deng speaks about the challenges South Sudanese refugees face, his voice sharpens, and it becomes clear that he’s “stressed”. He repeats the word often, although never in relation to money, mates or girls like other 22-year-olds. Rather, he’s stressed that Sudanese parents don’t understand what their kids are going through. That “they don’t take the time to listen”. He’s stressed that African refugees don’t have a voice in Australia, because “no one else is speaking”.

He says the same isolationist mindset that protected his family in Kenya, harms them in Australia. “Once we step out of our homes, we have to adapt to Australian culture,” he says. “Parents don’t understand what we’re going through, because they grew up in African cultures. It’s completely different. For me, it’s about trying to help these kids survive in this world.

“At home, our parents are quite strict. They control the things we do very heavily, they don’t want us to hang out or go out much. It creates a massive issue because wherever their kids are in the community, parents can’t understand what they’re going through. I’m trying to help guide the younger generation because I came from the same neighbourhoods and worked through the same problems coming to Australia, trying to adapt to a society with different views.”

Australia’s views are also adapting to South Sudanese refugees, who are evolving the sporting landscape. Long the domain of Italian, Greek and eastern European migrants, the simultaneous Socceroos’ debuts of Deng and childhood friend, Awer Mabil, are changing the face of Australian football.

The duo’s journey, which began “playing in Adelaide parks together” reached its pinnacle when they combined for Australia’s final goal in a 4-0 rout of Kuwait in October. Football writer and fellow South Sudanese refugee, Ann Odong, called footage of the two embracing in green and gold “a visual representation of our acceptance as Australians”.

If Australian sport’s eagerness to draw from this wealth of talent symbolises acceptance, then it bodes positively for Deng’s longing for a South Sudanese-Australian identity. But convincing the community’s elders to accept this new identity may be the largest challenge.

Deng hopes that by using his status to mentor the path that was set for him, he can lead this change himself. “My family was different,” he says. “They were fairly understanding. They understood that we have a new society and we need to let our kids live their lives.

“Give them a bit of trust. It’s not the same as it is back home.”