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If you're booing Adam Goodes, examine the reason why

Roar Rookie
29th July, 2015
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Roar Rookie
29th July, 2015
118
3613 Reads

Several reasons have been offered up for why Adam Goodes is booed. Here is my attempt at a comprehensive list.

a) He stages for free kicks / sooks when he doesn’t get one.
b) He is a sniper / slid into Josh Gibson once.
c) He won Australian of the year, but doesn’t deserve it.
d) Some people talk of him as if he’s a saint, but he isn’t one.
e) He is overrated as a player.
f) He wears his heart on his sleeve/is proud of his aboriginal heritage a little too loudly more my liking.
g) He picked on a little girl for calling him a “monkey”.
h) Everyone else is doing it, and it’s just a bit of fun; I don’t mean any harm by it.

None of these reasons actually justifies the relentless booing that the player has been subject to over the period of a couple of years now. Let’s break them down.

If you boo Adam Goodes and you do so for either options (a) or (b) then you are being hypocritical unless you boo every player that has ever staged for a free kick or every player that has ever been rubbed out for a crude attack on another player.

Yes, there was a period a couple of years back when Goodes used to repeatedly play for frees. I hated it. I’m a Swans supporter and I would yell at him to get on with it. But many other players over the years have staged repeatedly. And Goodes does not do it anymore.

Yes, he did slide crudely into Josh Gibson once. And over a 350+ game career, he’s been rubbed out for indiscretions a couple of times.

So have many other stars of our game, from Hodge to Judd to Fyfe. Typically when a player is reported, he is booed for the rest of the game by opposition fans. That’s a generally accepted form of letting him know of your disapproval of his actions. (If I were a North fan at the game when they played the Hawks earlier this year, I would’ve probably booed Jordan Lewis after his hit on Todd Goldstein.)

If it’s a particularly egregious act, then the player might be booed the next couple of times the same teams clash. But you soon move on. You’d be kidding if you think booing is justified for years after an incident.

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If you boo Adam Goodes and you do so for options (c), (d) or (e) then you have got the wrong guy. Goodes didn’t award himself Australian of the Year.

He doesn’t talk of himself as a saint. Nor did he award himself two Brownlows. Go take it up with the government or the umpires or whoever it is that thinks he’s a saint. Misdirection of hate is a cop-out.

As for whether he really deserves all those accolades from Brownlows to premierships to all Australian honors – well, stop the presses: You, a fan of the game, have an opinion on whether a player is over- or under-rated!

Welcome to a club of a million. Go debate your views with your mates at a pub. Even Shane Woewodin won a Brownlow not too long back. Not too many rate him worthy.

If you boo Adam Goodes and you do so for option (f), you might be what is called a racist. Please go introspect. Deeply.

Finally, if you boo Adam Goodes and you do so for either options (g) or (h), you might be lacking in empathy. Was it unfortunate that a spotlight was shone on a young girl?

Of course it was. But this was an instinctive reaction by Goodes, who had no way of knowing in that split second as he turned that this was a 13-year-old girl. We’ve all reacted instinctively before and regretted it later. It was two years ago. Move on.

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Also note that calling attention to being called a racist remark is to be generally applauded.

And if you’re doing it just because everyone else is doing it, you know ‘coz it’s part of the theatre of going to the game and sitting in the outer, then just imagine yourself in the same situation. Every time you speak up in any work meeting, everyone else present starts booing you.

You could brush it off your shoulders for a couple of weeks. Perhaps a month? But years on end? And in the public eye with your family and friends full witness? You’re dreaming if you think that wouldn’t hurt.

The debate over whether booing Goodes has racist undertones is an important one, but is also one which somewhat deflects the point, for it implies that the booing might be okay if it didn’t have a racist element to it. In fact, it wouldn’t be.

The ongoing booing of Goodes simply has no justification. It is unprecedented in its voracity and disproportionate to the extreme when compared with anything the player may have once done or any way in which he may have once acted.

It is shameful bullying of an individual by a crowd, and if you’re doing it then you need to take a good hard look at yourself.

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