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I haven’t been able to shift the knot in my stomach that’s been there since Saturday night. I suppose it’s been there for some months.
Even though, deep down, I think I knew this was coming, the thought that I will never again see Adam Goodes run out onto the SCG is a punch in the guts.
Yes, sports stars retire, and you can always say that ‘the game will never be the same’, because of course it won’t.
But not this time.
This time the game will never be the same, but not because we have lost an all-time legend of this great game, and this wonderful football club; not because we have lost a football player who has won nearly every honour this game has to bestow.
Not because we have lost a football player who, for 15 years, has personified that ‘Bloods’ mantra of team-first, hard-edged, selfless football; not because we have lost a player who revolutionised the role of the ruckman, then that of the wingman/midfielder, then that of the mobile forward. A footballer who in his 372nd game performed better than probably 35 of the 44 players involved in the match.
This time our game will never be the same because a little piece of its soul died on Saturday.
Throughout 2015 we have witnessed time and again the way the football community rallies around its own in times of loss. The extraordinary outpouring of collective grief upon the death of Phil Walsh is a perfect example, and the ensuing goodwill towards his Adelaide Crows as they marched to an improbable finals series.
The way two clubs, Carlton and Hawthorn, rallied around Brett Ratten following the death of his son in a car accident is another. The warmth, the compassion, the reaching out to those in their hour of need was remarkable in both instances, and I have rarely been prouder to number myself among the followers of this wonderful game.
Yet 2015 has also seen the absolute worst of this football community in the treatment of Adam Goodes. One of the all-time greatest players, and a man who has exhibited nothing but eloquence, compassion and empathy throughout his career, was booed everywhere he went because he stood up for himself, and his people.
It didn’t matter that Goodes had done everything in his power in 2013 to protect the 13-year-old Collingwood fan who had racially abused him – he was the one bullying her. It didn’t matter that he had neither nominated himself nor selected himself as Australian of the Year in 2014 – he was arrogant, a show-off, a big-noter.
It didn’t matter that he used his time as Australian of the Year to speak of his own experiences as an Indigenous man in an attempt to foster some empathy and understanding between black and white Australia – he was being divisive for even noticing the divide in the first place.
And it didn’t matter that he was expressing his culture and identity by performing an Indigenous dance during Indigenous round – he was declaring war on white Australia.
And so Goodes was booed. Relentlessly. Everywhere he went. He was booed (by a small minority) in Geelong, despite pleas from everyone at the Cats for their fans to have some class. He was booed in Perth, despite Ross Lyon being one of his most outspoken defenders and Lyon’s faith that Fremantle supporters were better than that.
He was booed in Melbourne by St Kilda fans, who presumably had forgotten (or didn’t know about) their club’s significant role in the establishment of the AFL’s anti-racism code. He was even booed in Sydney, which should have been his sanctuary, by travelling supporters of both Collingwood and North Melbourne.
And sure, Goodes may have been booed on occasion before he stood up for himself in May 2013. Like all champion players, there’s always something for rival supporters to object to – Joel Selwood shrugs, Sam Mitchell lifts his knee, Barry Hall had a tendency to punch people in the face.
But although Goodes’ style of playing didn’t change, the treatment of him certainly did. Was it just that people hadn’t booed him before, so were making the most of their opportunities before he retired? Was there some kind of simultaneous Damascene revelation among tens of thousands of football ‘fans’ nation-wide that compelled them to all start booing at once?
Or was there perhaps a particular event, a particular incident, that made him less appealing to a certain type of person?
Yet despite all this, the AFL equivocated. News reports suggested that there were some members of the AFL commission that felt the booing was Goodes’ own fault, that he had brought it upon himself, so perhaps it was no surprise that the commission’s response to the issue was too little, too late, and milquetoast in the extreme.
Perhaps that’s why the commission refused to declare the booing racist, going only so far as to say that, well, ‘racism is in the eye of the beholder and if Adam Goodes feels this is racist then it is racist, but only because he feels that way, because Australians are really all about A Fair Go and we’re not really racist’.
‘Not really, okay maybe a little bit but only Jonno, but only after Jonno has had a few beers, but that’s not really racist because he’s a good bloke is Jonno, and he works with a bloke from Indonesia and they get along fine…’
But make no mistake about it. The booing of Goodes was racist, motivated in response to the actions of a man who never once sought to put anyone else down, but only to raise his people up. Goodes was booed because he dared suggest that Australia, as a nation, has yet to deal with many unspeakable aspects of its own history, and that some of these aspects directly affect him personally, his family more broadly, and Indigenous people around the country.
Yet despite speaking about these issues with compassion, boundless empathy and the constant acknowledgement that no matter how disparate our histories our future is unified, Goodes was literally booed out of the game.
And with his departure we have lost a wonderful opportunity to nip this atrocious behaviour in the bud, to stand up as a football community and as a nation and say: ‘This is not how we behave, this is not how we treat one of our most celebrated athletes.’
Sadly, the only message that can be gleaned from season 2015 is this:
‘This is how we behave, and this is how we treat even our most celebrated athletes.’
And of course this stain on the game will be glossed over in the next fortnight, as the sport formally says farewell to its retirees. And of course, in time, it will become a smaller and smaller part of the story of a man I have no doubt will go on to achieve great things.
But those of us who witnessed it, those of us who heard it, will never be able to forget that, when someone most needed our support, our community was incapable of offering it.
That’s a stain we’ll never get out.
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