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The AFL was upstaged last night on grand final weekend. Very rarely does it get said, because generally the AFL’s showpiece has always delivered.
Over the years, compared to its NRL counterpart, the Australian Football League has always looked like it has had the better package. And as a New South Wales born Australian football tragic, I would say it is true.
Having grown up in a rugby league heartland – it doesn’t get more rugby league than Goulburn – Australian football always caught my imagination a lot more, with rugby league having its occasional moment.
At the same time, there is no shame in saying Australia is blessed to have two great footy codes to entertain us with. That is folly of the code wars – the reality is that two states in Australia will always have rugby league strongholds, especially in Queensland.
Generally the AFL has better leadership – the fallout for the TV rights deal for both codes showed the NRL still lacks great leadership. Super League War II may just about be on its way, yet it was hard to overlook what the NRL achieved on the weekend, especially for Indigenous Australians.
The NRL grand final outshone the AFL showpiece with a package no one saw coming. From the entertainment – local-based acts Cold Chisel and Jessica Mauboy – to the actual game itself. It was a throwback to glory days of rugby league; it’s last greatest grand final was in 1989.
Coincidentally, both teams, the Brisbane Broncos and the North Queensland Cowboys, were skippered by Indigenous players. It was the first time in NRL history for a grand final. And then one of those players, who will likely go down as one of the greatest players of the modern era, Johnathan Thurston, played the game of his life.
The 32-year-old led the Cowboys to their first premiership in their 20-year history and won the Clive Churchill medal.
Thurston is a proud Indigenous man. He wears his culture on his sleeve and in his mouth (mouth guard) for all to see. It is when champion Indigenous athletes like Thurston stand up and do their amazing feats, and Australia applauds, that a horrible realisation sinks in.
Taking nothing away from Hawthorn’s incredible three-peat achievement, the AFL grand final was marred before the first bounce had begun. No I’m not talking about Ellie Goulding’s embarrassing performance, and Bryan Adams was okay. But if that’s the best the AFL can do, then wow!
The entertainment aside, 2015 will be seen as the year Australian sport was marred by AFL supporters who believed they had every right to boo an Indigenous player – Adam Goodes – for reasons which don’t stack up.
Perhaps the biggest irony for the AFL is Cyril Rioli was awarded the Norm Smith Medal – rightly as he was everywhere against the Eagles – an Indigenous player who was highly vocal in his support for Goodes.
The culprits tried to convince us it wasn’t racist – that they weren’t influenced by their daily Andrew Bolt or Miranda Devine readings, that they weren’t booing him because of his Australian of the Year acceptance speech, or that infamous incident with the 13-year old-girl (who yelled out a racial slur). They claimed they were booing him for staging free kicks and because they just didn’t like him, for reasons they couldn’t explain.
High profile AFL commentators like Sam Newman squared up Goodes on national television, saying he had turned the football field into a political forum – that’s why Australia boos him.
What Newman’s sentiment said to the world was that Australia hasn’t grown up.
This was the same guy who a week later said the AFL was getting too political with Multicultural Round and expressed his disgust – how dare St Kilda hold a gay pride match! Not to mention his mate, Billy Brownless, made a public sexist joke towards a woman and her 18-year-old daughter (referring to them as strippers), in the same week a male spectator attacked a woman at an AFL final.
Ironically, as a side note, Goodes is a White Ribbon ambassador. He campaigns against domestic violence and violence against women, having watched his mother be a victim.
Is Australia that naïve to believe an Indigenous player would never make the stand Goodes did? Essendon great Michael Long made a stand too. The problem is, when Goodes did it, he gave the racists an excuse to hide behind.
No, being 13 years old does not excuse you from doing wrong or unacceptable acts.
Is white Australia that gullible that it believes it can tell an Aboriginal person what racism is? Never mind those who try to debunk Goodes, overlooking that he pinpointed racism. All racism is unacceptable.
Yet in their thousands they came with all sorts of excuses for booing, and even though Goodes himself said the booing was racist, they kept doing it. When someone keeps doing an offensive act towards another person, after they say, ‘Stop, I don’t like it’, it is nothing but sheer abuse and bullying.
Yes, if you participated in the booing, you were a bully. You were an abuser. Not only that, you booed every Indigenous person, player and athlete in this country. You failed to see that the stand Goodes made when he pointed out that racial slur in the crowd.
Are you that naïve to believe Rioli or Thurston would not have done the same, had they been in earshot like Goodes was?
If you booed Goodes, you booed Cathy Freeman, Rioli, Thurston and Long, and your local Indigenous communities.
During the week, another Indigenous NRL champion, South Sydney Rabbitohs captain Greg Inglis, said Goodes had made a statement for all Indigenous people, by not taking part in the AFL grand final retirees motorcade.
While Inglis’s sentiments suggest he also took the booing of Goodes personally, the great tragedy is that Goodes – one of the AFL’s greatest ever players – felt he had to miss it as a result. For this Australia should be ashamed.
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