Does Australian sport have a problem with tall poppies?

Do we hate to see people succeed? Are we all being a bit precious to suggest booing isn’t allowed towards a player? Or is something more sinister at play here?

The recent ‘booing’ scandal taking front and centre the past few weeks in the AFL has raised a fervour of debate across the sport. It has also brought to the fore the dirty ‘underbelly’ of certain members of Australian society and the way they regard sporting stars in seemingly contradictory fashion.

Adam Goodes is the name on everyone’s lips. Is he purely igniting the flames and needling those who claim he needs to ‘be quiet’? Or is this a greater sign of how Australians would prefer their sporting greats to behave?

As a relative novice when it comes to the AFL the recent controversy surrounding the Swans star had me taken aback by the sheer ferocity of opinion on all sides and I decided it was time to further look into the history of where and when this all began.

May 24, 2013 Adam Goodes is called an ‘ape’ by a 13-year-old Collingwood fan. Anyone who claims to understand the English language realises this is a very thinly veiled derogatory term aimed at his race. Despite the weak claims to the contrary from the people involved.

Looking at this incident on its own seems to me an open and shut case. However, after reading over recent articles on the issue and the subsequent comments section which accompany them, the vitriol towards Goodes was nothing more than mind boggling and deeply concerning.

This all seems to stem from his Australian of the Year award and subsequent speech and his personal view on the topic. A string of very dark rhetoric on the issue is witnessed with some of the more PG comments like ‘He needs to man up’ and ‘He’s doesn’t know his place’, and perhaps the most telling, ‘Why was he given Australian of the Year for making a young girl cry?’.

Some claimed they purely disliked Goodes for a tripping incident three years prior as the main source of the booing. I will allow you the reader to make up your own mind on this as I imagine hundreds of tripping incidents occur in the AFL regularly.

The support of Goodes by the AFL community in my estimation has been weak at best. With the wise old head of Eddie McGuire not only referencing him in the same breath as King Kong the musical, to lambasting him for his recent ‘war dance’ (during Indigenous Round no less) as aggressive and hoping we “never see it again”.

This to me speaks volumes on the true nature of the booing in the first place. I think we would all agree the All Blacks’ Haka is violent in its premise but no one has questioned its place in the cultural landscape within New Zealand sport and rightly so. Why not enjoy the cultural demonstration for what it is and admire that this is a part of the Indigenous Round? Wasn’t this the whole point of the dance in the first place?

The question I ponder on this issue is why are Adam Goodes’ actions been so offensive to people? Is it purely because he is outspoken on issues that tend to make people squirm in their seats? Surely Ben Cousins and Jason Akermanis would have received the same treatment on social media and in the stands after their less than stellar remarks and actions?

However the silence was deafening. To strengthen my point, let us turn to Stephanie Rice. Seemingly made of Teflon when we consider her off-colour remarks towards the South African rugby team. Aside from a few voices her career as paid spruiker seems to be going off without a hitch. And of course, there is Greg Bird. I’m not sure what else this man has to do to be vilified as not only a sportsman but as a mere human being. But I have yet to hear the chorus of boos accompany these people to the same level.

As a matter of balance I have searched for incidents on booing of players in many other codes and lo and behold to my surprise you find that in all sports players are routinely booed.

Quade Cooper, that bastion of Australian rugby’s almost resurrection back in 2010, was involved in a few unsavoury incidents with All Blacks skipper Richie McCaw. This riled the New Zealand rugby public enough to spark a number of social media ‘hate pages’ and kicked off a chorus of boos that rang out around rugby grounds for a number of years.

Now this was never a question of his background (aside from the fact he’s a New Zealander by birth), nor was this a question of him being outspoken and aggressive. As referenced by the large cheers which greeted ‘The Caveman’ Sebastian Chabal after a memorable Test in Wellington in which his physical approach certainly left its mark on a number of players.

So, sure, booing and cheering is the right of the spectator and it is certainly encouraged as a matter of keeping the sporting theatre engaging. So what is the real issue here? Do the Australian sporting public love chopping down a tall poppy? I’m sure that’s unquestionable.

Lampooning Shane Warne and his antics are that of folklore. However, what causes different players and their different levels of outspokenness to be treated differently? This is a question I think needs to be looked into seriously and whether or not we do indeed have a larger problem in Australian sport.