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Booing Adam Goodes - it's awkward isn't it?

15th June, 2015
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Roar Guru
15th June, 2015
39
1479 Reads

For a minute, let’s pretend the following incidents do not involve Adam Goodes.

It’s Indigenous Round in 2013, and an indigenous Hawthorn player – say Josh Gibson, Shaun Burgoyne, Cyril Rioli or then-Hawk Lance Franklin – cops a racial slur over the fence from a Gold Coast Suns supporter.

Not knowing who delivered it, the player points in the direction of where he believes he heard it. The spectator alleged to have made the slur is removed, and at the end of the game, the player learns it was a 13-year-old.

How would Hawks supporters respond? How would the AFL media respond?

Two Hawks players racially vilified on the Gold Coast – in an AFL expansion area – what would the headlines be? Would there be investigation of the culture at the Gold Coast?

Suns chairman John Witheriff and skipper Gary Ablett Jr would be fronting media conferences, apologising on behalf of their club, expressing their disappointment and educating that spectator.

Some six months later, Burgoyne or Rioli is made Australian of the Year.

Would Hawks supporters support those players, or bemoan the fact Shane Crawford was overlooked for the award, because of his remarkable achievement of cycling for breast cancer research?

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Or how about, two years later, indigenous Magpies player Travis Varcoe performs an ‘off the cuff’ war dance towards the opposition cheer squad – would Collingwood president Eddie McGuire support his player’s actions?

It’s awkward, isn’t it?

Three reasons are given for booing Adam Goodes.

First is diving and staging for free-kicks. If he does, he is not the first or last player to do so. Essendon’s Matthew Lloyd was the greatest exponent of the dive in the history of the game.

Secondly, there are those who are doing it just because everyone else is doing it. They’re the people who watch a kid getting bullied and beaten up at school, then join in ‘just because’.

The booing gives the racist element the opportunity to hide and cowardly vent their prejudice.

Booing an opposition player and his stance on racism because of the team he plays for is as pathetic as it sounds.

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Perspective seems to be lost in some discussions over the booing.

It wasn’t Goodes’ fault he was named Australian of the Year. He was given the award for work he does with young indigenous people.

Imagine if Goodes rejected the award because of his stance on racism, and because of what Australia Day means to Indigenous Australians?

He was damned the moment he was nominated, damned for receiving, and he would have been damned for rejecting it.

Goodes was put in an awkward position. He was also put in an awkward position on the field, he or any other Indigenous player should never be put in.

Like St Kilda’s Nicky Winmar lifting his guernsey and pointing to his skin at Victoria Park in 1993.

Like Michael Long being racially vilified by Collingwood’s Damian Monkhorst in 1995.

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Like West Coast Eagles star Chris Lewis, in the 1991 grand final against Hawthorn at Waverly Park, being subjected to persistent racial abuse from both Hawks players and supporters. A worked-up Lewis ended up getting suspended for retaliating.

According to Dermott Brereton, it was done in the name of “gamesmanship” because they had heard racial taunts put Lewis off his game.

Apparently footballers weren’t as well educated in racial vilification back in ’91 – even though race relations had been a hot topic since a bloke by the name of Martin Luther King Jr educated us in the 1960s.

Brereton has apologised to Lewis since that infamous day, however it left an ugly mark on the game. Former Eagles coach Mick Malthouse still fumes over the incident, and even questioned the how his then–club handled it.

Even if Goodes had not made the stances he made, are we that naïve to believe no indigenous Australian footballer would eventually make one?

Maybe it’s because Adam Goodes has reminded Australia, as well as the Australian game, of some inconvenient truths. Perhaps we haven’t learned as much as we believe we have.

Maybe that’s why it’s so awkward.

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