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There is still plenty of talk about AFL crowds giving it to Swans star Adam Goodes. The bad news is that it isn’t going to stop, the good news is that it might not be a problem.
I switched on the Swans game on Saturday long enough to get the score, watch a bit of play, and hear Goodes being booed again.
The next day, as expected, the result was overshadowed by disappointment over the booing and general angst about how this could happen.
Indeed, what sort of Australian would boo the Australian of the Year? Adam Goodes is a hero, star player and proud Indigenous man.
There is no doubt that some of the people booing him are out-and-out racists, jeering him for the colour of his skin and the pride in his heart. But I would suggest that the vast majority of people who boo Goodes are nothing of the sort. They are just booing him, nothing more.
Booing gets a harsh rap, both here on The Roar and generally in civilised conversation, with few people ready to stand up and defend the act of moaning loudly at something they don’t like.
Well I happen to love booing, and feel it is an integral part of going to the game. This is not church, parliament house or violin recitation. You are paying good money to watch a bunch of adults dressed up in brightly coloured clothing play schoolyard games with incredible seriousness.
It is the adult version of a pantomime stage play, you cheer the goodies and boo the baddies.
Australians are great at booing.
We boo the opposition when they run on the field, boo the Prime Minister, boo the refs, boo decisions we don’t like, boo the sponsors, and we also boo particular players.
And they are very particular players. To get booed in Australia, you need to be either extremely good, or extremely silly.
The best players are always booed. Viv Richards, Wally Lewis, Richie McCaw, all legends of their game, and all of them entered playing arenas in Australia to howls of derision (Wally only copped his in certain parts of Australia of course!).
For right or wrong, Australians have always celebrated the act of going for the powerful member of the tribe and trying to take them down. Just as Glenn McGrath would announce each summer who his ‘bunny’ would be, Australian crowds look at the best enemy player and do anything they can to let them know they suck.
Aha, I hear you say, but Adam Goodes is no longer the best Swans player. Why don’t the crowds boo Lance Franklin, Kurt Tippett or Jarrad McVeigh? They must be booing him because they are racists!
Again, perhaps not.
Adam Goodes has made clear that he doesn’t like it when you boo him and he wishes it would stop. This is exactly what Virat Kohli did, and before him Muttiah Muralitharan, and before him Sir Richard Hadlee. The end result for them was the same as what Goodes has received – more booing than before.
A crowd member, especially one supporting a team in trouble, is stuck in the enormously frustrating position of watching something of great importance unfold right in front of them, with absolutely no control over the outcome. So when a player comes out and admits that they don’t like being booed, it is a chance to help your team – a slim chance, but chance all the same.
The winning strategy for a player is to never admit you are put off by the boos, even better pretend that it motivates you. A cursory search of recent articles on The Roar reveals a number of players claiming that the boos they copped were of no concern at all.
We have all met racist people, and some of them are at the game booing Adam Goodes for the colour of his skin. But I firmly believe that the vast majority of booing AFL fans are either supportive or indifferent to Goodes’ Indigenous background. They boo him because he plays for a good team that wins a lot and he has said he doesn’t like it.
This affair is building to become an enormous headache for the AFL and it is difficult to imagine how it can be addressed. Possibly the simplest solution is for concerned people to accept that when the game begins and the baying mob start giving it to Goodes, they do not see a Indigenous man. They just see some guy playing for the Swans.
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