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2015: The season that spoke to our (in)humanity

9th September, 2015
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9th September, 2015
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Last month, Essendon player Brendon Goddard launched a scathing critique on the AFL media, condemning their lack of empathy for his teammates who continued to play under the stress of the ongoing WADA investigation.

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Goddard pleaded for the media – and society in general – to view the players as fellow human beings: blood, flesh and all.

They have feelings, too, he said. They aren’t immune to the pressure and dislocation brought on by society’s gaze.

And it appears no one is immune. Not even the biggest name in the AFL.

Indeed, Lance Franklin’s startling admission of suffering from an ongoing mental health condition was as perplexing as it was grounding.

How could one of the highest paid players in the league – a dual premiership player with a beautiful fiancée and enviable life – possibly be suffering in secret?

As Swans coach John Longmire so aptly put it, Buddy is but one of many walking around pretending that everything is okay. Instead of asking, ‘why Buddy?’, why not ask, ‘why not Buddy?’

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In the hyper-mediated world that we now find ourselves in, where every Instagram post and Facebook status is in some way tailored to portray a picture-perfect life, the pressure to replicate that doctored façade is not only crippling, but also inherently misleading.

It’s not only young footballers who feel the pressure to keep up appearances, but young people in general.

And it’s these social media platforms that have also opened up players to new channels of criticism – although the criticism itself is anything but new.

Less than two weeks ago, Essendon’s Courtenay Dempsey was the victim of a horrendous racial attack on Instagram.

In the aftermath of the vilification, Dempsey pleaded with the public to view him as a “human”, in the same vein as his teammate had only weeks earlier.

But wasn’t this all just a little bit of history repeating?

The slur directed at Dempsey came only weeks after Adam Goodes took leave from the game to deal with his own wellbeing after being the subject of racist abuse.

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And while the majority of the AFL family have come out in support of Goodes – and labelled those who now boo him as racist, regardless of their motives – the Swans champion was still booed by parts of the St Kilda crowd in Round 22.

The thought of Goodes travelling to Perth this weekend to play in the first qualifying final against Fremantle scares many. In many ways it will be a return to the crime scene, where another young Indigenous man in Lewis Jetta took it upon himself to make a stand.

It won’t be surprising if Goodes is again booed, such is the lack of humanity that has come to characterise the 2015 AFL season.

Sport is so often labelled as a vehicle for social change and a microcosm for society and the issues that dominate it.

This year, it seems the AFL has held a very ugly mirror up to our society and the issues that not just dominate it, but plague and degrade it.

Phil Walsh’s untimely death reminded us of the frailty of the human existence. Yet, even this tragedy did little to deter our own inhumanity at times this year.

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