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Let me start this by saying that there are few players in the modern era of the game who would be more deserving of having some sort of medal named after them than Adam Goodes.
In fact one of the most unfortunate aspects of the racism saga that Goodes has endured for several years is that the football public has largely forgotten what a truly magnificent player he was.
Twice a Brownlow Medallist, twice a premiership player (once as co-captain), three times a club best and fairest winner, and four times in the All-Australian team – those achievements stack up against the very best players in the history of our game.
Make no mistake, I’ll someday be telling my grandchildren about what an experience it was to watch him play, in the same breath as Chris Judd, Gary Ablett or Matthew Pavlich.
Naming a relevant award of some kind after Goodes would be a fitting way to commemorate one of the best footballers of this very young millennium.
However, establishing the Adam Goodes Medal as according to Eddie McGuire’s vision, which he detailed earlier in the week, would be nothing more than a farcical monument to McGuire’s self-serving desire to preserve his own media image.
This whole thing surrounding Adam Goodes started as I’m sure many of you will remember when Collingwood hosted Sydney at the MCG on Friday night in Round 9, 2013. It happened to be Indigenous Round.
Goodes was playing an absolute blinder – 30 disposals, 11 marks, three goals. And when a Collingwood fan decided to call him an ‘ape’, he rightly took exception to that, famously pointing her out to security at the ground.
Well after the incident McGuire was more than happy to step in and make the token steps that always seem to be taken in situations like this – ban the offending individual, make a public statement. He had no trouble finding some strong words to say.
“This club doesn’t stand for it, the football world doesn’t stand for it… Everyone knows the rules at Collingwood: if you racially vilify anybody, it’s zero tolerance; you’re out,” McGuire said.
Strong words, but talk is cheap. It was less than a week before McGuire ventured the idea live on the radio that those behind the King Kong musical should get Adam Goodes down to Melbourne to promote the event.
Now to be fair to McGuire I don’t believe he intended for his comments to sound the way they did. In what he said immediately after there’s a clear impression of a man who realises he has just unintentionally put his foot in his mouth and is desperately trying to backtrack.
We’ve all said something stupid once or twice, myself more than most (remember when I tipped Carlton to win two days ago?), but the disappointing thing in this situation was McGuire’s unwillingness to own up to his mistake.
Instead he repeatedly insisted that he had not racially vilified Goodes with these comments. Because, of course, it is always up to person who makes a potentially racist comment to decide whether it was racist or not (that’s sarcasm, by the way).
It’s not like McGuire was willing to afford the Pies fan who he banned from the club that same right to decide whether or not their own comment was racist. So maybe it’s just up to the rich white men of the world to tell us what is and isn’t racist? That seems like a good system (sarcasm again).
Unfortunately for McGuire, racism isn’t about intent, it’s about damage. If you’re playing with matches and accidentally burn your house down, your house isn’t any less burnt down just because you didn’t mean to do it.
The bottom line is the McGuire was happy to take a hard line stance on racism… when it was someone else’s arse on the line. When it was his, he flip-flopped without hesitation.
The really damning moment for McGuire only hit the news last August when Richard Colless – who at the time of the original incident was the chairman of the Swans – revealed that McGuire had said to him, “You and Horse have f**king ruined my career,” after Colless and Longmire took a public stance denouncing his comments at the time of the incident.
Goodes said some time ago that the incident had ended his friendship McGuire. “Friends don’t make jokes about their friends like that,” he said, and he’s right.
McGuire’s actions through these events have always been those of a man looking to preserve or enhance his media image. A fan vilifies a player? Have them banned, make strong statement against racism. You vilify a player? Publicly apologise (but don’t actually punish yourself), deny it was racism, privately attack those who disagree.
What’s the next step? Well apparently in McGuire’s mind it’s to organise a yearly blockbuster against the Swans where the best player on ground will win the ‘Adam Goodes Medal’.
Are we to believe that McGuire just picked that name out of a hat? Why not a blockbuster against Carlton for the Chris Judd Medal, or against St Kilda for the Lenny Hayes Medal?
No, this seems to me to be just another shameless attempt by McGuire to get his name in the papers and undo some of the damage he did to his reputation years ago.
By all means, if the AFL or the Swans someday create an award that it would be appropriate to name in Goodes’ honour, and Goodes – a humble bloke, really – is willing for that to happen, he would be as deserving as any.
But let’s not build another monument to Eddie McGuire’s ego. That’s all this would be, and believe me, we already have more than enough of those.