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It seemed like an awful parody.
Two imbeciles on a keyboard abusing a player simply because he was indigenous. The shock and outrage was immediate. This isn’t supposed to happen, not in 2019, not since Nicky Winmar and Michael Long drove a transformation of Australian rules football.
It seems like there is a day like it every year. A day where we ask ourselves are people really learning, do people care and most importantly, when will the bigotry, idiocy and casual racism from the public end? Not even three weeks into the men’s AFL season and we are already dealing with our third incident of responding to abusive language on social media aimed at AFL and AFLW players.
Unfortunately, if you look through the history of our great game, it’s littered with incidents that leave us scratching our heads and thinking why in everything our game is, does this remain the greatest stain?
While a small handful of these incidents have happened on-field (Justin Sherman, Damien Monkhorst and Michael Long and Peter Everitt come to mind as offenders who crossed the line on the field of play) the terrifying thing is that it is coming from us. The ones over the fences, faces in the crowd have slowly morphed into faceless trolls behind keyboards.
Is that what we are as footy fans? It’s a passionate game and it makes us say and do certain crazy things. But for a number of years now, we the fans, and yes it’s only a small minority, are ruining it for everyone.
The AFL’s focus on stamping out racism has shifted from the nation’s football fields to homes where cowards operate from behind their keyboards.
In 1993, Nicky Winmar pointed to his black skin in the face of Collingwood supporters who had racially vilified him. From there it has been a never-ending tale of repeat offences.
Two decades later, Sydney hero Adam Goodes pointed at a 13-year-old girl who called him an ape during a game at the MCG. Eddie Betts had a banana thrown at him two years later and has been constantly targeted online since.
But today West Coast forward Liam Ryan would have had little idea where to start looking on Sunday when two social media cowards attacked him and later deleted their accounts.
In many cases, sport can be a driver for change. It can be the thing that makes a difference in people’s lives and unifies communities, particularly around national success. But it can also create tension and cause conflict.
Following earlier incidents of racism in the AFL, where Sudanese born Majak Daw was abused from over the fence, Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane said: “racism reduces another person to the status of being a second class citizen and prevents individuals and communities from reaching their potential.”
Around the world, sporting achievements are still seen in racialised terms. Success and failure is explained by colour. The white skin of an athlete is rarely highlighted (and is largely invisible) whereas the skin colour of indigenous and coloured athletes is often identified as a determining factor of ability.
In Australian sport, “whiteness” is the norm against which all others are measured, with athletes from different background classed as “others”. It serves as a sight for the emphasis of notions of “difference”. More often than not, resulting in offensive, abusive and rotten behaviour by fans.
What does racism in sport say about society? This behaviour has so often been written up under the guise of banter and is universally accepted as part of a sporting culture. But this acceptance is indicative of deeper societal issues and an underlying a sinister racist culture that is still alive in sections of the community.
Australian Football has been tied to historical notions of Anglo-Celtic “Australianness” and the evidence that fans continue to adhere to these mythical views when deciding who is and isn’t Australian.
The AFL is in a period of growth. It is trying its hardest to evolve and widen the appeal of Australian Football through non-traditional markets. Through both men’s and women’s Footy, it has recruited players from key ethnic backgrounds to act as multicultural ambassadors.
These men and women come from backgrounds including Brazilian, Polynesian, African and Lebanese heritage while Indigenous players are also prominently featured in marketing material.
However, in recent years the rising levels of abuse (racial and other targeted abuse) towards our stars has made me realise that this is a stain on the game that we cannot seem to remove and the worst part of it all is we, or at least a small minority of us, are the problems.
We are the faces in the crowd that calls things out at the footy match and most of us have a social media account and can write anything on anywhere. Let the past two weeks of this year and incidents this year tell you where society is heading.
Action will be swift and you will be named and shamed. The days of online trolling are over. We can and ought to rally these social media sites to limit and ban negative, abusive and derogatory comments but the fact of the matter is the sites aren’t putting the comments there – that’s coming from us.
The public and community.
We want to go to the footy and feel safe and have an enjoyable experience – in victory or defeat. We don’t want to be subjected to violence in the crowd and hatred and horrific and abusive language. The AFL runs with a slogan of “many cultures, one game”.
It is a beautiful line that highlights how much so many contribute to this game that we love.
No one wants to see our stars abused, vilified and demonised. Football is just a game that we play and something that we get passionate about. As Alex Rance said in a video he shared last year in support of one of the number of times Eddie Betts has unfortunately been targeted, “humanity should never become secondary to a game”.
We can all do better, we can all learn a little bit more and hopefully, this is the start of the process to eradicate one of the greatest stains that still lingers around our game.
No one is born a racist. Unfortunately, we will always still have people who say what they say with no idea how deeply their words, actions or comments cut.
The way to combat that is to educate and try to change the discourse of a racist and misogynistic world that we get caught up in. As a society, we need to eradicate hate and start to clean up our act.
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