Adam Goodes was being a sook. He wasn’t humble enough. He’s playing the victim. And he’s polarising Australians.
Goodes should just get over it.
You only need to type in Adam Goodes into Twitter’s search bar to find lines like these scattered online in response to the Swans legend rejecting the AFL’s invitation to join a list of football greats in the Hall of Fame last week. Some argue there is no greater honour in football.
Goodes, gracefully, said no.
Let’s not forget: Goodes was booed into retirement. It was hostile. He was also racially vilified by a 13-year-old girl. And Eddie McGuire, a president of one of football’s largest football clubs, referred to him as King Kong (and not punished by the AFL for it).
Think about that for a minute. The real concern is not Goodes accepting or not accepting his Hall of Fame invite. It’s how, six years on, the 41-year old still lives with the trauma of his racial vilification and how the AFL failed him. This is something he can’t forget. Racism leaves scars. And they clearly haven’t healed.
Adam Goodes (Photo by Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)
If you have watched the Ripple Effect documentary, which aired after the Dreamtime match in Perth, it examines the lasting effects of racism and the traumatic impact one experience can have on indigenous AFL players and people of colour.
Nathan Lovett-Murray explains his first incident when he was in Grade Four, almost 30 years ago, when an older kid spouted vile insults at him while he was running laps at school. It crushed his confidence. It made him angry. At one point, Lovett-Murray says, he even contemplated taking his own life.
Being vilified questions things like belonging and identity. It can fracture careers.
Since 2015 when Goodes left the game, the AFL has struggled to challenge the football landscape to keep Indigenous players safe from vilification. And in that time Twitter has emerged as the latest vulnerable entry point for racist abuse.
While recent steps are being made by the AFL to work with social media platforms Twitter and Facebook to create stronger reforms, it won’t be the silver bullet.
Significant steps to create change will only come with an all-hands-on-deck approach: changes to curriculum and education in schools, new laws that allow prosecution from online abuse, and football fans banding together to call out racism.
You only have to check your Twitter feed from the weekend to see Paddy Ryder was called ‘Blacky Ryder’ and mocked for depression. Liam Ryan was called a ‘black dog’.
One football fan went as far to say “I’ll admit I called him (Liam Ryan) a black dirty ape just in the heat of the moment.” These are the ones we know of publicly.
Of the Indigenous players I have spoken to in the last month, almost all of them receive death threats, racist abuse, monkey emojis daily. These threats spike if they try to speak out against racism or simply if they post a photo on Instagram of their family.
All of them said the threats – and large volume of threats – leave mental wounds.
Graham Cornes wrote in The Advertiser that “it’s hard to know what else the AFL can do to make it (the Adam Goodes situation) better” and also asked the question: “Can he forgive us?” I hear Cornes. He wants what every football fan wants: that Adam Goodes should be celebrated. But it’s complicated.
Only, at this point, can Goodes decide what direction the relationship travels in. Goodes needs to be at peace with how the AFL failed him but if that day doesn’t come we all have to accept that. Some fences just aren’t meant to be mended.
Adam Goodes retired in 2015 amidst considerable controversy over his treatment by fans. (Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)
The danger is that if AFL executives give us lip service on a transformative approach to make change, but fail to deliver. Last year when football resumed and players took a knee to show solidarity for the Black Lives Matter movement, some saw it as an inspiring move, never seen before in the AFL. Yet, 12 months on, what’s become of it? Since then Eddie Betts has received monkey emojis.
The Do Better report leaked earlier this year acknowledged Collingwood’s struggle with its racist culture. There’s a scrolling list of players that have been targeted racially.
The knee moment was a player-led idea backed by the AFL, but there was an opportunity to keep the conversation going, like what the English Premier League (EPL) did this year when they kneeled before every game.
But like the EPL, there needs to be more than a symbolic knee to create real change.
It’s hard to say what, if anything, will change in the next five to ten years. The worst thing the AFL can do right now about Goodes is to say ‘ah well, we tried’. If they want him in the Hall of Fame they need to change the culture of the game.
Goodes sees the game differently. He sees it as a toxic racist culture. As fans we need to understand that. We need to understand real damage has been done.
If the AFL can get to work in fixing the systemic issues in the game so that other indigenous players feel safe, then perhaps, just maybe, in time Goodes might have a change of heart.
And if not, we – the greater football community – have to respect his decision and continue to make the game a safer place for Indigenous footballers.
Jorge of Brisvegas
Roar Rookie
I have heard this argument before, what if one of the “other” colonial nations captured Australia ? The indigenous people would have been worse off / wiped out! So the premise for this argument is that “stop bashing Britain because they were not as bad as other nations could have been?” So the logical follow on from this argument is that the indigenous people of Australia are lucky? They should be thankful that it wasn’t someone else ? They should just be quiet and move on (quiet Australians??) We should just not talk about it. If someone attacked you in the street, stabbed you in chest, stomach, slashed a deep wound in your leg, stripped you naked, raped you and threw you down an embankment to die………. but someone found you in time and you were taken to hospital. You survived. You obviously have physical scars(some horrific) , you require a colostomy bag to process internal function. You have multiple mental and emotional trauma from the experience and you and your family have been changed forever by the experience . But someone says , “well it could have been worse, they could have killed you! “ Does that sound like a similar analogy ?
Jorge of Brisvegas
Roar Rookie
.??? @Roger to say the booing wasn’t about racism because if it had been, it would have occurred his whole career, is incorrect. The whole thing happened because Adam Goodes was named Australian of the Year. But unlike “good” Indigenous winners of the past, he chose to be a “bad one” and use his status and position to call out racism in Australia and call for a positive change, R for reconciliation. This raised the strong undercurrent of animosity of many of our countryman of what racism? Who is this black man telling us who we are and what we should do? He is getting “above” himself? Aborigines should get “over it and move on”! I am not racist so when he calls Australia racist, he is insulting me ! Then he called out the words from the young Collingwood supporter - game on! Every right wing/ anti race issue commentator piled on and accused Goodes of bullying and attacking a 13 yr old girl, who didn’t mean to call him an Ape , at the footy. Over the next few months, he got mercilessly booed Every time he touched the ball! People used the excuse he was a “flog” and or played for free kicks, obviously monumentally destructive behaviour from a footballer. So that is why thousands and thousands and thousands of people booed 1 man. Not for being a flog, not for staging for free kicks, not for being a great opposition player, not for being Australian of the year, not for victimising a 13 yr old girl, not for being of high profile, but he was a proud, strong indigenous man who had the temerity to call out Australia’s culture of casual racism, of “not our fault” , of we need to just move on , “it is not me”. They yelled and booed and chased him , as the they had chased and hunted his forebears, and they chased him out of the game. One of the best players the game had ever seen. Australians DO see colour! If we were honest with ourselves we would see the yellow streak down our back as being too afraid to face our past AND our present! After over a hundred years of pushing it under carpet or outright denial - let us just face it. In football terms we keep running past the ball and attacking the man. That man (or woman) is black and we need to pay the penalty. The penalty is admitting as a country what we did ! Who we did it to, what pain we caused and how we feel about it now. Only then can we reconcile and move forward together. Mate, it is ALL about race. Or more exactly about the soul of our country.
Mr Right
Roar Rookie
It is obviously isn't it. It was that moustache he wore. Lucky the footy season finished before Movember commenced. Otherwise the VFL would have had to outlaw the booing.
Micko
Roar Rookie
Because he was bl-.... wait, no he wasn't! Um not sure. There's literally no other reasons to boo someone except for having a different skin tone...is there? :silly:
Mr Right
Roar Rookie
So why was Leigh Matthews constantly booed?
.kraM
Roar Rookie
Hmm, probably wouldn’t go that far.
JAMES G HASLAM
Guest
'Only, at this point, can Goodes decide what direction the relationship travels in. Goodes needs to be at peace with how the AFL failed him ' We failed Adam Goodes. We must change the relationship.
bagley
Roar Rookie
people always wanted KB to come back to the tigers, but they respected his right to decide, if or when that was going to happen, lets hope Adam gets the same respect.
Rowdy
Roar Rookie
So why did Eddie have bananas thrown at him? Not even the 'good' Eddie could escape racism.
Micko
Roar Rookie
Goodes acted like a clown, and hid behind his ethnic background to justify his silly behaviour.
Micko
Roar Rookie
How? Nobody demanded the Saracens changed their name after various attacks and massacres in London! Why the hypocrisy???
KiwiBear
Guest
I too am a Pakeha Kiwi....mmm the Crusaders....NZ Rugby and not changing the name was horrific systemic racism after the Mosque mssacre. Think Tana Umanga and his well known experiences with Graham Henry
Beni Iniesta
Guest
You should read up on the Act of Union of 1707 between Scotland & England. Yes indeed - Scotland were very willingly a part of the United Kingdom. Do you know why it's called the United Kingdom?
Beni Iniesta
Guest
Catholics vs Protestants has been huge in Australian Rules. Irish vs. English basically. That is pretty sectarian.
Bandicoot
Roar Rookie
There was one thing that could have been done to stop this in the bud. I remember being at the Hawthorn/Swans game when he was being booed unmercifully. There were a few women just behind us who were booing and I asked them why. They replied that they didn't know why but everyone else was doing it so it was a good bit of fun. If Cyril Rioli had come out on to the ground at half time, grabbed a microphone and said that he was disgusted with the Hawthorn fans for booing Goodes for no reason. Had he then threatened to walk off the ground if it continued in the second half, I wonder if it would have. The indigenous footballers could have banded together and stopped this happening hence they are almost as guilty as the mob.
Beni Iniesta
Guest
It's not a "white" game, it's an indigenous game called Marn Grook.
Bandicoot
Roar Rookie
He was booed because: 1/ How dare he. A black man putting a poor little white girl to shame. Like, it was all his fault that she called him an ape. 2/ After being named Australian of the year. Again, how he dare he tell all us white folk about what we can and can’t do. We can’t have that. So, if you believe that this is not racism, fair enough. Continue to live in your world of denial.
Rowdy
Roar Rookie
Except SA and WA had very few Irish. Obviously Tas & Vic did.
Bell31
Roar Rookie
Maybe some fans don’t like a high profile player of Indigenous background who is willing to speak their mind about difficult issues…
.kraM
Roar Rookie
Seriously? This again?