Rebecca Vavic complemented her Adelaide Crows scarf and jersey with a “We Love Adam Goodes” sign.
Advertisement
He was the 2014 Australian of the Year. While that policy was abolished in 1973, the country has had episodes of race-related violence since, including attacks in the past decade on Indian students attending local universities.
Jetta said it was his way of showing support for Goodes: “He’s a superstar of the game, and a superstar for the Swans“.
Meanwhile, top NRL indigenous players including North Queensland co-captain Jonathan Thurston are planning to perform indigenous dances at upcoming games as a show of support. The first Australians, who have lived on the continent for at least 40,000 years, constitute 9 percent of the professional players in the top competition, the Australian Football League, despite making up just 3 percent of the total population. People lined up to condemn the Aboriginal “war dance” delivered in the direction of Carlton fans during this year’s Indigenous Round as aggressive or provocative.
“What we’re talking about is a really complex issue that’s now sitting in the sports area and involves Adam, but I think it’s something that constantly is part of Australia, and disappointingly so”.
“He is being booed by people – not all, but many of them -because they have no respect for him and no regard for him as an Aboriginal man and that is shameful”.
“Adam did not choose any of this to happen to him”.
His team, the Sydney Swans, didn’t immediately respond to an emailed request for an interview with the player.
Nova Peris, an Aboriginal woman who won an Olympic gold medal as a field hockey player before switching to represent Australia in track and field and who is now a federal politician, said the taunting of Goodes was “disgusting” and “embarrassing”.
Addressing these issues has proven tricky.
An even more disingenuous slur has been that Goodes is being booed only because of the way he plays football; he is, it is sometimes suggested, too keen to seek a free kick and ingratiate himself to umpires.
“The Swans position on this matter is very clear: you can not be a little bit racist”.
The unidentified man said his ejection was an “overreaction”, and described the current uproar as “political correctness gone mad”.
Goodes detractors continue to bring up his unabashed belittling of a 13-year-old racist girl in 2013.
“I worry sometimes in trying to come up with marketing campaigns… that sometimes the AFL can put themselves in the wrong platform”, he said.
McLachlan went on to say the AFL “couldn’t tell people how to behave” at games.
Abbott said Friday that nobody should be “subjected to taunts”.
“As such, I urge our supporters to understand the toll this is having, the message it is sending, and that it does not reflect well on our game”.
The Richmond AFL club will wear a special shirt usually reserved for the league’s indigenous week in their match this weekend to support Goodes.
THE Cape York leader addressed the Garma Indigenous Festival in north-east Arnhem Land on Saturday, saying he did not like what the persistent booing and bullying of Goodes revealed about a section of Australian society.
Advertisement
Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane has no doubts there are racial undertones.
