GEELONG coach Chris Scott wants his supporters to show leadership on the Adam Goodes booing issue when the Swans visit Simonds Stadium next weekend. It is draining on Adam…
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“I think there are lots of different attributes as to why (the booing) started and now I think it’s sheep-like behavior and I don’t even think people know why they’re doing it now”, he said on Monday.
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”. Adam Goodes can fix this by changing his behaviour.
“The fact [is] that Adam believes this is now racist in nature and if anyone continues down this path then it is racism from where we sit and it should be called out”, he said.
Without drawing any comparison with what Adam Goodes has to endure on a weekly basis every time he steps out to play a game of football, Dennis Eggington knows what it is to experience the arrows of racism that are faced by a number of advocates.
“It is completely inappropriate and it has to stop”, said Trevor Nisbett, the club’s chief executive.
One man was evicted from the ground after a women called Melissa, reported him to security staff for racially abusing Goodes. “It was just part of the banter of the game”.
As examples of Goodes’ “behaviour”, Jones mentioned the time in 2013 when he raised an objection after he heard a crowd member yelling out a racist taunt, and the time, in May of this year, when he performed a war dance during the AFL’s indigenous round.
It’s sparked a debate that’s divided the Australian sporting community, with pundits butting heads over whether or not the vocal and prolonged Goodes-hating is motivated by racism.
What is the difference between people who boo Goodes because they disagree with his statements on Aboriginality, and those who lined the streets of Selma to abuse Martin Luther King and his companions on their marches?
“This booing stuff, it needs to be thrown out the window”.
“The bloke’s had enough and the game has had enough”, Healy said on 3AW.
“At its heart here there is a racist element”, he told ABC Radio.
Goodes has told a handful of teammates and those within his inner sanctum that he is weighing up the decision to end his career.
The booing of Goodes had subsided in recent weeks but West Coast’s notoriously parochial crowd drew the issue back into the spotlight on Monday.
Francis Leach, a sports commentator, said in The Age: “What a redneck wonderland footy has become”.
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Goodes believes modern “Aussie Rules”, the country’s richest and best-attended sport, had its origin in “marn grook”, an Aboriginal game noted by 19th-century colonialists in which players jostled to catch and kick stuffed animal skins. “Don’t use football as shield for your prejudice”.
