Gillon McLachlan, the chief executive of the AFL, has said the game needs players like the Sydney Swans’ Adam Goodes, but that the league cannot tell its supporters how to behave.
Goodes will sit out this weekend’s game against Adelaide at the SCG after weeks of booing from spectators while on the field.
Goodes has also been criticised by some high-profile commentators and the public throughout the week after he described the constant heckling as racism.
But on Friday he received the high-profile support of billionaire James Packer who said the booing had made him “ashamed to be Australian”.
“I think he’s an amazing role model and to hear people booing him is something that I’m ashamed of as an Australian,” Packer said on Friday.
Although McLachlan said on Friday morning that he hoped Goodes would return to the game soon and that the league backed the two-time Brownlow medallist, he also said there were no plans to specifically address racism displayed by supporters.
The AFL was looking only towards the coming weekend, and to getting Goodes to play again.
“We can’t tell our supporters how to behave,” McLachlan said. “History says they are the best in the world … Despite their perspective [I’m hopeful] they’ll look to the heart of the issue and they’ll decide what’s appropriate or not … And in the end, it is about respecting the feelings of Goodes.”
His comments came as the captains of all 18 AFL clubs pleaded for fans attending the games to stop booing. They released an open statement through the AFL Players Association.
They wrote: “As captains, teammates and supporters of the game, we know how motivating the cheer and roar of a crowd can be.”
“We also know how demoralising and offensive booing and jeering is. As leaders we are accountable for everything we do on and off the field, and we think it’s just as important for us to be accountable and call out unacceptable behaviour when we see it. And sadly this week we have all seen it.
“Enjoy the game, celebrate the success. But don’t boo, jeer or taunt players because of who they are or what they stand for.”
McLachlan described Goodes’s treatment and the subsequent commentary as a “polarising debate”. The AFL had not spoken to Goodes recently.
“I haven’t heard from him in recent days. He’s having some time getting away from an extraordinary amount of noise,” McLachlan said. “We respect our players, our clubs, our industry, and the feelings of a guy who’s feeling hurt.”
The AFL denied requests by Guardian Australia to speak to the AFL’s diversity programs manager, Ali Fahour.
While Goodes has been booed by crowds for a few weeks, the row came to a head last weekend when his Sydney Swans team-mate Lewis Jetta celebrated a fourth-quarter goal with an Indigenous war cry dance and threw an imaginary spear at the crowd.
Goodes is an advocate for Indigenous Australians, and has spoken out about issues such as family violence and his own experience of it, as well as the impact of alcohol on communities. He has featured in TV advertisements aimed at men in which he describes violence as unacceptable.
Some have said the booing directed at Goodes was because of an incident that happened more than two years ago, when Goodes called out a supporter who called him an “ape” during the AFL’s Indigenous round. The report led to a 13-year-old girl being evicted from the match. At the time, Goodes urged the media not to vilify the girl and refused to press any charges. The girl has said she did not know that the term was considered racist.
A News Ltd columnist and political commentator, Andrew Bolt, who was found to have breached the Racial Discrimination Act in two articles he wrote in 2009, was among those to have blamed Goodes and the Indigenous round incident for his recent treatment.
The prime minister, Tony Abbott, also weighed in on Friday, but stopped short of labelling the booing as racism. He did say, however, that racism had no place in Australia.
“You don’t have to agree with everything that Adam says; you don’t have to, I suppose, like his footy team,” Abbott said. “Nevertheless, I think there should be a basic respect given to all sportspeople, and certainly the last thing we want in Australia is anything – anything at all – that smacks of racism.”
Politicians typically got booed when attending games as well, Abbott said. “But Adam Goodes is a good bloke and he’s a great player, and I hope he’ll be treated with civility and dignity.”
The chairman of Abbott’s Indigenous advisory council, Warren Mundine, urged Goodes to “stay strong”. “I’m proud of you,” Mundine wrote to Goodes on Twitter. Mundine also described his own experiences of racism in a piece for the Spectator published on Friday.
“It’s hard to explain the damage racial abuse causes,” he wrote.
“It’s consuming, crippling and takes away your sense of worth. It instils a deep sense of shame. It cowers you. Most Indigenous players have experienced it since birth; it’s etched on their psyche before they ever take the field.”
The federal minister for social services, Scott Morrison, also weighed in on Twitter, supporting comments made by Mundine. “To paraphrase a great rugby phrase ‘go you Goodes thing’ and to quote Warren Mundine ‘stop the boos’,” he wrote.
The Richmond Tigers and the Western Bulldogs announced they will wear their Dreamtime Indigenous jerseys during their matches this weekend, and have encouraged their supporters to do the same. On Thursday the Swans’ chief executive, Andrew Ireland, said the team also had a show of support planned for Goodes, but would not go into details.
Speaking on ABC radio on Friday, Victoria’s equal opportunity commissioner, Kate Jenkins, said there was a general community confusion and lack of understanding about the experience of Indigenous Australians and the racism they experienced.
“Whether we like it or not a lot of us have grown up with very poor education about the issues facing Indigenous Australians,” Jenkins said. “It’s a fantastic thing we have in Australia, our longest living culture.”
She believed the behaviour towards Goodes was racially motivated, and that Australians had difficulty accepting that they were being racist.
“All indicators suggest it’s [the booing is] because he’s Aboriginal or more importantly because he’s spoken up,” she said.
“I think we have a real cultural challenge about speaking up. It’s really hard for disadvantaged groups to complain. We have an Australian culture that says don’t whinge, don’t dob in others, don’t complain.”
It meant minority groups were often silenced or ridiculed, Jenkins said. “There are groups in our community, and it’s not just Indigenous people, who are really suffering disadvantage every day.”
On Friday afternoon, members of some of more than 150 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community and business organisations, including the Australian Medical Association, issued a joint statement to call for a stronger effort to stamp out racism in sport.
“To dismiss claims of racism as just banter is to use football as a shield for prejudice,” the statement said.
“Legitimate barracking for one’s team is a tradition that has been alive as long as the game itself but, when such behaviour coincides with cultural displays and Goodes’ efforts to stop racism, it is clear that a line has been crossed to racial abuse.
“It is a great stain on our nation that the experience of Adam Goodes is the lived experience of many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and there is ample evidence that demonstrates the negative impact on mental and physical health, as well as life.”
Australia’s race discrimination commissioner, Dr Tim Soutphommasane, and Close the Gap campaign co-chair, Kirstie Parker, will gather with other leaders in Redfern park in Sydney to deliver the statement.
Australian Greens spokeswoman on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander affairs, senator Rachel Siewert, called on the AFL and Abbott to take a stronger stand against racism from spectators.
“They are in really clear leadership positions and it is fair for the public to expect them to send a very clear message to spectators to stop this behaviour, to admit that this is racism and to say that they will deal with this nonsense,” she told Guardian Australia.
“In my experiences working with the joint select committee on constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, I have heard from young people in particular about their experiences of racism.
“If they are seeing their sports heroes like Goodes standing up to racism and being denigrated for it, what hope is there for them?”
