I am a Collingwood supporter.
That’s a difficult thing to be today.
I’m sure many tens of thousands of people who support this great club with its roots in what was the riverside slum of Marvellous Melbourne feel the same as I do.
Shocked, angry, sad, horrified – even ashamed that the idiots and xenophobes of the United Patriots Front could, on Friday night, conflate on a banner at the MCG their ignorance and vile hatred for Islam with the Collingwood football club.
I don’t know if it will be possible to yell “Go Pies” with quite the same sentiment as it was before that awful banner was unfurled.
Every time I go to say it or write it, as I do often, I will see the terrible words emblazoned below it: “Stop The Mosques.” Whatever the hell that means, with all its sinister resonance in an echo chamber of idiocy, of stop the boats, etcetera.
I want to say – because I have a public voice and most Collingwood supporters who feel as angry as I do about this, do not: this was not done in our name.
My family has a long connection to the club, through my grandfather, who played for one of the feeder teams – Collingwood Trades - before going to Richmond seniors as full forward and leading goalkicker in 1908-09, then returning to Victoria Park as a patron. Friday night’s match was a beautiful thing for me and the Pies supporters in my family: if Collingwood won, as they did in a heartbreaker by a point, we won; if they’d lost to Richmond, well, it was still a victory we could have emotionally claimed.
But that match is now terribly marred for me and, I’d wager, the overwhelming majority of people who love the game and abhor racism and xenophobia of any sort (and that includes Collingwood supporters).
Collingwood is a big club that, like many of the more successful ones, corporatised long ago and shifted away from the place where it was born and grew. It has a vast membership, with devotees from all over the world.
Many have no connection to the club’s history, although their claim to the brand that is now Collingwood is no less legitimate than those of us who feel inextricably linked to the past of Victoria Park, by blood and upbringing.
Today I hear the AFL and the club condemn the racists of the UPF, who sullied the name of Collingwood and the game of AFL. Tragically, the Richmond player Bachar Houli, a Muslim, was racially abused at the same game on Friday night.
Naturally, the AFL and Collingwood have swiftly condemned the UPF’s actions and the abuse of Houli, a fantastic player and a modern testimony that the game has been and must continue to showcase Australia’s multicultural, multi-racial core.
I hear the AFL’s Gillion McLachlan and Collingwood’s Eddie McGuire talk tough, with vows to expel the culprits for the banner. Well, that ought to happen fast, given the amount of footage of those who unfurled it and wittingly sat under it.
Sherlock Holmes is not required to find and name them all, so that they can own their disgusting banner.
But what is required is a totally unambiguous continuing approach from the league’s leaders like McGuire and McLachlan in dealing with this incident and anything similar in the future.
They need to reiterate the harsh consequences for such behaviour. Every day. And they need to make examples of everyone associated with incidents such as Friday night’s.
Racial abuse is nothing new in the old or the modern game. But in recent decades the abuse of, particularly, Indigenous players has been a blight on a number of clubs – not least among them Collingwood, whose fans have been involved in some notably appalling racist incidents.
No one forgets the abuse of Nicky Winmar at Victoria Park in 1993. The abuse of Adam Goodes by a young Collingwood fan two decades later was a reminder, perhaps, of how steadily casual racism continues to infuse the support base, and society.
McGuire, who rightly condemned the abuse of Goodes, compounded the injury with a derogatory comment – apparently in jest – a few days later.
Today, I must tell myself that what happened on Friday night not only happened at the G – but in Australia.
And not only did it happen in the name of supposed Collingwood supporters – but Australian citizens.
Nonetheless, yelling, saying, writing “Go Pies” won’t feel right until I don’t know when.
