‘Disappointment’ is not strong enough a word to describe my feelings about Tex Walker’s racist slur — Shaun Burgoyne
Taylor Walker stood by Eddie Betts when he was racially targeted. That’s why ‘disappointing’ isn’t strong enough a word to describe how Shaun Burgoyne feels about Tex’s recent actions. Read an exclusive extract from Burgoyne’s new book.
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AFL great Shaun Burgoyne says the word “disappointment” is not strong enough to describe his feelings about Taylor Walker’s racism indiscretion.
Burgoyne, the league’s Indigenous games record holder, says Walker, as a former Adelaide Crows captain, has been in a “very privileged position” for many years.
“In footy-land, players are given opportunities for cross-cultural training,” Burgoyne writes in his new book Silk.
“They are exposed to all sorts of information around these matters and, not only that, Taylor had actually lived with it and seen first-hand how bad it can get given that Eddie Betts was his teammate for a few years in Adelaide.
“Eddie was racially targeted more than once and Tex stood side-by-side with him. The annoying thing for me is that Tex is a big personality and a public figure.
“He is in a position to make positive change for the better but there he was, involved in the kind of incident that we are trying to stamp out.”
The AFL suspended Walker for six games for making a racial slur about North Adelaide’s Robbie Young at a SANFL match at Prospect Oval in July.
A Crows official reported the incident to the club after he heard Walker vilify Young at a quarter time huddle and Adelaide notified the AFL about the matter.
Walker was also fined $20,000 – to go to an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander charity – and ordered to undergo an education program.
The Broken Hill product was photographed in Port Augusta on Thursday as part of a planned visit to the town by the Crows’ Indigenous program.
“I’m really disappointed in Taylor; actually, disappointment is probably not a strong enough word to describe how I feel about it,” Burgoyne writes.
“It seems that we need to keep repeating the same messages (about racism), over and over, because so many people are not really listening.
“And while I feel that very slowly, after each incident, there are more people who come out and voice their support for us, this incident shows we still have a long way to go.
“I’m not surprised that racism still exists within football clubs but I had hoped by now that the education provided for the players meant that something like Tex Walker’s comment was a thing of the past.”
In his book, co-authored by Martin Blake, published by HarperCollins Publishers and released next Wednesday, Burgoyne, who played 157 games for Port Adelaide and 250 games for Hawthorn, is also candid about the racist taunts he encountered growing up in Port Lincoln and the ugly fallout of Adam Goodes’ public stance against racism.
The four-time premiership player also writes about being part of the Power’s inaugural AFL premiership in 2004, the fallout of the club’s record-breaking 119-point grand final loss to Geelong in 2007, his controversial departure from Port Adelaide in 2009 – after he was overlooked for the captaincy – and the influence of premiership coach Mark Williams on his 407-game career.
BOOK EXTRACT: SILK BY SHAUN BURGOYNE
Port Lincoln was a small country town and in relative terms there were a lot of Indigenous people, but there were also extremes of lifestyle. There were the mega-rich people who owned the fishing trawlers and that kind of thing, and a lot of very poor Indigenous and non-Indigenous people trying to make a living as well. It was a complicated mix of people.
It was very easy for racism to flourish in that community, too easy for some people to look down on others. People would say things on the street, sometimes on the footy field.
Someone might call you ‘boong’, which was a nasty one, or ‘Abo’. It happened all the time when I was growing up.
There were a lot of fights at school, sometimes on racial grounds and sometimes not. There was a big mix of races, and as a young boy I struggled for a while to come to grips with why this happened. I found it confusing, because I never went looking for trouble, yet it came to me and it came to others, too. And I’m the same person to this day.
One incident that sticks in my brain happened in my early years at high school. There was a wall where we used to sit, and when we came to school one day there were racist words spray-painted all over that wall. I cannot remember the exact words, but I do remember the impact it had on me. And there were the teachers, busily trying to scrub the words off the wall as we started arriving for school, and me quite angry, underneath.
There were other incidents that stuck in my mind, like the time when I made the school athletics team in high school, around Year 8, and we travelled on the bus to Adelaide. I took my spot up the back of the bus and one boy, an Anglo-Saxon kid, started calling me different racist names along the way.
He was an older and bigger boy from St Joseph’s, a private school not far from my local high school, and he called me ‘Abo’ and other worse names and told me that I should move.
It was confronting because I was the only Indigenous boy on the trip, but I refused to move because I was sitting with a close friend.
I had to cop this and although we didn’t come to blows, I stored it up. I remember thinking that if I ever played footy against that boy, I would target him. Fortunately, it never happened.
I was involved in a lot of fights early in my life, whether it was over words that were said to me, or retaliating against something that was done to me, or sticking up for a friend or a cousin. Early on, I would just go ‘whack’. I wouldn’t cop any abuse and my attitude was: ‘Hit first and ask questions later.’
But then I would find myself in trouble with the school for retaliating. I can remember times when the police were called around home and to school, not to deal with me, but for other people in my circle.
Fortunately, our parents taught us that violence would never solve the issue. Gradually I changed the way I handled racism. Early on I would say that I hated those people who inflicted it on me, but later I learnt to hold the anger in, just venting at home to Mum and Dad.
They drew the line pretty quickly, though, and all of us were told not to fight back if we could possibly manage it. As we grew older, I guess we started to understand what was happening a little better.
We developed a pack mentality, looked after each other, and I gradually learned how to handle it without fighting. Everyone reacted differently to racism, and I can remember chatting to friends and family who had suffered from it, trying to calm them down.
By the time I reached high school, I had grown to understand that I could expect racist abuse around sport or at school, and who to expect it from.
***
It (the 2004 AFL flag) really was a premiership won the Port Adelaide way.
Port had won 36 SANFL flags but this was the first in the AFL, at national level, and I was overcome with emotion in the moments after the siren rang out.
We had a group of older players – Darryl Wakelin was 30, Gavin Wanganeen and Brett Montgomery were 31, and Damien Hardwick was 32 – who knew how hard flags were to win.
As we ran our lap of honour and then found our way to the mayhem of the Port dressing room under the MCG stands, it was easy to feel happy for those people and for teammates like Michael Wilson, an incredibly tough player who had endured dreadful injuries because of his style of play. And also for my younger teammates like Kane Cornes and Dom Cassisi, two boys who I’d been drafted with at the end of 2000.
In the aftermath, there are a few things that have stayed in my mind. The heat and overcrowding of the crazy dressing rooms, where Mum and Dad and Amy were waiting, was one.
Another was the moment an hour or two later when we had showered and changed into our suits for that night’s function, but were still in our Port jumpers, and the whole playing group wandered out to the centre of the MCG in the darkness, planted the premiership cup in the centre circle and sang the song again.
There was a great function that night at the Crowne Plaza hotel in the city with our friends and families, maybe an hour’s sleep, then a flight back to Adelaide for a big family day on the Sunday at Alberton Oval, our spiritual home.
Then a few days on, a tickertape parade through King William Street in the Adelaide CBD, where we were handed the keys to the city.
A few weeks on, I was lucky enough to take the premiership cup back to Port Lincoln, along with Darryl Wakelin, another Eyre Peninsula boy, and I remember going to Mallee Park, my junior club, in what seemed to be the world turning full circle.
It felt like a dream come true, that I was a premiership player.
***
To say that what happened that day at the MCG (at the 2007 Grand Final) is one of my least favourite memories would be an understatement.
A grand final win can give you great memories for life, things that you will never forget, but a loss can leave you with a very bad taste that lingers. There was no one in particular to blame but ourselves. We had a few players who were down on the day, with fewer than 10 disposals, but Kane Cornes had 37 disposals, Peter 36 and Chad Cornes 32, and I had 19 touches as well as two goals.
We tried, but Geelong was awesome.
It was humiliating to hear the crowd chanting and singing long before the end of the game, and watching the Geelong players celebrating through the last quarter.
All we could do was try to fight for some kind of respectability on the scoreboard, but we were broken, and we couldn’t even manage that.
It was completely demoralising for Port that day, and for me. Without a shadow of a doubt that is the worst single day I ever put in on a footy field, the worst feeling that a footballer can experience.
Afterwards, you sit back and reflect on it, and you think about all the people who came to support you, the family and friends who had high hopes as well. The siren goes, and the margin does not really matter.
You see the opposition’s faces, the jubilation, and you are envious. And in the rooms, it feels like there has been a death. There is nothing that you can say or do to make it better. Your family comes in and they console you and you feel like you have let them down, even shamed them.
After a losing grand final, you pretty much want to dig a hole and crawl right inside it. But even that is easier said than done. At AFL level, you have commitments to complete and we had a function to attend in Melbourne. There were barely 50 people there in attendance, outside of the players, staff and their families. Again, it was devastating but you have to go through the motions.
The same thing happened the following day when we returned to Adelaide. We had a family day at Alberton and hardly any fans turned up. It was humiliating and it was the start of something at that football club, I am convinced of that.
I think the 2007 Grand Final defeat impacted Port in so many ways. The whole club was hurt by that defeat.
It can last for a long time, that stigma, and possibly forever. As a football club, we tried to put it in the rear vision mirror. But we failed, because we were fatally wounded.
***
In November, 2008, Warren Tredrea stepped down as Port Adelaide captain, although he intended playing on in 2009. It became apparent then that I could be the next captain of the club.
I put my hand up to be captain – as did Dom Cassisi, Brendon Lade, and Kane and Chad Cornes. Choco also spoke to me about it. He said, ‘There’s potential for you to be captain, but there’s potential for the others as well.’
Appointing the captain was a long drawn-out process, a shemozzle, really. I think the club should have made a prompt decision so we could all move on. To me, it felt like we were all auditioning for the role for the whole 2009 pre-season, and I didn’t like it at all.
It was as though I was competing against my teammates, a position that I never wanted to be in, and I started to get angry and confused. I wasn’t sure what they were waiting for, to be honest.
The delay fuelled a media circus. I can remember picking up the paper and seeing the odds for each candidate, which created a dreadful feeling around the footy club.
In the end, Dom Cassisi was named captain but it took until February. Dom and I were great mates, we had been drafted together, but towards the end, it felt like we were being played off against each other. All along, I felt that whoever they chose, the other guy would have stepped in behind him and supported him in the new role.
I have since heard that Choco did want me to be captain, but from what I understand, the footy club board said no to his wish.
Even after the decision was made, people kept ringing me to ask about it, and every time I did an interview, it would be, ‘Are you disappointed?’ And I would say, ‘No. Dom’s the captain, let’s move on.’
Reflecting back, I didn’t begrudge Dom the captaincy. I would have liked to have led the club, and I am sure that Chad and Brendon and Kane would say the same. It is natural to think that way – it’s a big honour for anyone and the opportunities don’t come along too often.
It would have been good to understand what their issue was with me, their reasoning for overlooking me. I could have learnt from that. Instead, I was disappointed, and frustrated with the process.
***
All the leadership stuff was the lead-in to a terrible season in 2009. The cracks that had been opened within the playing group were all evident by the time we played West Coast in Round 2 at Subiaco. We were annihilated. We had a team meeting at the hotel in Perth the next morning, and it was highly charged, the worst meeting that I have ever been involved with at a footy club.
It was an angry exchange all round, with arguments between players and coaches. The consensus from the playing group at the time was along these lines: ‘Why didn’t we start our best team on the field?’ David Rodan had started on the bench, we considered ourselves an average footy team, if we were being honest, and we needed all hands on deck.
Remember that back in 2009, the multiple rotations that happen nowadays were not really a thing.
The way I saw it, we needed to get away to the best possible start and we needed our best players out there. I certainly said that in the meeting. We went through a horrible exercise where they asked us to rate each player out of the 22 on the night, starting from the top, and this was humiliating for the guys who were at the tail end.
This was part of our experience of the how the Leading Teams model was run at Port Adelaide. It’s fair to say that their program was not popular with the players.
What also happened in that meeting needs to be put in careful context by me. I generally agree with what my brother Peter says and what Daniel Motlop says, but I also disagree with a lot of things they say as well. Peter and I argued more than most other players did because we are brothers, and it was the same with Daniel, who is like a brother to me.
And in this meeting, we happened to agree with this one topic, which happened to be ‘start the best 22 on the field’.
I remember someone piping up, saying, ‘Looks like this is a black versus white thing.’
That completely set me off; I was very angry straight away. I said, ‘That is something that you should never say. Even if you thought that, never say that in this meeting. It’s a shit thing to say.’
He apologised to me later and we were cool. He said to me, ‘That’s what it seemed like.’
I know he meant no harm by that comment – to him, it was a throwaway line. I reacted to it and the tension went through the roof. Peter, Daniel and I were simply arguing about fundamental team selection.
***
‘WE DIDN’T DO ENOUGH.’
These were my words, and they were delivered at the AFL Indigenous All Stars Summit in Adelaide in February 2019.
The annual players’ camps were started a few years ago so that the 70 to 80 Indigenous players on AFL lists could get together, helping us to keep in touch with our identities, connect with our culture, and hear from other players. Every second year there was a summit based around cultural themes.
The 2019 themes were brotherhood and cultural identity, connection back to community and best practice in how these are linked back to clubs.
This camp in Adelaide was special because we had been given the opportunity to watch an early screening of The Final Quarter, the documentary film to be released mid-2019 about the last three years of Adam Goodes’ playing career and how one of the best players ever was basically run out of the game by crowds booing him on the football field.
On this particular day, we were at a city hotel and I was standing in front of players in my role as chairman of the AFL Players Association’s National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Advisory Council. And I was emotional.
It was four years on from the incident, but those moments were still raw in most of our minds and as we watched it, everything came flooding back.
There were quite a few tears flowing as we relived 17 consecutive weeks of Goodsey copping it from the crowds around Australia. I was sitting next to Brett Goodes, Adam’s younger brother and a fine AFL player with Western Bulldogs in his own right.
It was very confronting.
Adam had been run out of the game in the couple of years after that 2013 match against Collingwood at the MCG, when he publicly called out the young girl who racially abused him over the fence. After he was named Australian of the Year for his work with Indigenous youth foundations, in particular the GO Foundation, he copped it from the crowds all through 2014 and, at its worst, through 2015.
That was his last year of footy and it was an ugly time.
The booing was flat-out racism in my opinion, and then it caught fire. In the end, people were booing because the person next to them was booing, or because they were being told not to do it. It became a fun thing to do. It became a juggernaut.
The reality is, once Adam came out and said, ‘This is hurting me,’ it should have been stopped. Just like that. But that didn’t happen.
People argued that Adam Goodes was being booed for the way he played. What rubbish! For 300 games of brilliant football everything was fine and then he stands up against racism, both in his role as Australian of the Year and as a player, and suddenly he is booed every time he goes near the football, right around the country.
We all know what that looks and sounds like. It’s racism.
By the time any officials representing our game stood up and tried to do something about it, it was way too late.
I did not leave myself out of the heat of the blow torch.
‘That was terrible by me and the rest of the players, because we didn’t support Adam quickly enough. Neither did the clubs, neither did the presidents, neither did the CEOs. There are a lot of powerful people in the industry, and no one acted quickly enough.’
I know that the AFL administration through Gillon McLachlan came out – eventually – and apologised to Adam, and I know that certain coaches and presidents made statements about his treatment.
But it leaves a sour taste when you see a player with those accomplishments – two Brownlow Medals, two premierships and 372 games for Sydney – pushed out of the game in that way.
It’s a black mark on our game that will be there for a long, long time.
It took a huge toll on Adam, and it impacted upon all of the game’s Indigenous players. I played a game against Sydney in 2015 and our fans at the MCG were booing him, and it was an awful moment for me.
It frustrates me that the vilification keeps happening. Take one walk down the road and you know that we are a fully multicultural country. As for my people, we’re the oldest living culture in the world.
We have so much to be proud of. I want everyone to see that.
***
I am forever grateful to people like Nicky Winmar and Michael Long for taking the stances they did years ago, Nicky with his famous jumper lift in 1993 and Michael speaking up in 1995.
They have each made a massive contribution to creating awareness and educating players and fans. I’ve spoken to Gilbert McAdam, the brilliant Indigenous player who was in St Kilda colours the day that Winmar lifted his jumper. He told me that both he and Nicky copped it from the crowd all the time in those days.
I remember the Long incident. I was 12, barracking for Essendon and I watched the game on TV, the first Anzac Day clash in 1995 at the MCG.
It started when Michael objected to what Damian Monkhorst, then the Collingwood ruckman, called him during the game. It was the kind of incident that was pretty common back then, a few choice words like, ‘Get off me, you black so-and-so.’
But Michael was a proud man and he’d had enough. So he took action which led to a mediation hearing at the AFL.
As a result, the AFL introduced Rule 30, the anti-vilification rule that made it illegal for players to abuse other players on the field on the basis of race, colour and religion. In 2013,
the rules were broadened to outlaw all sorts of vilification of people, including disability, sexuality and appearance. It was then renamed Rule 35.
In 2021, on the recommendation of Michael Long, the AFL’s rule was renamed the Peek Rule in honour of the work done by the AFL’s Tony Peek, who worked closely with Indigenous leaders.
Australian football is the number one sport in the country and that gives us a good platform to educate people about racism. The Peek Rule is great and necessary. But it’s not enough to stamp out racism.
In 2017 in Adelaide, Eddie Betts had a banana thrown at him by a spectator during a showdown game against Port Adelaide, which is completely unacceptable. I was just amazed that this could happen in Australia. It felt like a big step backwards for the whole cause.
Eddie handled himself incredibly well when he spoke out publicly about it. Port Adelaide Football Club acted quickly and had the member who threw the banana hauled in to explain herself. Her membership was cancelled and she was required to do an education program.
You will always get people in the crowd being stupid. But I don’t think people go to the footy to listen to that kind of crap. As a society, we can’t accept it. The fact is, when you go to a game, you don’t leave your manners at the gate. You’re still required to be a respectable citizen, even if you are at the game and it gets emotional.
As a player, I want people to cheer for me and I’m happy for people to have a go at me, too, because I’m the opposition for them. But there are limits, and that’s what people need to understand.
***
Fast forward to July 2021, when I heard that Adelaide Crows champion Taylor ‘Tex’ Walker, former captain of the club, was being investigated under the Peek Rule.
Walker was in the huddle at a SANFL game when he passed a comment about the North Adelaide player Robbie Young, which an official overheard and reported. He was later suspended for six weeks, and required to donate $20,000 to an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander program and apologise to the Indigenous players at the Crows and again to the entire playing group, as well as undertake an education program.
I was really disappointed in Taylor; actually, disappointment is probably not a strong enough word to describe how I felt about it. He’s been in a very privileged position for a number of years as a former captain of his club.
In footy-land, players are given opportunities for cross-cultural training. They are exposed to all sorts of information around these matters, and not only that, Taylor had actually lived with it and seen first-hand how bad it can get given that Eddie Betts was his teammate for a few years at Adelaide.
Eddie was racially targeted more than once and Tex stood side-by-side with him. The annoying thing for me is that Tex is a big personality and a public figure. He is in a position to make positive change for the better but there he was, involved in the kind of incident that we are trying to stamp out.
On the back of his suspension and the sanctions handed down, he has committed to learning from his mistake and doing some service in the community. I think Taylor will learn his lesson.
It seems that we need to keep repeating the same messages, over and over, because so many people are not really listening.
And while I feel that very slowly, after each incident, there are more people who come out and voice their support for us, this incident shows we still have a long way to go.
The footy field is a workplace and when people go to work, they are entitled to feel safe.
This is a long haul. Changing society and getting rid of racial vilification is not something that can be done in five minutes. What we urgently need is more non-Indigenous people helping us.
But I know one thing: Indigenous people will never give up the fight. I will stand up with people like Eddie Betts, my brother.
This is an edited extract from Silk by Shaun Burgoyne, with Martin Blake. HarperCollinsPublishers $45, out October 13
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