Adam Goodes documentary - The Final Quarter - challenges Australia’s reluctance to acknowledge racism

Adam Goodes’ documentary, The Final Quarter, details his final three years in the AFL when fans turning on the star. SEE THE TRAILER HERE

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Not even the warning before the opening credits to the Adam Goodes documentary is enough.

Those who will next Friday see the premiere of “The Final Quarter”, the story of Goodes’ final three seasons in the AFL, are forewarned the 74-minute film is “confronting and distressing”.

And it is - for all that is condensed in those 74 minutes. And for all that will come from the film, particularly later this year when a free-to-air television broadcast slot is secured for director Ian Darling’s documentary.

There will be those who will struggle to accept the problem created by Australia having to question itself on its racist tones, just as AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan stumbled during those months of silence from AFL House as Goodes was repeatedly jeered.

There will be those who will remain stuck in denial, such as Sydney radio commentator Alan Jones who declined to have his voice recordings appear in the documentary. Strange how some run from their words from this saga, as Collingwood president Eddie McGuire did - after his predecessor at the Magpies, Allan McAlister, did the same in 1993 when Aboriginal star Nicky Winmar lifted his St Kilda jumper to proudly point to his skin.

All of this is confronting and distressing to relive because the question remains as to why from 2013-2015 Australian football fans turned on Goodes, one of its stars with two Brownlow Medals on his 372-game AFL resume with the Swans.

Sydney champion Adam Goodes points at a fan during the Swans and Collingwood Magpies game at the MCG.

And the jeering just gets louder and louder in the documentary, even after Swans and Crows fans “stood with Adam” Goodes in the AFL game at the SCG on August 1, 2015. A month later, with the St Kilda fans and then those of Fremantle, the boos returned to be, as Stan Grant says, “howls of humiliation”.

Goodes could not take his final bow - along with all the other AFL stars who retired in 2015 - in the parade of champions at the AFL grand final at the MCG for fear of being jeered rather than cheered.

The documentary works with archival footage. “To be closer to the truth,” says Darling.

The moment that significantly marks Goodes - and the debate on Australia’s “racist face” as Goodes put it - is in the opening to the AFL indigenous round in late May 2013.

Sydney’s Adam Goodes reenacts the moment St. Kilda's Nicky Winmar took a stance against racism in the AFL to mark the 20-year anniversary. Picture: Phil Hillyard.

Revisiting all the reactions to Goodes’ pointing out a 13-year-old Collingwood fan at the MCG after she called him an “ape” is indeed confronting - and certain to again draw differing responses. As did the “war dance” to the Carlton fans at the SCG after Goodes scored a goal in the indigenous round of 2015.

Of all that is recalled from Goodes’ toughest three years in football, the line: “Say nothing, do nothing, nothing changes” resonates most.

Those who question why Goodes was the only indigenous player repeatedly jeered - while others were cheered - in those three years will hear Goodes reflect on how he never made a stand for his culture when he was vilified at high school.

“Now I am more confident of my culture,” he says of his stand for indigenous rights and issues when he was Australian of the Year in 2014 and an AFL veteran player.

Goodes will not be at the premiere at the Sydney Film Festival on Friday, June 8. He is reserving that night for the arrival of his first child.

There will be four screenings at the festival from June 7-15. The free-to-air television date is still unknown. In September the film - along with education material on racism and depression - will be delivered to all schools and sporting clubs prepared to enter the conversation Goodes started in 2013.

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