AFL’s problems grow worse thanks to its do-gooder bosses

Goaded on by a hopelessly one-sided documentary about Sydney Swans legend Adam Goodes, the AFL is now turning on the very people who keep the game in business, the fans, writes Miranda Devine.

It was no coincidence that the same week the AFL’s new behavioural police were deployed to crack down on fans for such heinous crimes as calling an umpire a “bald headed flog” the AFL also was apologising for not preventing crowds booing Adam Goodes five years ago.

Despite denials by the AFL’s pathetically woke CEO Gillon McLachlan, it’s obvious that new rules are in force for fans precisely to prevent any future outbreaks of politically incorrect booing.

The AFL’s general manager of inclusion and social policy, Tanya Hosch freely intimated as much in a Q&A session after a screening in NSW Parliament House last Thursday of an egregiously misleading documentary about Goodes.

MORE FROM MIRANDA DEVINE: Only Adam Goodes can stop the booing

After all, once you’ve apologised to Goodes and beaten yourself up for not stopping the booing, the next logical step, at least from the delusional vantage point of a cloistered boardroom, is to stop the booing.

And the only way you can do that is to employ the sort of heavy-handed tactics that would make George Orwell blush. Hence the “Behavioural Awareness Officers” prowling the aisles of Marvel Stadium last week.

A new documentary, titled The Final Quarter, addresses a number of experiences Adam Goodes had while playing for Sydney. Picture: Phil Hillyard

This current bout of self-flagellating from the AFL was sparked by the Final Quarter documentary, a boring pastiche of archival footage made by left-wing philanthropist Ian Darling, who hails from one of Australia’s wealthiest families, and has bequeathed us other such divisive films as Gayby Baby and the Hunting Ground.

The Final Quarter’s false thesis is that superstar Swans player Goodes was forced out of the game in 2015 by racist crowds whipped up by racist media commentators like me.

Darling not only has torn a scab off an old wound at a time when Goodes was getting on with his life — he and his wife have just been blessed with a beautiful baby — but he has rewritten the essential injustice at the heart of this story, the actual reason crowds began booing Goodes in 2013 when they had left him alone previously, and when 71 other indigenous players were not booed.

MORE FROM MIRANDA DEVINE: Adam Goodes isn’t booed for the colour of his skin. He is booed for acting like a pillock

The incident where it all began was at a Collingwood match when Goodes, a 33-year-old elite sportsman, singled out and humiliated a powerless 13-year-old girl in the crowd he heard call him an “ape”.

This prepubescent child of a single mother on a disability pension was then frogmarched alone by stadium police past crowds who jeered her. She wept as she was questioned without a guardian in a closed room for two hours, until after midnight, while her worried but compliant grandmother, sat patiently outside.

The girl was a passionate Collingwood fan. She had no idea “ape” had racist connotations.

The grandmother then had to drive the child and her sister three hours home to their hardscrabble town in Gippsland.

What was supposed to be a special treat had turned into a nightmare.

The AFL recently introduced Behavioural Awareness Officers. Picture: Twitter

You could understand Goodes being stung by the word, but he knew the girl was young. He guessed 14, he said at the time.

The next day, at a press conference he uttered the immortal line that would spark a thousand headlines: “Racism had a face, and it was a 13-year-old girl”.

Darling glosses over the inflammatory impact of that statement by insisting that Goodes went on to say 28 times that “it’s not her fault”. But Goodes could have said that a million times. It doesn’t erase the fact that he had forever branded a powerless 13-year-old girl as the face of racism.

This was a story about power and class, not race. The power rested entirely with Goodes and the AFL. Yet elite preoccupation with identity politics meant that the real victim was further victimised because she was white. The mob called foul on that. Hence the booing.

MORE FROM RENDEZVIEW: Not even barracking is safe from tut-tutting wowsers

To this day, no one in the AFL cares about the girl, or her family, who I have interviewed at length over the years.

Collingwood boss Eddie McGuire, who got away with an undeniably racist comment about Goodes even promised them season tickets. But when I checked with the family a year later, the tickets had never come through. Mum Joanne wasn’t even surprised.

Darling was at pains to ask Goodes if he minded him raking over old coals before embarking on his film. But he didn’t bother asking the girl, who is now 19, and works at McDonalds.

When I asked him why he didn’t try to tell her side of the story, Darling said he didn’t think it would be “fair” to identify her.

“I just felt that was many years ago and as an 18-year-old girl I didn’t want to make her go through that again,” even though that’s exactly what his film does.

AFL Chief Executive Officer Gillon McLachlan is missing the point. Picture: AAP/Daniel Pockett

But it was AFL diversity guru Hosch during the Q&A session at Thursday’s screening, who put her finger on the real impact of Darling’s boring movie. It’s driven the AFL grandees to dare to dream that they can stop a crowd from booing.

“The big question that the film asks us to ponder in many respects [is] how can you stop people from booing,” said Hosch.

“It’s incredibly difficult, but I think the AFL could have acted more quickly … Definitely what the film has done is really raise the question what would you do if you had your time over, what if it happened again, and I think that question, well, we’ve had a big week of media coverage in relation to crowd behaviour in our game, so it’s definitely something we’re looking at and I think it’s a concern not just to the AFL but all the people who come to our game to enjoy it”.

A question came from the audience: “What could the AFL have done to stop the people from booing? Should they have had a round with no fans?”

Hah! No fans, no problems. No game either, but that’s the least of the AFL’s concerns these days. It prides itself on being Australia’s leading agent for progressive social change, and it abuses ancient fan allegiances to achieve that aim.

@mirandadevine