Eddie Betts reveals struggles with racist remarks during AFL career

Eddie Betts’ has revealed his private struggles with racism and how he blames himself for not doing more to help Adam Goodes.

You see it when he scores a goal, posts playtime with his five kids on Instagram, or just when he’s larking around at training with his Carlton Football Club teammates.

But Eddie Betts’ beaming smile is also the mask he wears when racism rears its ugly head and the indigenous football star tries to put on a brave face.

As he tells The BINGE Guide in one of his most candid interviews to date, the 34-year-old has spent years trying to smile through the pain of racial taunts from AFL fans who have targeted him and other Aboriginal players of the game.

Starring in a powerful new Amazon Prime Video documentary, Making Their Mark – which takes viewers inside the tumultuous 2020 season – Betts breaks down the effect racial attacks have had on him and why the code’s recent reckoning with its dark past has been a long time coming.

The lowest point of his 17-year career, he says, was the moment, in 2016, when a Port Adelaide fan threw a banana at him, while he played his heart out for the Adelaide Crows.

The 27-year-old woman was fined by police and counselled by the club, but Betts admits he still bears the emotional scars of being likened to a monkey and flinches as he talks about how it haunts him to this day.

“I‘d go do [coaching] clinics with the kids throughout Adelaide but little kids, little kids are innocent. They’d come up laughing ‘oh, you got a banana thrown at you hahahaha’ but it hurts, it really, really hurts.”

Eddie Betts during a Carlton Blues press conference in Melbourne. Picture: AAP

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So much so, he explains sadly: ‘I feel weird eating a banana. I feel weird picking up bananas at the shop because I think people are looking at me.”

Worse yet, the shame has crept into his young son’s playtime, tainted by the horrible slur.

“My son’s climbing up a tree and saying, ‘look, dad, look, I’m a little monkey,’ and I must admit that kind of grinds me a little bit. I don’t want to say ‘no, you’re not a little monkey,’ … but it grinds me deep down and it hurts that it upsets me.”

As the AFL examines its issues with racism, and clubs like Collingwood face up to their appalling treatment of indigenous players, Betts says he’s only found his voice since Sydney Swans hero and proud Adnyamathanha and Narungga man, Adam Goodes was booed out of the game.

“If it wasn’t for Adam Goodes and the way he stood up for what he believed in … he gave everyone else a voice,” Betts says.

“But to be honest, some kids are still scared to speak up because they don’t want what happened to Adam to happen to them.”

Carlton Football player, Eddie Betts. Picture: Jason Edwards

Betts is adamant “the AFL should have done more to help and protect Adam” and blames himself for not doing “more to help Adam.”

“I feel guilty about that, not doing more. But because of Adam, I do believe now I have a voice. His presence and what he’s done has made me stronger in what I believe in, and my voice needs to be heard throughout the AFL, throughout Australia in general … to stand up against racism, to make it a culturally safe spot for young Aboriginal kids to come and play.”

Betts strength was also tested last year, when all players were forced to leave their families and relocate to COVID-safe Queensland for much of the 2020 season.

While the ‘bubble’ spelled holiday for the younger, single players, family man Betts was terribly homesick living away from his then pregnant wife, Anna and their children, Billy, Lewis, Maggie and Alice [son Eddie Betts IV was born in December].

Born in Port Lincoln and raised in a large family in Kalgoorlie, Betts says he struggled with the quiet of a hotel room for weeks’ on end.

“Hectic was my lifestyle. Noise was my lifestyle. Chaos was my lifestyle. And it’s something that I’ve been brought up my whole life with, so it was tough.”

He adds: “If I knew it was going to be 13 weeks without seeing my family. I probably wouldn’t have gone, to be honest. We were told it was going to be four weeks and then we’d be coming back to Victoria.”

Instead, he was kept company by a camera crew which followed him and other AFL figures around for the gripping seven-part series — including GWS captain, Stephen Coniglio, West Coast Eagles star Nik Natanui and Richmond Tigers power trio of coach Damian Hardwick, president Peggy O’Neal and chief executive, Brendan Gale.

The intimate access meant the crew slept in the next room to Betts, who jokes: “I couldn’t snore without them knowing.”

But the successful execution of the season during a pandemic came with plenty of personal pain, Betts admits – including one tearful scene he had producers edit out of the program, after his pregnant wife was forced to abandon quarantine and his reunion with her and their children postponed.

Eddie Betts of the Adelaide Crows and his partner Anna Betts arrive at the 2019 Brownlow Medal ceremony. Picture: AAP

“I just broke down watching everyone else with the kids. I walked to a [hotel] toilet and I cried and cried. I was so upset. The CEO came and gave me a cuddle and said, you know, ‘we tried … hopefully we can try to get her up next time.’”

Betts says: “I sat in my room and I cried for five minutes. I was really, really sad. Then I ran into the coach’s wife, Hannah Teague. We’re pretty close and she’s pretty close with Anna. So she cried and that made me cry more.”

Fans and those new to the game will get a greater insight into the mental anguish players perform under and the sacrifices it took to stage the season, he says.

“It’s going to give people outside of that part of your life, an idea of what it’s like to be an AFL footballer, and the mental stress that we go through.”

Returning for what could be his final season with the Blues, Betts has overcome an off-season hamstring injury but expected to be fit to play in round one against the premiers Richmond on Thursday, March 18.

The four-time Goal of the Year winner is also enjoying his off-field advocacy role with the club, leading indigenous awareness programs within the community.

“I enjoy connecting with people and educating people, but I can only do so much,” Betts says. “[Clubs] need to start educating themselves as well, and want to do it. Not just tick a box. The [Carlton] footy club is improving and the AFL as an organisation is improving, but there’s still a lot to be learned.”

* Making Their Mark, streaming Friday on Amazon Prime Video

Originally published as Eddie Betts reveals struggles with racist remarks during AFL career