Top indigenous figure Mick Gooda slams Gill McLachlan’s leadership during Adam Goodes racism row

Just days after the AFL issued an apology to Swans legend Adam Goodes, a senior indigenous leader says that’s not enough — and ‘heads should roll’ over the league’s failure to act sooner.

Former Swan Adam Goodes is the focus of a documentary titled The Final Quarter, which tells the story of the final three years of the dual brownlow medallist’s career. Picture. Phil Hillyard

A senior indigenous leader says Gillon McLachlan should be removed as AFL boss because of his failings in the Adam Goodes racism row.

Mick Gooda, who led an AFL contingent invited to address the United Nations Human Rights Council in 2011, said last week’s belated apology to the dual Brownlow medallist “isn’t enough”.

“I had a friend on the AFL commission who told me at the time that people were blaming Adam for it — that he had brought it on himself,” Gooda told the Herald Sun.

“They were saying exactly what the rednecks were saying.

“The AFL lost me.”

Adam Goodes ended his career with a sour taste in his mouth. pic. Phil Hillyard

The retired Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner said the AFL had “lost its way” in fighting racism after the exit of chief executive Andrew Demetriou.

A social media post from Gooda on Saturday declaring “heads should roll and give someone who cares a go” was liked and retweeted by Adelaide Crows champion Andrew McLeod.

There was a time when the AFL led the world in taking on racism in sport. And here we are, the treatment of Adam Goodes laid bare for all to see. The leadership failed Adam and an apology is not enough, heads should roll and give someone who cares a go.

— Mick Gooda (@MickGooda) June 8, 2019

“Where has Gillon McLachlan been here? What, put a bloody apology in an annual report six months later? That’s how important they thought it was,” Gooda said.

“I’m as angry today as I was then.

“I just don’t think an apology is enough. If they want to get back to where they were, just scrub the leadership and start again.

“They all just sat back and let it happen.”

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Gooda, who led the Royal Commission into the protection and detention of children in the Northern Territory, said the league commission and its senior executive failed the leadership test when Goodes was booed out of the game in 2015.

“They could have done something really profound, but they didn’t do anything,” Gooda said.

“They were like rabbits in the headlights.

“They didn’t know how to deal with it. They never called everyone together to say, ‘Well what do we do here?’

“That’s what they were thinking at the time — that he brought it on himself.

“(Former AFL commission chairman) Mike Fitzpatrick was a bloody Rhodes Scholar, that tells you something.

Behind the scenes of the Adam Goodes documentary, The Australian Dream.

“It’s a slippery slide, we’re on it and I don’t see any end to it, really.”

Asked to describe McLachlan’s performance during the Goodes crisis, Gooda said: “P*** weak, to be quite honest.

“My expectation was high — (thinking) ‘they’re going to do something, they’re going to do something’ — but, nup, nothing.”

Gooda said Demetriou had shown leadership when he stood alongside Goodes at a press conference in May 2013, the morning after he was called an “ape” by a 13-year-old girl during game at the MCG.

“When you are the subject of racism and you see someone from the institution taking a stand, it is so great,” he said. “It inspires you.

Mick Gooda says AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan and AFL Chairman Mike Fitzpatrick failed Adam Goodes. Picture: Kylie Else

“They set that standard and then they didn’t meet it (in 2015). That’s so disappointing.

“The champion couldn’t even do his final lap of honour at the Grand Final.

“In 2001, Andrew McLeod, (league staffer) Jason Mifsud and I went to the UN in Geneva and presented for the AFL, because I actually believed in them at that time.

“Back then they actually were leading the world on fighting racism. People like Mick Malthouse, Kevin Sheedy and Terry Wallace had come out and said, ‘We won’t tolerate it in our teams’.

“We did lead the world, and that’s what we said that day at the UN, but then we lost our way.

“When they asked me to do it I said, ‘Of course I will’, but now here we are.”

The Herald Sun has sought comment from the AFL.