Hawthorn racism review: Eddie Betts says shocking allegations are not surprising
Eddie Betts “wasn’t surprised” by the disturbing historical allegations at the Hawks – he knows one of the players personally. This is his heartbreaking take.
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Eddie Betts has called on all AFL clubs to conduct their own external reviews into the treatment of Indigenous players, saying he “wasn’t surprised” by disturbing allegations raised in a Hawthorn review into its recent history involving First Nations players.
Praising the players involved in the review for their bravery in speaking up, Betts said “his heart went out” to the players involved before declaring “when is it going to stop?”.
Betts said the incidents could happen “at any football club”.
“It was a tough read, reading that today, but I wasn’t surprised, to be honest,” Betts said on AFL 360.
“As Aboriginal people, we are not surprised. We face these issues in many systems, the education system, the justice system, the health system, and it always comes back to what I have been preaching a lot, and that is education.
“We spoke about it before, about the Indigenous liaison officers, having those people at the footy club now can make those spaces a lot safer for these young Aboriginal kids.
“My heart goes out to those players for being brave, for speaking and for their families as well. But it was really hard.
“But this could happen at any club. If Shaun Burgoyne was at that football club and it slipped under the table then, as a leader and listening to him speak, he was very devastated that these boys did not speak to him. I don’t know if they were told not to speak to him or not.
“But if that was the case, this could happen at any football club. I think that every football club should do a review like this. Every football club should come out and do an external review, contact the Indigenous players, the past Indigenous players and see how that footy club was.
“It was sad to read because we want this industry to be safe for these young Aboriginal kids.”
Betts revealed he knew one of the players who raised the Hawthorn allegations and would reach out to him to say “thank you” for his bravery in speaking up.
“I know one of them, which I will reach out to as well,” Betts said.
“I will reach out to him. I am just going to tell him how brave he was and, ‘Thank you for speaking up and bringing this awareness to everybody’ because if he hadn’t spoken up we wouldn’t be going through this and people need to be educated.
Betts said group of senior Indigenous players had also been in touch with McLachlan to share their feelings on the allegations.
“As a group (we got in touch) and we just spoke about how we felt,” Betts said.
“It was more so how we felt and, ‘How do we move forward and where to from here?’.
Betts described allegations that a player was told he and his partner should terminate a pregnancy as “really, really sad to read”.
The former Carlton and Adelaide star said he would always believe the word of “the players and the brothers”.
“I guess people are going to believe what they are going to believe,” Betts said.
“I am always going to believe the players and the brothers.
“It keeps happening. We grew up with this stuff. It’s not just the AFL.”
Asked how the AFL would move forward from these latest allegations, Betts said he was unsure.
He said ongoing incidents of racism left him feeling like he “did not belong here in Australia”.
“I don’t know because we keep coming back to this,” Betts said
“We keep finding ourselves talking about it, you keep hearing me on this show, preaching my heart out. When is it going to stop? When are we going to grow up, when are we going to learn, when are we going to educate ourselves?”
Betts also revealed he was kicked out of a public pool after an elderly white couple complained he was making their grandchild “uncomfortable”.
Speaking on AFL 360 in the wake of the Hawthorn racism scandal, Betts said the encounter made him feel “Iike I don’t belong”.
“This year alone, I was at a pool and the lifeguard came up to me and told me I needed to get out of the pool,” Betts said.
The former Carlton and Adelaide star said he was approached while holding his baby and with his twin daughters nearby.
“I found out that (an) old white elderly couple told the lifeguard to tell me to get out of the pool because I was making their grandchild uncomfortable,” he said.
“That just made me feel like I don’t belong,” Betts said.
Betts’ comments came as four-time Hawthorn premiership player Jordan Lewis said it was “devastating” to read the bombshell allegations, but said other players were “not privy” to any of the incidents or conversations.
“I think the overall emotion is devastation,” Lewis said.
“Having been involved at that football club and understanding the culture and the Indigenous players that were there and the love and care that we showed from a playing group point of view, then to realise they had these experiences that we were not sheltered from, but we weren’t privy to these conversations.
“I can honestly say, hand on heart, that when it came out this morning and you ring around ex-teammates and Indigenous teammates to see if they had known anything about it and, to a man, no one ever heard of anything like this happening in our time there.
“The alleged conversations that have happened to those individuals, we as a playing group were never privy to those or ever passed on any information that we needed to have input in.
“It’s clearly disturbing if these allegations are true and they’ve happened to these individuals when it should have been a really safe environment.”
‘Sickened’: Hawthorn coach shocked by allegations
Shocked Hawthorn coach Sam Mitchell has vowed to ensure his club is “the absolute best” and most inclusive organisation after disturbing historical allegations left him feeling as if his heart was “torn into pieces” for the affected First Nations footballers and their families.
Mitchell’s former Hawks teammate Shaun Burgoyne is also shocked, while Hawthorn’s AFLW coach Bec Goddard has described the reports as “sickening”.
An emotional Burgoyne said he could barely believe some of the allegations made about his former footy club, saying he and Mitchell had no idea about the suggestions until the past 24 hours.
Young Indigenous players were separated from their partners and were pressured to terminate a pregnancy by key Hawks officials including then-senior coach Alastair Clarkson, according to allegations reported by the ABC.
The ABC report claims that an external review commissioned by the Hawks into its recent history involving First Nations players has revealed shocking allegations involving multiple players, one of whom it is claimed had made several attempts on his own life in the aftermath.
“It’s very confronting … I have no knowledge of those things happening,” Burgoyne said at the Rule Prostate Cancer event on Wednesday.
“I have no knowledge of this, it’s the first I’ve heard of it in the last 24 hours.”
Mitchell said he had been asked to take part in the report, but stressed he couldn’t believe allegations and feels deeply for those affected.
“I’m torn in a thousand different directions,” he said.
“I was upset … disturbed is an accurate description … I spoke to Shaun (about it) , we didn’t know anything like that was happening. It is enormously troubling.”
Goddard shared her feelings on social media on Wednesday.
“The allegations are sickening and demonstrate how far from great our game can too often be,” the AFLW premiership coach wrote.
“I acknowledge the unbelievable courage of those who were able to tell their story.”
Former Hawthorn chief executive Stuart Fox said the claims were upsetting.
Fox is the chief executive of the Melbourne Cricket Club.
“I have been shocked and saddened to learn about the allegations outlined in Hawthorn’s report into past events at the football club,” Fox said.
“These allegations are deeply troubling and I fully endorse the AFL’s independent investigation.”
Meanwhile, former Hawthorn captain Luke Hodge has been left deeply “shocked” and “uncomfortable” by the allegations of “disturbing historical allegations” involving the experiences of multiple First Nations players and their partners during the club’s highly-successful premiership era.
Responding to an ABC report into an external review the Hawks commissioned on its recent history involving its Indigenous players, Hodge said the extent of the allegations left him feeling that their team success was “irrelevant” compared to the pain suffered by individuals.
“What we went through as a group, we had a lot of success over the years, but at this stage, that’s irrelevant because what young blokes were told or put through,” Hodge said on SEN.
“When you get drafted to a football club, it is supposed to be an exciting time … it should be that ‘my life has changed, I now have a pathway for the next 10 years hopefully’. But that’s not what happened with these young kids.
“Your first thoughts go to the players who went through it, the partners and their families who went through it. It doesn’t matter what your job is, it is always family first, and they are the people you need to look after.”
HAWTHORN INSIST PLAYERS ‘FEEL SAFE’ AMID SICKENING CLAIMS
Hawthorn CEO Justin Reeves and vice president Peter Nankivell have spoken in the wake of damning and sickening allegations of abuse, trauma and baby loss.
Reeves said the club would continue to offer support to those affected, insisted players felt safe and refused to admit that Hawthorn had a culture problem.
“I think Australia has a culture problem historically,” Reeves said. “I think like all of us, we focus on every day being better and building a great environment for our club.
“I feel confident from the report as well that currently our players feel culturally safe, but like so many institutions, I think we have to face our history and our past and we have to act responsibly and we have to cooperate and move forward from that.”
Reeves said club had spoken to a wide ranging group of people and that the findings had come as a surprise to them all.
He added that they had not been able to discuss the allegations with anyone directly impacted.
“We spoke to a really wide range of people who were at the club at that time and it has been a surprise to everyone that I’ve spoken to, the findings of that report.”
AFL WILL INVESTIGATE
The AFL has confirmed it will commission an independent, externally-run investigation into damning allegations surrounding Hawthorn and key football figures.
League chief executive Gillon McLachlan said that he had not spoken directly with current senior coaches Alastair Clarkson and Chris Fagan - who are at the centre of explosive allegations relating to their time at Hawthorn - in the wake of the reports but said that he expected their immediate fate at their clubs to be settled today.
He said AFL commission member Andrew Newbold, who was president of Hawthorn for the period during which the allegations have been levelled, would not be stood down pending the result of the investigation.
“People’s positions on this will become clear over the course of the day,” he said.
“That will play out over the course of the day.”
McLachlan announced that a four-person panel, led by an eminent Kings Counsel, would be confirmed in the next 24 hours.
“It’s hard to find more serious allegations,” he said.
It has been alleged that young First Nations players had been separated from their partners and one player and their partner even encouraged to terminate a pregnancy.
It is alleged that one player had since made several attempts on their life.
McLachlan acknowledged the “hurt, anger and grief” of those involved that had shared their stories, and dedicated the AFL’s priority to their support.
“We need to run a proper investigation to get to the bottom of it - and this is important - out of respect for those making the allegations, and out of respect for those being accused,” he said.
“We need to provide natural justice and allow that process to go on, but we will seek to have that panel in place as quickly as possible and work with the Hawthorn Football Club, consult with who prepared the report and the players and partners involved to engage with them to expedite it and not extend the trauma.”
McLachlan - who received the report last week and has read it in full - described the claims included as “distressing” and “harrowing stories”.
He also said there had been new detail in today’s ABC report that had not been in the report commissioned by Hawthorn.
“Obviously it’s a tough read,” he said, but said it was a confidential report that it had been intended would stay that way.
“We don’t publicly disclose any investigations until they’re complete.”
The league’s general manager of inclusion and social policy Tanya Hosch said it was “hard to find the words” to describe how she felt reading the allegations and that “the country has a bigger problem” with indigenous issues.
“I don’t think we’re immune to that … we will definitely think in broader scope when the time is right, but we’ve got a really urgent, pressing issue right here and now which has to take absolute priority,” she said.
“Of course we’re thinking about the broader issues.”
Victorian Minister for Sport Steve Dimopoulos said he had spoken with AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan in the wake of the reports, which he described as “extraordinarily serious allegations”.
“I feel for everybody involved,” Dimopoulos said.
“I’ve spoken to the AFL and they will investigate them thoroughly and comprehensively, and that’s exactly what should happen - both Hawthorn and the AFL.”
Dimopoulos stopped short of calling for an independent review.
“I’m not going to tell the AFL how to manage its affairs, other than to say they are extraordinarily serious allegations … I am pleased that (McLachlan) clearly has stated they are serious,” he said.
“They will investigate as they see appropriate with all the stakeholders the AFL will meet.”
McLachlan and the league’s general manager of policy and social inclusion Tanya Hosch will address the media shortly.
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