‘Under the bus’: Heritier Lumumba shares leaked audio of Nathan Buckley meeting

Heritier Lumumba has leaked audio of a private meeting with former Collingwood coach Nathan Buckley that was recorded back in 2014.

Former Collingwood defender Heritier Lumumba has leaked audio of a meeting with Nathan Buckley from 2014 where the ex-Magpies coach accuses him of throwing club President Eddie McGuire “under the bus”.

On Monday, Buckley claimed that Lumumba’s version of events surrounding his experiences at the club was “not the truth that I know to be true,” prompting the 2010 All-Australian to post a lengthy response to social media.

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The audio, which comes from Lumumba’s final tumultuous year with Collingwood, was shared to his Twitter account on Tuesday afternoon, and verifies the 35-year-old’s claim that Buckley shamed him for condemning McGuire’s infamous King Kong gaffe.

In the clip, Buckley says to Lumumba: “You threw him under the bus. You threw him under the bus, mate.”

Lumumba intervenes: “I didn’t throw him under the bus, and we can’t go through that again.

“This is part of my issue, because you still believe that, and that’s what hurts me so much Bucks, and I know you’ve carried it this whole time.”

Buckley responds: “What the whole thing comes back to is, do you actually think about the best interests of the football club?

“You’ve become a bit of a rogue and you might call it leadership but you’ve basically gone on your own, not tangents, but on your own crusades at times.”

This is incredibly shocking - being labelled as going 'rogue' for speaking up. The audio is damning. https://t.co/dk8G4ZInEs

— Lachlan McKirdy (@LMcKirdy7) May 10, 2022

The 49-year-old immediately replied to Lumumba’s post on Twitter: “Heritier, I offer you the opportunity to put a full and uncut version of our conversations on public record so as to provide context to our conversations and the support that was provided to you above and beyond that which could be reasonably expected in the circumstances.”

Heritier, I offer you the opportunity to put a full and uncut version of our conversations on public record so as to provide context to our conversations and the support that was provided to you above and beyond that which could be reasonably expected in the circumstances.

— Nathan Buckley (@ncb_cfc) May 10, 2022

The audio leak comes after Lumumba levelled a series of new allegations of misconduct at his former club, including the use of a pornographic image in a 2014 team meeting by an assistant coach.

“An assistant coach showed a pornographic image during a team meeting to emphasise a point that he was making,” Lumumba said in the dossier given to The Herald Sun.

“One of the team rules was to ‘come forward’, so he showed an image of a group of about five or more men ejaculating on a woman’s face with the words ‘come forward’ as a caption.

“Nathan Buckley was the head coach and seemed unfazed by it all.”

Lumumba also claimed former chief executive Gary Pert made sexually inappropriate comments in front of players’ wives and partners during a night out in 2011.

He demanded an apology and Pert was forced to apologise to the players but Lumumba said he felt targeted afterwards.

The document also revealed the extent of his ongoing dispute with Buckley, claiming that during his final year at Collingwood, Buckley “became increasingly paranoid about me”.

“In team meetings I would constantly catch him staring at me, and even when he was speaking in front of the group he would consistently glance down at me,” Lumumba wrote.

“It became too much for me, so I confronted him about it privately. He claimed that he felt I was judging him for his intelligence, and that I was demanding too much from the club.

“When it came to the culture of the club he became hyper defensive about being held to the standards and values he was supposed to be leading.”

Nathan Buckley, coach of the Magpies, with Heritier Lumumba. Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images

Lumumba has spoken out repeatedly over an alleged racist culture he says existed at Collingwood during his time with the club. He says there was a culture of “racist jokes” and alleges he was referred to as “Chimp” by teammates.

He originally planned to present his dossier to Collingwood as part of the reconciliation process following the Do Better racism report, which eventually led to McGuire’s resignation as Magpies president.

But that hasn’t happened after Lumumba, Leon Davis and Andrew Krakouer formally severed ties completely with the club last month over its handling of allegations of racism.

Buckley responded to Lumumba’s claims on radio on Monday morning on SEN: “I’m not going to be drawn into detail and I’m not going to say that Heritier’s right here, wrong here because that is his perspective of the truth.

“But there are other versions of the truth that are a long way away from the way that he perceives it.

“Mine is very different from what he presents, but the context becomes important and the whole idea of the process is to have open dialogue, respectful dialogue so that you can actually move forward in a positive way.

“It seems that Heritier doesn’t really want to move forward unless, I don’t know, heads need to roll. I don’t know exactly what he’s looking for or what his requirements are to feel like he has been heard.

“He has been apologised to – I’ve apologised to him; the club has apologised to him … for the environment that he’s been in – and not just Heritier – but the other Indigenous players that have come through.

“I haven’t been perfect as a leader. I haven’t been perfect as a person.

“I consciously thought of this – I put my head on the pillow last night and I slept well because I know that I have owned my imperfections and I’ve owned the things that I’m responsible for.

“My conscience is clear in that regard – it doesn’t mean I’ve been perfect, it doesn’t mean I couldn’t have done things better – but I’m open-minded to continue to learn and I think the club is as well.”

Nathan Buckley speaks with Heritier Lumumba of the Magpies. Photo by Robert Prezioso/Getty Images

Heritier Lumumba’s full statement

“I’ve given Nathan Buckley many years to grow and hopefully tell the truth,” he tweeted.

“Unfortunately, he has used his platform and considerable profile to discredit me, including making insinuations about my mental health and being deliberately misleading about the past.

“My claims about Buckley have always been consistent: That he was actively aware of serious cultural problems at Collingwood, and that he was instrumental in punishing me and pushing me out of the Club when I spoke up about these issues at all levels of CFC.

“The highest profile instance of Buckley undermining me was a 2017 press conference where he denied any knowledge of the racist nickname ‘chimp’ which I was subjected to at the Club. He also suggested I was mentally unstable.

“Here you can hear me telling Buckley how I was ostracised for speaking out about Eddie McGuire‘s racist comments about Adam Goodes – and Buckley responding by accusing me of going ’rogue’ and throwing McGuire ’under the bus.’ This was recorded in 2014 just before I was traded.

“This was Buckley‘s attitude in 2014 when I simply asked for people’s basic human & workplace rights to be protected. In 2020, the Do Better report proved that CFC had still failed to meet the minimum legal requirements for human rights protection in a workplace.

“Many people have asked what I want. For the past 15 months, I‘ve been in dialogue with CFC, open to finding a way forward. I did this in good faith despite the Club’s history because I believed in the possibility of a process of healing and improvement.

“The process was led by the same legal team that had attempted to suppress the release of the Do Better Report. I found the conduct of CFC to be misleading and manipulative, concerned with damage control rather than anything in the spirit of genuine reconciliation.

“CFC‘s lawyers’ disgraceful behaviour and disrespect towards independent First Nations experts in a meeting – which led to several heated exchanges between them – led to the final breakdown of all dialogue.

“Buckley can talk all he likes about ‘multiple truths.’ I’ve always presented facts. Everything I’ve said to date is accurate because it’s based on the multitude of recordings I have accumulated over the past 10 years to protect myself, my reputation, and my legal interests.

“The AFL and CFC‘s sponsors cannot simply keep their heads in the sand. When clubs are incapable of dealing with serious systemic and cultural issues, organisations that fund them and profit from them must also bear responsibility.”