Eddie McGuire pays a price while Waleed Aly stays silent

There are hundreds of column inches published today about Eddie McGuire’s resignation as President of the Collingwood Football Club. Many of these will discuss his legacy to the club, and the critical moments that led to his resignation.

We all know the story. McGuire had commissioned an independent review of the club’s responses to racism. The report, Do Better, had been received by the club two months ago.

It was promised that the report would be made public in a new era of transparency and accountability, (the sorts of key words hammered into professional footballers by coaches these days).

Yet, under McGuire Collingwood chose to bury it, conceal its criticisms of the club’s culture, even from the AFL.

When it was leaked last week, McGuire held a press conference where he was almost exultant, declaring it a “historic and proud day.” The players from the AFL, AFLW and netball teams all signed a letter expressing their sincere apologies for the club’s racist culture, described in the report as systemic. McGuire had lost the players.

Lumumba during his time at Collingwood. Picture: Wayne Ludbey

In the end, it must be said, McGuire failed to listen. He failed to listen to a premiership player, Brazilian born of a Congolese father, Heritier Lumumba who had a story to tell of enduring casual racism around the club for years, of having to cop nicknames such as “Chimp” and “Slave” from teammates and club officials.

When Lumumba later spoke out against his club president, for his comments comparing Adam Goodes to King Kong, the premiership player was ostracised within the club, felt obliged to leave and eventually retired. At the time, Collingwood coach, Nathan Buckley accused Lumumba of throwing McGuire “under the bus.”

Afterwards, McGuire blamed prescription pain killers for his on air denigration of Goodes. I thought it was a matter of not operating heavy machinery. Who’d have known racism was a side effect of Panadeine Forte?

But there’s another story here. And it is worth telling because it reveals progressives, even the prominent ones who routinely renounce racism and perhaps having experienced it themselves, don’t listen much either.

When Heretier Lumumba first spoke out about his experience of racism at the club, Ten Network’s The Project, a skewed left current affairs and infotainment program that screens nightly to audiences a touch under a million strong across the country, decided to do some digging.

We should probably hesitate before entering the names Waleed Aly and Peter Helliar to the list of investigative journalistic duos topped by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein or locally, Bob Bottom and David Wilson.

Waleed Aly and Peter Helliar didn’t listen. They didn’t believe Lumumba. They suspected. They interrogated. They harangued. They took their cues from backgrounded gossip and innuendo provided by the club. The segment culminated in a Waleed Aly interview of Lumumba that lasted for an hour and a half but was cut back to a neat three minutes. Those present described the interview as where any sensible viewer would have formed the view that Lumumba had been put through a form of unnecessary torment but hoped the edited interview would be all right. It wasn’t.

A still image of the Waleed Aly-Heritier Lumumba interview.

We can’t watch that segment and that interview anymore as it was taken down by Network 10 without explanation yesterday.

Helliar offered a wholly inadequate apology to Lumumba on Twitter last week for his role in that appalling segment now utterly discredited. Alas, crickets with the occasional sound of a lone dog barking in the background from Waleed Aly. Other than that, silence. Not a sound. Not an apology or retraction. Nothing.

The Project’s Peter Hellier has apologised for his questioning of Lumumba.

One seminal moment in the history of racism in Australian sport was on a Saturday afternoon in April 1993 at Collingwood’s suburban home ground, Victoria Park, where Nicky Winmar lifted his St Kilda jumper pointed to his chest and announced himself black and proud of it.

It has almost been forgotten that McGuire’s predecessor, Allan McAllister, a week after that powerful photo of Winmar at Victoria Park was taken, said of indigenous footballers, “As long as they conduct themselves like white people, well, off the field, everyone will admire and respect them. As long as they conduct themselves like human beings, they will be all right.”

Progress has been made from those grim days under McGuire although obviously not enough.

Eddie McGuire, the Pope of Melbourne has gone and there is no white smoke coming from the chimney at the club’s Holden Centre HQ.

The difference between McGuire and Aly is McGuire accepted consequence. He had little choice, but he chose wisely and resigned.

It is time for Waleed Aly to accept consequence, too. He owes Heritier Lumumba an abject, sincere apology, no questions asked, or qualifications offered, on air at The Project in front of his audience, lest the rest of us start thinking more deeply at what kind of half-arsed infotainment dressed up as journalism he and a comedian were attempting in covering a complex story about racism in elite sport.