Play The Final Quarter in Adam Goodes’s boots

Adam Goodes celebrates a goal during his remarkable career, which ended with him booed out of the game. Picture: Phil Hillyard

The Sydney Swans are not last, they are merely close enough to last on the ladder right now, but honestly, who cares?

Okay, we care a bit.

Winning — Ash Barty, Dylan Alcott, the Swans themselves, post-siren goal, you little beauties, this weekend — is obviously great but it’s not everything.

Sportsmanship, that’s what matters, and so to the premiere of the Adam Goodes movie, The Final Quarter, in Sydney on Friday night.

Every seat at the State Theatre was taken. Ushers with torches were running around, trying to squeeze one last person in here, one last person in there. The Swans players were all in attendance; so, too, the coach, John Longmire; and the big brass from the AFL, milling uncomfortably, but where was Goodes?

Nowhere. And some people were worried. Is he doing okay?

Relax. Yes, he’s doing okay, he’s better than okay, actually.

Goodes and his wife, Natalie, were expecting this past weekend, which you can take to mean that he’s put his life back together. He’s moving forward.

It behooves the rest of us to look back.

The Final Quarter, about the racial vilification endured by Goodes from 2015 until his retirement in 2017, is — to use a football term — bloody hard to watch.

How hard? AFL executives saw it last Thursday and on the same day released a complete, unreserved apology for the sustained racism Goodes experienced at his place of work.

Shame, that’s what you feel when you watch it. Shame that any man should for long have been asked to endure this ordeal, with precious little in the way of community support.

There’s no narrator. All the footage is archival. Everything you’re seeing is exactly what happened: Goodes is an ape, a chimpanzee! He could play the role of King Kong, ha ha!

In May of 2015, Goodes does a celebratory war dance on the field, all ebullience and brio.

But, oh no. The commentators didn’t like it.

Taking your football shirt off; running around with stretched fabric over your face; doing the lightening bolt; climbing into the stands at Wimbledon, that’s all okay.

A tribal dance in the face of booing?

Provocative. Divisive.

Now the crowds begin to boo in earnest, and Goodes tries gamely to deal with it.

“It can be a sign of respect,” he says, hopefully. “They know you’re a dangerous player.”

They say he was booed, but hearing it again, the hatred, the derision, every time he goes near the ball, what must it have been to experience?

Soon his quiet dignity begins to crumble.

Over the course of the film, Goodes starts to look different. His expression grows haunted. He’s not walking as tall.

The club is doing all it can: during the I Stand With Adam round in August 2015, Swans supporters stood and cheered for him at the 7thminute in the third quarter (he’s No. 37) and it gets you all tingly, to see so many people standing up for one man, under siege.

But, the kicker: he’s not there. He’s already gone from the game, having taken time out to deal with the mental strain.

He’ll soon retire, and he won’t take part in the traditional drive-around for retiring players, ahead of the Grand Final.

You’ve probably already heard that media figures Eddie McGuire and Sam Newman come out of this film badly.

By contrast, Caroline Wilson, Waleed Aly and Stan Grant are superb.

Grant in particular does his best to say to people: “Yes, we get it. You don’t think it’s racist to boo him every time he goes near the ball. You think you’re going him for staging, and carrying on like a pork chop.”

The film is for you.

Maybe your mind won’t be changed, but go with it open. Play a quarter in his boots.

The Final Quarter will be shown on free-to-air TV later in the year. In the meantime, it’s a Sydney Festival sell-out, with every seat full, but only until the final curtain falls, when it’s every seat empty, as every person rises to give Goodes the standing ovation he did not get, but absolutely deserved, when he retired a champion.

Caroline Overington is a Sydney Swans ambassador