Heritier Lumumba reveals depth of his feud with Nathan Buckley and drops a pornographic bombshell in Pies dossier

Heritier Lumumba has made explosive new claims of misconduct at Collingwood including the use of pornographic images and inappropriate comments by Pies bosses.

Heritier Lumumba as a Collingwood player in 2014.

The depth of Heritier Lumumba’s long-running feud with former coach Nathan Buckley is laid bare in an extensive dossier he wanted to present to Collingwood in a now derailed truth-telling process.

Lumumba’s camp has released sections of the document that detail a series of misconduct claims against club figures including the use of a pornographic image in a 2014 team meeting by an assistant coach.

A sexually inappropriate comment made by former Collingwood boss Gary Pert in front of players’ wives and partners during a night out in Sydney in 2011 was another example he cited of how “specific coaches and executives acted as though they were beyond reproach” in his time at the club.

Lumumba had planned to present the dossier to Collingwood as part of the ‘Do Better’ reconciliation process.

READ THE FULL, EXPLOSIVE DOSSIER HERE

Nathan Buckley and Heritier Lumumba.

The document reveals the extent of the 2010 premiership player’s ongoing dispute with Buckley.

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

“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.

“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.”

Buckley yesterday declined to comment on Lumumba’s version of events.

MEDIATION SESSIONS

The dossier details how Buckley held an eight-hour mediation session with Lumumba in 2013 after their relationship had broken down in the months after Eddie McGuire’s infamous King Kong gaffe.

Lumumba accuses Buckley of branding him as being too sensitive.

“The mediator was shocked by what I was saying but Buckley was adamant that I was the problem – I had ‘gone rogue,’ ‘ flown off the handle’ and ‘thrown (him) McGuire under the bus’,” he says.

“I agreed to stay at the club but Buckley informed me I was being removed from the leadership group.”

Lumumba says he started his career with Buckley and learned “so much” from the captain about reaching an elite level and being held to the “highest standards”, but says the goal posts shifted when it came to cultural standards.

“For as long as I’ve known him, he’s always hung his hat on being honest and having integrity, which is why I’ve found his responses to the club’s cultural issues to be so disingenuous,” Lumumba says.

Lumumba insists Buckley knew the nickname ‘Chimp’ was being used at the club, despite his denials at a 2017 press conference.

He claims Buckley discussed the use of the nickname with him in an eight-hour mediation in 2013.

“Nathan Buckley has been strategically laundering his reputation,” Lumumba says.

“Most recently on a reality TV show, he claimed that he wished he showed me more support when I spoke up about McGuire.

“The fact is, from that point onwards, he played a major role in punishing me for speaking up and ultimately pushing me out of the club.”

Lumumba adds: “This man was instrumental in punishing and pushing a black player out of the club for speaking out about racism.”

Gary Pert and Eddie McGuire are included in Lumumba’s dossier.

TOXIC CULTURE

On the 2011 Pert incident, Lumumba claims the CEO got “heavily intoxicated” in Sydney and made “inappropriate comments” in front of players’ wives and partners that “referenced their sex lives, which made the partners uncomfortable”.

“The players whose partners were present were furious. It was a major distraction and no one, not even coaches that knew, were prepared to confront Pert about it,” Lumumba says.

“As someone who was voted into the leadership group, I felt that I didn’t have a choice but to go to his office and ask that he address the issue with the playing group.

“I told him that the players were regularly held to account for their actions and behaviours (myself included) from coaches to executives, which is why it was important that there was consistency across the board.

“Eventually, there was a meeting called where he apologised to the playing group for his actions. I could always feel the tension between us for the remainder of the time I was at the club, which I believe was instrumental in shaping the club’s policy towards me.”

Pert told News Corp Lumumba’s account of events was inaccurate and that the alleged incident was addressed 11 years ago and resolved.

He agreed a light-hearted conversation took place with a small group of player partners regarding the inability for partners to stay at the club hotel on interstate trips the night before a game.

Following Lumumba raising concerns about the conversation, Pert says he spoke directly to several players to provide context and an accurate account of events. He says he contacted the partners directly involved in the conversation, who confirmed there was no issue and expressed their embarrassment at the conversation having been escalated.

BUCKS’ ‘PARANOIA’

Lumumba says in 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,” he says.

“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.

“One day in 2014 when I arrived at the club, a staff member approached me about a homophobic poster that was on the notice board, that the staff member said was affecting his wellbeing.

Nathan Buckley declined to comment on the allegations.

“As a leader I felt that it was my duty to represent and support him, firstly by taking it down, then taking it further to the leadership of the club.

“When I raised it with Buckley privately, by showing him what was on the wall, we clashed heavily because of his rigid refusal to take any action. He basically ended up saying that I was the problem.

“I was being excluded on many levels including from a major team meeting, while being prohibited from doing media appearances.

“It’s crazy, because individuals who would be suffering would come to me to protect them.

“It was punishment for having an unwavering commitment to upholding the club’s values, values Buckley and Collingwood always publicly claimed they had.

“On one unforgettable occasion, he even felt compelled to tell me that I was walking incorrectly.

“He later accused me of trying to bully and intimidate him. At the heart of it, he was showing me how fragile he really was; a white man troubled by how a black man moves and walks.

“Perceiving black peoples’ presence as a threat is unfortunately something that is common in a world where black people get killed for simply walking the ‘wrong’ way. This was around the same time he admitted he felt I was judging him for his intelligence.

“I tried my best to explain to him that he was disrespecting me and my culture, but he literally refused to listen to me and said that my culture was not relevant to what was happening.

“In my final meeting with the club, that was also attended by Derek Hine and Rodney Eade, Buckley told me that I threw McGuire ‘under the bus’.

“This was what he cited as an example for why they believed I didn’t put the club’s ‘best interests’ first.”

Heritier Lumumba said he felt disrespected by senior members of the Collingwood Football Club.

HOW EDDIE REACTED

Lumumba says he caught up with McGuire in the days before he was traded out of Collingwood.

“I told him about the ‘Chimp’ nickname and everything that had happened since the King Kong incident,” he says.

“Eddie has claimed he ‘never heard’ the nickname as a way of avoiding the topic, but he definitely knew about it directly from me.”

He says he also spoke to another club director “about what had happened” in late 2014.

“I met him at his home and told him the exact same things that I told McGuire, and he was completely indifferent to it,” he says.

Lumumba says he heard nothing from the board member until seven years later when the pair came together on a Zoom call with club chiefs early in 2021.

“He claimed not to have known about racism at the club at which point I checked him and reminded him that I had laid out the entire history to him in person at his house, which he was unable to deny,” he says.

“When I confronted him about taking responsibility for the club’s failings, he became defensive and spoke at length about his philanthropy as though it was a shield he was hiding behind.”

When asked for comment, the then club director said his recollection of the meeting with Lumumba was “vastly different from mine”.

“I strongly object to his inference that I knew about racism at the club at that time and did nothing,” he said.

Lumumba last week revealed he had withdrawn from formal talks with the club, declaring that the club “cannot be trusted to pursue genuine reconciliation with its past”.