Indigenous Round should focus more on bright side

Rabbitoh Cody Walker dives over to score against St George Illawarra as the NRL’s Indigenous Round got under way at Jubilee Stadium. Picture: Phil Hillyard

I believe things are back-to-front with the NRL’s Indigenous Round. I don’t believe this is the week to be highlighting racism. That’s for the other 51 weeks of the year. For every minute of every hour of every day of every one of those weeks.

I believe Indigenous Round is the time for an earnest celebration of Aboriginal input, otherwise the message gets so mixed that it is lost altogether.

It’s a week to rapturously applaud Arthur Beetson and Chicka Ferguson and Gorden Tallis and Matt Bowen and Preston Campbell and Latrell Mitchell and Johnathan Thurston and Mal Meninga and Laurie Daley and Greg Inglis and the fact rugby league welcomes, with open arms, and singing hearts, every Indigenous athlete who lights the joint up with flair or grunt or a bit of both.

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The NRL is no hotbed of racist hate, as far as I can tell. No one turns a blind eye to bigotry. Awareness has never been greater. The first to defend Indigenous players in all things regarding race are their non-Indigenous teammates. In this, league can be held up to society as an example of acceptance and understanding.

South Sydney’s Latrell Mitchell wore an Indigenous-design boots for the Rabbitohs’ Indigenous Round match against the Dragons on Thursday night. Picture: Phil Hillyard

I appreciate the difficulty in walking in another man’s shoes. But if I was an Aboriginal athlete, there’s no place I’d rather be than the NRL. And yet the build-up to this year’s Indigenous Round feels the same as last year’s and the year before that and the year before that. Negative. Aboriginal players revealing they’ve been subjected to deeply offensive insults as juniors, and then trolled by Twitter idiots who post things like a photo of a jerry can and comments about Mitchell perhaps wanting to see the picture of his best mate.

To completely and totally and utterly stop racism from league, sport, society, we’re going to have to wipe all the idiots off the face of the Earth, which is a task beyond even Peter “Perfect” V’landys, although he may like to give it a go.

Aboriginal players are embraced wholly, completely, totally by rugby league. The question of booing them is a curly one; it is one I have no answer to. If Mitchell is razzed, for instance, will the assumption be that it’s because of the colour of his skin? That is Adam Goodes all over again?

Perhaps if Mitchell is hounded during a game by supporters of another club, it’s merely because he’s viewed like New South Welsh persons have viewed Wally Lewis in State of Origin. As the villain. The threat. The danger man. As the bloke who has to cop it because you just can’t cop him as an opposition footballer.

Which is different from racism, the essence of club sport and league tribalism. Then again, what if racists have an excuse to shout him down and then wriggle free of their prejudices by saying, I just don’t like him as a player? Again, I have no answer.

If Lewis was Aboriginal, in this day and age, would his Origin treatment be acceptable? Tallis, too, has been hissed at during Origin. The baying mob have not been viewed as racists, just footy heads revelling in giving it to a superstar in the other team’s colours.

Mitchell cops it on Twitter. Twitter is full of halfwits. They receive a commentary platform they have done nothing to earn. How can Mitchell deal with it? By retweeting every vile comment he receives, by setting it free, by sending it to the rest of us, and therefore sharing the load. As simple as that.

He can ease his anger and frustration by displaying it to the whole league world and instantly seeing that thousands of people will e-stand with him. It will empower him, alienating the dopes who target him.

It’s what Eddie Betts has done in the AFL, naming and shaming the culprits, making sure we’re aware of their existence.

Trolls go awfully quiet, awfully quickly, when they fear being identified, pathetic in their cowardice, less likely to do it again.

The complication on game day is giving a good old-fashioned razzing to a player who just so happens to be aboriginal. I like the Newcastle Knights when they’re not pissing off Adam O’Brien and their rain-soaked fans by playing like entitled princesses.

When the Knights play the Rabbitohs, I wouldn’t mind sitting up on the hill and when Mitchell makes a run, calling out something like, ‘Hammer him!’ Nothing to do with racism. Not remotely. Everything to do with the fact that if the Knights don’t in fact hammer him, he may score four tries and kick 12 goals and conjure five assists and put 40 points on us on his own. And yet these days, I suspect my hollering will be misunderstood.

I’m probably more inclined to keep my mouth shut for fear of coming across as racist. Perhaps that’s a good thing. Perhaps that’s a bit of a shame given half the fun of the fair, and half the atmosphere at games, comes from heckling rival luminaries. Such trepidation may be warranted, or too sensitive. Again, I have no answer.

The inarguable fact is that league is a most inclusive sport. Bravo. Mitchell is in the best possible place at the best possible time. That’s the message to be shouting from the rooftops. Aboriginal players are deeply admired. Beetson. Ferguson. Tallis. The Brett Hodgson tackle! Bowen. Campbell. Mitchell. Thurston. Meninga. Daley. Inglis. Cody Walker. Joel Thompson. So many more.

Mitchell has started the Indigenous Round by saying he’s nearly quit the NRL because of racist trolls, which is fair enough to get off his chest, and the sort of society-wide cultural discussion that will lead, with any luck, if COVID-19 ever nicks off, to a new national anthem.

But there’s so much good to salute this weekend, too. The online trolls are not real league people, no way, and the code has given Mitchell infinitely more than it has taken away. Indigenous round can be a party, not a post mortem.

Mitchell is a supremely successful 23-year-old Aboriginal man in a sport, and club, that provides widespread respect and admiration and affection and support and love.

That’s the message for the young Indigenous kids. Look where this game can take you. To a land of milk and honey and opportunity called the NRL.