Ten years on from that fateful SCG night in a season which drove Adam Goodes from the game broken-hearted and in despair, the league still asks the question.

Those overtures come from AFL inclusion boss Tanya Hosch and are passed on through friends and intermediaries like Sydney board member Michael O’Loughlin.

The message is clear – what can we do to reconnect Goodes with the game?

And yet as O’Loughlin told this masthead on Tuesday, Goodes’ message back is just as emphatic.

“No, he is not interested right now. He’s fine. He’s living his best life. We miss him, we love him and hopefully at some point we will get to see him again. He loved the game and the game let him down and it has let a lot of people down,” O’Loughlin said.

“He should have walked out a hero and that he didn’t is a real indictment on us.”

As the AFL’s Sir Doug Nicholls Round roars to life this weekend celebrating our great Indigenous players it will do so against a tinge of what O’Loughlin calls sadness.

Friday night’s Sydney-Carlton clash marks 10 years since Goodes’ war dance – a tribute he made to the Flying Boomerangs, a team of teenage First Nations footballers – was misinterpreted in that SCG game against the Blues in round 9, 2015, with the brilliant star saying of that season: “My love of the game died inside me”.

Hawthorn travelled to Darwin this week where the brilliant Cyril Rioli spends his days estranged from the club and still shattered at what he sees as racist treatment across his career.

The Hawks are doing all they can to re-engage with the four-time premiership hero, but without success so far. They invited him to training on Wednesday as one of their past players, but he is not expected to attend.

Collingwood’s Brazilian-born Heritier Lumumba, who has been at the forefront of the fight against racism, now lives in Los Angeles and while he is estranged from the club he at least shared “genuine happiness” at the club’s 2023 premiership while he watches what he calls the club’s “cultural evolution” from afar.

Magpie officials including former president Jeff Browne have engaged with him in recent years and have tried to meet with him. They are prepared to wait for as long as needed to renew ties with their 2010 premiership player.

So for every gain made by the AFL – its well-executed Indigenous All Stars game, the commitment for every club to have a full-time Indigenous welfare officer and the huge amount of work at all levels in an effort to boost the number of First Nations participants – the high-profile setbacks are an acknowledgment there is so much more to be done.

The AFL issued a formal apology to Goodes in 2019 but he made it clear he couldn’t see a time he would return to the league.

“There’s nothing, today, that excites me, or that makes me think I would like to be back in AFL circles. I have no interest. No interest whatsoever. My love for the game died inside of me in those final years of me playing,” he told Nine that year.

“By the end of my career I just really hated being out there on that field and being subjected to what was happening to me.”

He has been eligible to join the Australian football Hall of Fame since 2021 but is not interested and hasn’t attended a Brownlow Medal since 2013.

‘INDIGENOUS SUPERMAN’

Sydney great O’Loughlin, the third Indigenous player to reach 300 games, gets an almost-daily reminder of Goodes’ actions on that dramatic night.

The statue commemorating his war dance sits outside the club’s headquarters and never fails to move him as he walks past it.

He gets a little emotional as the memories of that night tumble out.

“How do I say it? I remember watching Adam and I was so happy and proud. I was just smiling. The majority of fans would say, ‘How good was that’,” he said of the 2015 dance.

“That image went out to a lot of our communities. It was just an incredible moment. To see it etched into our Swans history with a sculpture out the front of our headquarters, every time I see it I get goosebumps. A young Indigenous man in Indigenous round so proud of his Indigenous heritage.”

O’Loughlin’s kids call Goodes ‘Uncle Adam’, with the families regularly catching up.

But Goodes is so scarred he just can’t see a way back to an AFL world which provided him so much pain.

“We are all incredibly proud of Adam and who he is,” O’Loughlin said.

“Adam is very sure and comfortable and happy and proud of what he has accomplished. Life is fantastic for him. We want to welcome him back but he’s not in that space at the moment.

“It’s a real shame because the younger people could learn so much from being around a person like Adam and that’s on us.

“Our people love this game, and we are sick of talking about the mad and bad and sad of our game. I love the game but the game has let so many of my peers down. And I am so frustrated with it.

“Nothing would make me happier and would make the Swans fans happier than having Adam around the football club and involved with the Swans, than having Adam around the football club and involved with the game.

“(But) the support was so lacking. And we all have choices of what we want to do when that happens.”

Tanya Hosch is the AFL’s executive general manager of inclusion and social policy. While she has ruffled some feathers with her methods, Goodes made clear in 2019 that he rated her highly and O’Loughlin is adamant she has got the job done in her time at the AFL.

Hosch spoke to this masthead in February and she continues to check in on Goodes sporadically – sometimes through O’Loughlin but he is so insistent he wants nothing from the AFL it seems a futile task.

“We want to build relationships, repair relationships wherever we can. You have to be very discreet about that,” she said in February when asked about reconnecting with Goodes and Rioli.

“At the end of the day it’s about making sure people feel good about their time in the game. And all players who leave the game can have some struggles with how they left the game. They don’t always do it on their terms but in the case of some of the reviews which have taken place, what is really pleasing, is the willingness to talk about those issues, and those relationships aren’t completely severed and you hope there will always be a time people do feel like they can re-engage on terms they are comfortable with.”

WHY WE’D LOVE ADAM AS A MENTOR

At the AFL’s Indigenous round launch at the Ian Potter Centre on Tuesday the legacy of Goodes was impossible to miss.

The Indigenous AFL players believe in this round and the honest conversations it starts, but to a man the loss of Goodes as a mentor and sounding board was keenly felt.

North Melbourne captain Jy Simpkin was old enough to remember that inspirational moment and its ugly backlash.

“I think I was 16 or 17 years old and I remember it. At the time I thought, ‘How good is that? An Indigenous man celebrating his culture and he did some stuff no one had done before,” Simpkin said.

“Leading the way for the next generation. You look around the room today and every time Bobby Hill kicks a goal in these rounds he celebrates his culture and I have no doubt that is from Adam Goodes doing it 10 years ago.”

Will Goodes come back to footy?

“I think that’s up to Goodsey ultimately,” Simpkin said.

“It would be awesome to have him down here and have a chat with him at some stage but ultimately it’s up to him.”

Hill not only paid tribute to Goodes with those celebrations, he wore his number on his back as a young GWS draftee.

“I do like doing that shake (a) leg dance. Goodes did it when he was playing. He made a pathway for us by doing it. When I got drafted at GWS the No. 37 was available so I took that because of him,” he told this masthead.

“I saw him a couple of times in Sydney but never met him. I would love to meet him. He is an unbelievable man and he made a pathway for us Indigenous players to speak up.”

Carlton’s Jesse Motlop named Goodes unprompted when asked about an Indigenous athlete that had inspired him.

“Adam Goodes is a great player and someone I idolised growing up,” Motlop said. “I think just the way he represented his culture and how proud he was, I remember being pretty young so wasn’t able to understand a lot then but it was him standing up for what he believed in.

“And winning the Australian of the Year was no joke. Not only was he great on field, but off field. Striving to be someone like that is what I try to do.

“I haven’t actually met Adam so it would be great to pick his brain and see what he went through and how he became the person he is.”

THE LEAD-UP TO THAT NIGHT

Goodes and teammate Lewis Jetta made a pact before that Carlton clash in 2015, a game that was meant to kickstart a weekend of celebration of Indigenous culture and its impact on Australia’s national game.

They agreed to do a special Indigenous dance if either kicked a goal.

Goodes’ version was first used by the Flying Boomerangs at a training camp in Cairns in 2009. He had learnt the dance when he and other members of the AFL’s Indigenous All-Stars squad met with the Flying Boomerangs two years later.

One of the Flying Boomerangs from around that time was a kid called Willie Rioli, whose own journey in AFL football would be impacted by racism.

Goodes had already been the subject of a booing campaign from sections of the crowd, dating back to at least two years earlier.

But it reached an alarming level the weekend before that Carlton game when the Swans played Hawthorn as small pockets of the MCG targeted him whenever he went near the ball.

At halftime of that clash, Sydney chairman Andrew Pridham sought out AFL executives to express his anger. Then he took to Twitter: “What a sad indictment on AFL fans to act this way toward an adornment to our game.”

THE MOMENT

On the morning of the Marn Grook match against the Blues, this masthead’s then chief football writer Mark Robinson wrote: “At AFL games, the booing of Goodes is ugly, it’s haunting … people can argue all they like about why they boo Goodes, but denials that the animosity towards him is, in part, racially motivated are plainly wrong.”

It pitted third placed Sydney against bottom ranked Carlton, who had days earlier sacked its coach Mick Malthouse, and replaced him with interim coach John Barker.

Lance Franklin kicked the first three goals of the game in the first 13 minutes and by the middle of the second quarter, the game was as good as over.

Then came Goodes’ moment, 19 minutes and 49 seconds into the second term.

Wearing an Indigenous jumper designed by his mother, Lisa, he took a mark about 30m out from goal and nailed it before moving right towards a pocket of Carlton cheer-squad members in the crowd and performing the dance.

The stabbing of the forearms was symbolic of informing opponents they would not get through the team’s defences, while the raising of one arm running forward denoted the brandishing of a boomerang.

There were a few muted boos, but the Swans fans, who made up most of the 32,105 fans in attendance, cheered him.

But it set off a wave of booing for the remainder of the season that proved so damaging to the game.

Goodes explained the following day: “From my point of view, my teammates loved it, the Carlton players loved it … it is not something that people should be getting their backs against the wall about,” he said

“If it is something we don’t understand, let’s have a conversation and understand ‘what was Goodesy doing? … Oh, OK, it was from the Indigenous All-Stars … it’s something he learnt from these under 16s kids’.

One of his close mates, Jude Bolton, called it Sydney’s ‘Nicky Winmar moment’.

The solidarity from opposition players came as early as the next day. Melbourne pair Jeff Garlett and Lumumba paid homage to him with their goal celebrations in a game in Alice Springs.

And Jetta performed his own version when he kicked a goal against West Coast later in that 2015 season.

As Jetta recalled a few years later: “If only they understood he was doing it for the young guys … representing the young guys that did it before us, there probably would have been a different response.

Goodes only played another 14 more matches, leaving the game without a fitting farewell to the fans after the Swans lost a semi-final to North Melbourne at Stadium Australia.

‘WE MUST GET BETTER’

Goodes’ former coach Paul Roos sees the progress made on field with greater understanding of race but despairs at the continued social media abuse of players.

“I think the majority of people have matured,” Roos said.

Roos sees the irony of the AFL lauding the contribution to diverse and Indigenous talent when some key past greats are isolated from the game.

“(We have failed) if there is even one of them,” he said. “If someone is offended we have to take that offence seriously. We have to make this better or understand it.

“Does he have to come back? No. He’s very content. He’s got a great family and he’s in a great space. But I think we miss great players when they are not around the game”

TRYING TO RE-ENGAGE WITH CYRIL

Rioli made a brief appearance last year at the Gold Coast-Geelong match but was quickly gone before friends could even greet him.

He and his wife Shannyn attended February’s Indigenous All-Stars game but have basically shunned all of his former teammates and friends from his Hawthorn days.

He spends his days in Darwin but has little communication with former friends or even Indigenous leaders including AFL legend Michael Long.

O’Loughlin says there is much work to do to repair that relationship.

“But you know what, they have got a lot of work to do to win trust back.

“I saw him at the All Stars game with his wife and it was brilliant to see him there. But there is some serious hard work to be done there.”

In a Federal Court statement of claim last year Rioli claimed he was nicknamed Humphrey B Bear among a string of “culturally ignorant” comments from players across his decade at the club.

He said he felt “culturally unsafe” at the club, retiring in June 2018 and was one of the Indigenous players who agreed upon a settlement with Hawthorn last November.

As part of that deal the Hawks agreed to establish a First Nations Advisory Committee, develop a First Nations strategic plan, expand the role of its Indigenous Player Development Manager and relocate its current cultural safety room in Waverley to a prominent spot at its new Kennedy Centre in Dingley.

THE FUTURE

O’Loughlin, the chairman of the recent Indigenous All Stars game, sees light at the end of the tunnel.

For all the negative headlines about decades-low Indigenous representation and social media racism he believes the AFL is tackling those issues head-on.

New Indigenous academies and training camps are being funded.

AFL executive football boss Laura Kane told the Herald Sun in February the new NGA rules allowing clubs to bid on all talent will incentivise greater investment in Indigenous kids.

New rookie rules allow Category B players like Ricky Mentha and Malakai Champion to stay on rookie lists for longer to foster development.

Former Port Adelaide and Hawks forward Chad Wingard has been hired as a full time Indigenous and social policy officer.

“It is a bit like society. There is a lot of work to be done. Tanya Hosch is an absolute star. She fights for people, she fights for communities. We need more people like that,” O’Loughlin said.

“I am close to it because I was chairman of the Indigenous All Stars. It was an absolute success. The community turned up in droves. Tanya is the reason it got off the ground and the rest of us joined in the heavy lifting.

“It was an incredible game and to see the end results, it wouldn’t have been done without someone at a higher level pushing that.

“It tells unbelievable stories and it creates imagination. Our people love this game and they love this round. I meet people who say, ‘Why have an Indigenous round? I enjoy having a conversation with them. Not a Twitter war but a conversation. It is valuable to do these things because it inspires First Nations people around the country.”