The ineptitude that has come to characterise AFL efforts to resolve incidents of alleged racism stands in stark contrast to the league’s effective public relations agenda that has seen it become almost universally applauded as an exemplar of reconciliation and improved race relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.
Such popular understandings of the AFL are the result of a PR strategy that first emerged in the 1990s after high-profile incidents of on-field racism involving Indigenous footballers Nicky Winmar and Michael Long. As the number of Indigenous players increased,the AFL went to work reconstructing the past;one in which the AFL and its predecessor,the VFL,had always embraced Aboriginal contributions to the sport.
The PR campaigns revised the history of past Aboriginal players including Joseph Johnson (Fitzroy FC 1904-1906),Sir Douglas Nicholls MBE (Fitzroy FC 1932-1937),Graham Farmer (Geelong FC 1962-1967) and Sydney Jackson (Carlton FC 1969-1976),emphasising the role football had played in their liberation from racism and discrimination.
In retelling the stories of these players,the AFL significantly downplayed or excluded important aspects of their experience as Indigenous men. Johnson played as a white man at a time when state protection law that applied to Aborigines threatened the forced removal of his children.
Nicholls was refused a rub down after training with Carlton because as an Aborigine he was unclean and “stunk”.
Farmer did not advertise his Aboriginality for fear that it would again undermine his freedom as it had in his childhood when an inmate of Sister Kate’s Home in Perth.
Jackson,unable to hide his Aboriginal identity,was weekly subjected to vile racist attacks by those on the field and in the stands. In a highly decorated career,his most vivid recollection of playing football is being called a “black bastard” by Collingwood supporters in the 1970 grand final.