- Jul 19, 2019
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- AFL Club
- Collingwood
Try being an ethnic AFL player. Ask the former Italian and Greek players what they endured from the crowd and their team mates back in the day. Racism doesn't have selective options, it's equal regardless of what race is being abused. It's purely racismSome very well may have had an easier path but most haven’t. Yes the crowd noise does go up, but unfortunately for close to 100 years so did the opposition noise. Go have a chat to Chris Lewis, Nicky Winmar, the Krakouer brothers and find out what crowds and players said to them every week. Yes many players have shown enormous courage to reach AFL but not many have had to go through the complete cultural shock that many Aboriginal boys and girls endured and the brutal racism Aboriginal players have experienced. You do realise many of the Aboriginal players cannot speak English when they arrive at clubs. Perhaps if we had did have an endless focus on race we wouldn’t still be hearing of cases of racial abuse against Aboriginal players.