Great Acts of Dissent: A look back in time

[Cuthbert Collingwood]

well i can't remember one - i thought that even though lots of other clubs had a bit of history of aboriginal players (fitzroy, geelong, essendon, even the scum) that we had never had one till Leon

interesting excerpt from an article by michael costigan

Collingwood Magpies: From racism to reconciliation

"...I am not claiming to be a model anti-racist. Indeed, there is one aspect of my life which has sometimes made me uncomfortable. I’m referring to football (of the Australian Rules brand) and to my life-long addiction to the Collingwood team. Since Collingwood has come to symbolise some aspects of racism in sport in Australia, I will ask your indulgence while I summarise a story that goes back a decade or so.

I remember watching a game at Waverley Park around 1993 between Collingwood and St Kilda and being aghast at the racist remarks addressed by a group of young Collingwood supporters at three Aboriginal players in the St Kilda team. It made me ashamed to be a Magpie supporter. One of the St Kilda players, Nicky Winmar, later became the centre of one of the most celebrated events in the history of sport racism. He had played a magnificent game on Collingwood’s home ground, helping St Kilda to a rare victory in that place. He had also been subjected to racist abuse similar to what I had heard with such disgust at Waverley Park. After the game he walked towards the Collingwood stand, lifted his jumper and pointed with pride to his dark skin.

Around that time, the Collingwood chairman made on of the most stupid and crass remarks ever to pass the lips of a sports administrator. Black people were very welcome at Collingwood, provided they behaved like white people.

Later he realised how indefensible his words were and tried to make amends, but the damage had been done. An Aboriginal leader in Darwin “pointed the bone” at Collingwood – and they performed dismally for several seasons, until he lifted the curse.

Other episodes occurred during the 1990 premiership, including a racist comment made by the Collingwood player Damien Monkorst to Essendon’s Aboriginal start, Michael Long. One of the outcomes has been that players from every club have now come to understand that this sort of thing is simply not on.

To their credit, the Collingwood club has learned its lesson. It has recruited a number of Aboriginal players in recent years including two who played in yesterday’s Preliminary Final – Richard Cole, a young Wurumungu man from Tennant Creek, and Leon Davis, a Nyunga man from the south of WA. The Collingwood team has also twice visited Aboriginal communities and conducted football clinics in the Northern Territory and the Tiwi Islands, where they are enormously popular. The visits were sponsored by ATSIC, the Pratt Foundation and the AFL..."


oh well about Cole but that was bound to happen, he is now destined to be loudly booed at every time he plays the pies, but not cos he's aboriginal, but cos he's a (foster) mummy's boy who put in a crap season so his trade price would be lower (hmmm, shocker of a granny that, nick davis)

[Warbler]

Do any of you know what the law calls racial villification ????

It's when a MINORITY group is villified by a MAJORITY

But a MINORITY can villify a MAJORITY and that's not racist .

I have trouble with that -- if it's good for the goose it's good for the gander . You have laws that treat people differently according to their colour -- if this was South Africa , you'd call it racism / apartheid

[Johnson#26]

[Nutmeg]

loki does this make you Grand Wizard of the KKK sorry CFC????

Lucky you told us "you're not racist" and you have "friends of all descents" - would I be right in assuming none of them are indigenous Australians? You then go on to vilify a group of people purely on the grounds of race, making outlandish generalisations about getting "every advantage you could think of". FFS they weren't considered citizens or allowed to vote until the 1970s! They've had 50000 years of history wiped out, and our current PM STILL believes in terra nullis! Historians (read Keith Windschuttle) are allowed to claim that the massacres by the English never happened - sorry people but this is tantamount to denying the Holocaust - and we wonder why our country is stuck in a redneck-hick-self important-self righteous rut and that incidents like Cronulla occur?
As for black-to-white racism, yeah some of us have copped it on the sportsfield. Once a Fijian girl abused EVERY member of my team racially (we've got Maoris, Anglos, Samoans and Singaporeans) and we smashed that stupid bitch until she couldn't stand up. Then I got racially abused by a chick who was whiter than me - how does one react to that????

There's an old saying Loki about people in glass houses - I'm not proud of this part of Collingwood's history, but the fact that we're trying to fix it now is something of which I AM proud.

Like I said loki, lucky you're not racist..........

[3rd degree]

Great Post Nutmeg. Shove that up your jumper Loki!

[regan is true fullback]

We did indeed have an aboriginal player before Ahmat. His name was Rod Waddell and in 1980 he was the most brilliant young rover in the Diamond Valley League.
In 1981 he played reserves with Collingwood, he could have been another Ricky Barham - recruit of the year.
Unfortunately some checking by the Cardinals turned up the problem that he had given his address at his sisters place in Lalor and was therefore zoned to the Showponies.
In the true heroic style of the Hickey administration in standing up to the infallible ones nothing was done. He had to cross over to Carlton against his wishes - probably the recruiting coup of the decade in that the Carlton rovers cut Collingwood up in the last quarter of the grand final.
Waddell couldnt get a game at Carlton ahead of Ashman and co and drifted off to Geelong where his career also went nowhere. He would have been great at Collingwood.

[stui magpie]

[bazdaddy]

Cronulla happened because ethnic teens were taking over like they do everywhere, they are not proud to be Australian and because 1/8th of them is italian or what ever they would prefer to be that, I know because I am a teen my self, I go to school and I see it at school I go to parties and I see it there, that is why a riot such as Cronulla take place.

No let's hope Leon doesn't make 200 games because if he does club will be nowhere, and who here will accept the Australian Flag been burnt and spat on because of what happened several decades ago and to a further extent the 1700's.

[3rd degree]

Yep you are teen and one of very reddened neck! For what its worth the aboriginal flag should be place over the section of the british flag - its not to say I'm right just an opinion.

[bazdaddy]

[Zakal]

[3rd degree]

This is too big a can of worms you are opening. My main problem with you is to say Leon Davis should not play 200 games for our club. That sort of contradicts your slogan Collingwood , WHENEVER HOWEVER FOREVER just a bit doesn't it? Afterall he is part of Collingwood is he not?
and when did he burn and spit on the australian flag ??

[Zakal]

I think his point is more that he believes Leon has no future at teh club as a PLAYER, and the decision to keep him should have nothing to do with his race, but purely his playing ability. If we keep players on just so we can appear to be "indigenous friendly" then we are pathetic, and doing both ourselves, and them a great disservice.


Personally I hope we keep Leon, cos i know hes got teh ability to be a solid player, just needs to take teh next step. As do so many of our boys.

[CP]

That article appears in a national newspaper and is a disgrace.

It's blatant prejudice towards the Collingwood Football Club is no different than the prejudice that it blames the club of. Instead of focusing on the positive outcomes that these "acts of dissent" helped champion, this newspaper goes to lengths to make the Collingwood Football Club the epitome of "evil white Australia". This approach is completely unecessary and myopic to the extreme.

By labelling the Collingwood Football Club as racist against Aborigines, it labels every one of us as racists. For a people who are apparently striving for racial acceptance and harmony, they're doing a fair amount of finger pointing and muckracking from my point of view.

Funny how two of the four most important acts of dissent involved the Collingwood Football Club. Now, I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but one could be caught thinking as to whether some of the best spin doctors were on the case to hold out and orchestrate that sort of exposure.

[Robbo.D.yobbo]