It’s almost as if the year 2020 can’t get any worse. In a year where it has been dominated by the covid-19 pandemic, something more significant is brewing up and that’s a fight against racism that has been stemmed for years among years.
In the news world, the most significant story going around has nothing to do with football. But because one player has started taking a stand against the media in Australia within the past few days, it now has everything to do with football.
Of course, the story is about the wrongful - and I put a strong emphasis on that word - death of George Floyd at the hands of a police officer that should be getting the book thrown at him. I know that charges have been pressed, and I’ve even read about his wife filing for divorce, but whether or not he gets the significant jail time he deserves remains to be seen.
More importantly, what this death has done has sparked so many riots across the United States of America. Understandably, I can see how it can spark people to be upset. But the one thing I can’t understand is why there are quite a few people that have to resort in breaking, entering, looting and assaulting innocent bystanders. That’s something I won’t defend for the people in America.
So how does this intertwine with the footy? Well, Chad Wingard has been a man of intrigue over the past couple of days. He was quoted on Twitter by 7AFL saying:
“When people are saying racism in Australia is nothing compared to America, ask any Aboriginal person growing up. Just because you didn’t see it or it doesn’t affect you, doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Stand together and don’t be silent!”
Over the weekend, I was discussing the situation in America with one of my best friends over the phone and the words ‘Well, at least we’re not them’ entered the conversation. At the time, it felt like it made sense. How many Australians have we seen cause a ruckus on the streets of Melbourne in the name of fighting back against racism? The answer has been very few, if any.
But what Wingard said makes me think more of the situation Australia faces, because he raises a very good point about the indigenous community. We don’t need to go back far to see the issues in the game. The whole Adam Goodes story is the most prominent and talked about, but people still argue against it today, which baffles me.
Also players such as Eddie Betts, Liam Ryan, Majak Daw among others have been targeted and racially vilified over the past few years and it's often the ones with common sense that ask: When is it going to stop?
This problem doesn’t just come from the footy field, it happens in the real world too. Since 1991, 432 Indigenous Australians have died in police custody. If that doesn’t speak of the problems that Australia has, then I don’t know what the hell to say. The Guardian has published a bunch of articles about it and have listed a few cases of police brutality on the indigenous community.
The one that has popped up frequently, and Wingard mentions it on his Twitter account, is the death of a man named David Dungay, a 26-year old indigenous man that was killed by a handful of officers that ‘restrained’ him in his jail cell. The video in comparison is eerily compared to the death of Floyd, with footage of Dungay being restrained, with his head pressed faced down on a bed and him screaming out "he can’t breathe" so many times.
If this doesn’t say that we have a ways to go to beat racism, then I don’t know how else I can convey the message to you all.
Wingard then follows up with a tweet saying that he doesn’t trust the media anymore, will only do the interviews that he’s contractually obligated to do until something changes and until that day comes, he’ll sharing his own thoughts and content on social media. Just a day before, he posted tweets saying that there needed to be more diversity in the media and condemning the Australian mainstream media for showing only the ‘negative’ riots.
Since then, I have heard the usual negativity that comes out of someone whenever they attempt to make a stand about something. ‘Sook’ is number one, closely followed by ‘try and get a kick first.’
I’ll admit, I have been a shrewd critic of Chad Wingard in years gone by. We all know exactly what he is capable of on the football field. The man won an All-Australian and Port’s best and fairest in just his second season and led their goal-kicking in 2015 and 2016. But over the past few years he has been horrifically inconsistent and that led to him being traded to Hawthorn, where up until the last month and a bit of the Hawks’ 2019 season, he started recapturing some of his better footy.
This year, he started the year off on the right foot, putting up three goals, 20 disposals and a probable three Brownlow votes in the Hawks’ win over Brisbane. But this isn’t about him getting a touch of the footy, recapturing his form or some kind of relevancy on the field. It’s about people taking a stand against not just the media, but racism full stop.
He doesn’t leave an explanation why. But you don’t need to really go far to see why he is doing what he is doing and that’s because the media machine is more focused on getting anything out that sounds half-juicy to engage the average Joe Blow to read it. People will publish something without knowing the full extent of the story.
Whether it is deliberate or not, it’s an easy thing to do to publish a story out from rumours. I’m ashamed to admit I did that in an article once upon a time. It certainly got people reading it, but let’s just say that’s a lesson I had coming to me and it was well learned. Even as an aspiring Journalist student in his first year, scrolling through all the lectures and exercises about defamation and what you can and can’t publish, it certainly opens up a dimension of things that you can and can’t say.
Just to further ram the point home about players’ distrust for the media. Just look back to the whole Jack Steven incident. The man was found stabbed in the chest (thank god not fatal) and now everyone wants to know what the hell happened. Eddie McGuire, Collingwood’s local megalomaniac who just happens to be president of the club, demanded that the Cats step forward and reveal what happened.
Now I’m as curious as the next person to know what happened, but the reality is that it’s just as much Eddie’s business as it is mine and that is none of our business whatsoever. Jack Steven is entitled to keep what happened between him, Geelong and everyone else who’s near and dear to him.
Also keep in mind that one of Eddie’s players stepped away from the game before all this Covid-19 business happened, how would it feel if the Cats demanded that Collingwood give an explanation on what happened? I don’t think he’d be singing a similar tune would he? He’d be going full-bore trying to get everyone to shut up about the whole situation. As a matter of fact, he probably did. But we’re only just scratching the surface between the relationship between the media and the players.
Before I leave it, I’ll drop some examples for you all. I want you to try and cast your mind back to social media feuds such as Tom Browne and Jack Riewoldt from last year, the ongoing saga between Kane Cornes and Taylor Walker, Jesse Hogan’s tirade against Tom Morris - also from last year, and of course the old favourite from the Western Suburbs - Damian Barrett’s ongoing feud with Luke Beveridge and the Western Bulldogs.
The media in football is just as bad as the media around the world and it’s time for it to change.