The Big Shrek wrote:Now that I've sobered up a bit and found my phone, time for a sensiblish post. Was nice to put a face to the Yank Man name and good to see the Edwardstown boys come in for a beer. It looks likely that we will meet again in the finals.
I understand a report/complaint has/will be made. The umpire spoke to the team manager about it during the game but I'm in the dark as to the details of what's going on. Needless to say we support the guys who had the comments directed at them. Edwardstown seem to me to be a very well run club full of decent people, it shouldn't reflect on them as a club, I'm certain that the overwhelming majority of people there would abhor racism as much as anyone. This certainly isn't an us vs Edwardstown thing.
Unfortunately racism is still a real issue. Sometimes it's overt and sometimes less obvious. I went to the Mundine vs Green fight this year and it was shocking there. I've got a mate who writes for the Advertiser and when he wrote an article about changing the date of Australia Day the comments on social media were atrocious. So despite the fact that when Eddie Betts had a banana thrown at him the public were baying for blood, a lot of the time racist behaviour goes uncondemned/unnoticed by the general public. I've been exposed to it mainly because of my Aboriginal friends through football. If it wasn't for that I'd probably wouldn't be that aware of the extent of it. When someone stands up and calls it out I think it's important to support them. If we don't it can perpetuate the effect of the abuse because not only has the person been abused, but then been disbelieved or ignored.
We've been lucky at Kilburn to have a lot of indegenous players over the years. We've also had Aboriginal rounds in previous years which have been pretty special occassions and great fun to play in. We've had dance and music performances, indegenous food and some language taught to us. One of our A grade players has had a documentary made about him and his work reinvigorating the Kaurna language, it was on tv last week. It made me proud of my club to see the hall full of people after the first dreamtime game at Kilburn learning about Aboriginal culture.
The guys involved in this are very proud of their heritage. We might be having another dreamtime game late this year. If we do I'd encourage everyone to come down it's a great day. Hopefully we can put this behind us in due course and have get on with creating some more good news stories and promote the indegenous culture we are fortunate enough to have.
I think this is the best thing you've ever written on here.
You're right, Towns are meticulously run - having overseeing GF proceedings at the ground last year, I've seen this first hand, unfortunately, there's always one person, directly associated or not, that will spoil it for the rest. I'm sure it'll be sorted with maturity by both sides.
I nearly sent you a message to see when your dreamtime game was - obviously other clubs like Rosies and WC have taken these on but no one does them like Kilburn and if I've been doing even an inkling of media, I've always ensured that this gets a big shout out.
Do you know which channel the doco was on about your teammate? Wouldn't mind having a gander - I reckon there was a guy who played for SN who was doing something similar and he had a doco on SBS going back a couple of years ago (not the same guy??)