EDDIE, IT’S TIME
McGuire must take blame for club’s culture of racism
“Racism at the club has resulted in profound and enduring harm to First Nations and African players. The racism affected them, their communities, and set dangerous norms for the public.”
HISTORIC and hey?
What a bamboozling response after revelations were made public of a bombshell report that found Collingwood and its Eddie McGuireled board oversaw systemic racism.
Monday’s 55-minute press conference was positive spin layered upon positive spin in a one-team competition of backslapping.
McGuire had the opportunity to make the honourable decision and relinquish the presidency. He didn’t.
He has vowed to make Collingwood better, all the while being one of the reasons why Collingwood needed — and asked for, it must be said — the independent review in the first place.
He should have opened the press conference with a sincere apology, spoken about the shame and embarrassment of this “historic day’’ and accepted individual responsibility for his role, minor or major, in where the Collingwood Football Club finds itself. And then stood down immediately.
Not at the end of the season, as he planned, but yesterday. Once again, he did not raise his hand and accept he has been central to — and influential in — the systemic racism the review clearly believes abounded at Collingwood.
The report took aim at the board time and time again, and for that McGuire has to take responsibility. proud day,
Instead, he wants to fix the problem. He wants to right the wrongs.
There were mentions of mistakes and “mishaps’’ in the past, but they were quickly incinerated in McGuire’s telling by the gloriousness of what’s being addressed at the club now, such as “mechanisms and processes and systems and applications’’.
The club’s heart was in a good place, he said.
Still, it was a moment when McGuire could have given the club clean air. For he has polluted it several times.
THE independent report, which was revealed on Monday, did not say so categorically, but left no one in doubt that it found an unhealthy level of responsibility lay at the feet of the president.
“There is a culture of individuals, if not quite being bigger than the club, then at least having an unhealthy degree of influence over club culture,’’ the report said.
This comment was made not on the basis of Heritier Lumumba’s accusations of racism, nor his legal proceedings as the report noted that Lumumba did not engage with its authors.
No, this was about everything else, including the casual racism of which McGuire is repeatedly guilty.
The jokes. The laughs. About King Kong and falafels. And about how McGuire never meant to be offensive, all while being offensive. Boom boom is now ka-boom.
Yesterday was a damning, damaging and shameful day for McGuire and Collingwood.
The Pies attempted to spin it in their favour by declaring it a day for humanity and saying they would lead the charge in the fight against racism. But the spin could not outweigh the realities of the past.
McGuire has presided over some of the period — which extended back well before his tenure — that will forever stain the football club.
The independent review found the club and some of its individuals racist.
Even McGuire, who is sharp on his feet, could not dispute the findings, although one comment by him was corrected by chief executive Mark Anderson.
As has become common, any negative media about Collingwood, coach Nathan Buckley or the president is met with customary McGuire bullying. He often dismisses it as “sensationalism’’ or “clickbait’’ or “bias’’ without addressing the issue.
Monday’s revelations were not clickbait. They were a wounding truth and its scars are indelible.
The review found “systemic racism within the Collingwood Football Club that must be addressed if things are to change”.
The 35-page report reads like a First Landing document you’d find at the Melbourne museum.
“Racism at the club has resulted in profound and enduring harm to First Nations and African players,’’ it said. “The racism affected them, their communities, and set dangerous norms for the public.’’