When mum was the word for racism, hatred
In round nine of the 1981 NSWRL season, Olsen Filipaina was picked as a five-eighth for the Balmain Tigers for the first time since he had arrived in Australia.
He lined up in the halves alongside Aboriginal Percy Knight for the greatest challenge available — an away game against defending premiers Parramatta at a hostile Cumberland Oval.
It was a bad day for Balmain and for Olsen. Parramatta scored six tries to one and Olsen was involved in his first on-field fight in Sydney with Parramatta’s hooker Paul Taylor.
Olsen remembers the fight with a grimace: ‘It was a short scuffle and we were holding each other, wrestling around with some short punches. It was embarrassing for me as he was the shortest guy on the field.’
What Olsen feared more than Taylor was his mother, Sissie, finding out about the fight and he was relieved to get through his post-match phone call without her mentioning the incident.
Before leaving Auckland, Sissie had made him promise that he would never get into a fight. His father had also given him a lecture about not bringing shame to the family name.
Filipaina explains why he never lashed out or retaliated at racial abuse or cheap shots: ‘If I had punched someone and got sent off, people don’t care why. It would shame my parents and family name and as one of the first Polynesians, I didn’t want to give us a ‘‘troublemaker’’ stereotype.
If you called me ‘‘n ..... r’’ or ‘‘black bastard’’, I would take your number and if I don’t get you this game, I’ll wait the whole season and I’ll get you in the end. Call me whatever you want but I would tell them, ‘‘I’m not going away’’.’
Turning the other cheek was difficult for Olsen. He says: ‘When you are kicked, or punched or insulted, the normal instinct is to let them have one. I knew how to handle myself from growing up in Mangere East, but I really didn’t want the headlines or to get a reputation as a brawler. It’s hard to explain, but I couldn’t let my mum down. That’s who I reported in to.’
Olsen’s reputation as a big hitter sometimes helped calm things down: ‘Some guys in particular would always be into you with racial stuff or cheap shots, but I was able to get revenge by putting big hits on people that did and said things to me. I would remember them and knew that at some stage of the match, I could put them in pain legally. If not this match, then the next one. Some of them kept going, but it stopped a lot of them.’
As Olsen walked off the field after his fight with Paul Taylor at Cumberland Oval, he was hit in the head by a full can of KB beer and racially abused by a large contingent of Parramatta fans. They called him a ‘black bastard’, ‘coon’ and ‘n .... r’ and told him to ‘go back into his cage’.
The volume of words stung Olsen and had a deep impact on Olsen’s Ma¯ori partner Leslie, who was sitting in the crowd. She will never forget what she heard that day: ‘As soon as I heard the N word I was shocked. Where were we living? I mouthed them back and as you can imagine that only made it worse.’
Driving home from Cumberland Oval that afternoon, Olsen felt a part of him breaking. He felt like a ghost of himself, going through the motions.
‘For some reason people don’t understand that racism is different,’ Olsen later explained. ‘Call me short or fat or dumb or ugly — I can deal with that. But insult my colour or my people and you are insulting my parents, my friends, my children, my grandparents and all those that came before them.
‘If you were to insult a white person’s mother, they would go crazy on you. But that’s exactly how I felt in a lot of matches when I was racially abused, often while pushing my head into the ground. I understand things happen in the heat of battle, but not that many times from that many people. At least one person saying sorry would have been nice.’
Olsen was amazed at the ability of Aboriginal team-mate Larry Corowa to seemingly absorb the racism. Olsen says: ‘Larry was used to it, but it had never happened to me before in Auckland. Some fans didn’t know about Polynesians so sometimes I copped the same slurs as the Aboriginal players. I could have passed for one except for my big thighs!’
It wasn’t just the racism that Olsen found difficult to swallow. Some team-mates had it in for him and for the first time in his career he experienced treachery from the
inner sanctum.
It was a shock for Olsen when reserve-grade team-mates at Balmain deliberately tried to injure him at opposed ball work sessions between first grade and reserves. At one session they finally got their man when his sternum was cracked by a deliberate elbow.
‘We were supposed to be playing ‘‘hold’’ not tackle, but every time I got the ball I had all these reserve-grade players hitting me as hard as they could and one got me,’ Olsen says. ‘My coach Frank Stanton didn’t care. I had to play the next Saturday and it was incredibly painful. I had to tape a big sponge on my chest every match for a month. It was dog eat dog and I couldn’t believe what some Aussies would do to get in the team.’
On reflection Olsen can now understand their behaviour as a product of a larger system: ‘When I look back at how desperate Aussies were to play it makes sense. Players got a bonus for being in the first grade and there was a big drop in pay if you were sent to reserves. It created pressure and trying to injure guys was their way of trying to get back in the team. I was an easy target and if I fought back, I would be fined and branded a whinger. So I sucked it up.’
The lack of respect from some teammates at Balmain meant that sometimes he didn’t want to turn up to training. Olsen remembers having cans of beer tipped on him at an after-match function. He still feels disgusted at his own teammates talking behind his back. Olsen says: ‘When that stuff is going on, the joy of playing together is not there; it ruined league for me.’
Olsen’s partner Leslie recalls an uncharitable atmosphere at times for Olsen in the Balmain Tigers clubhouse: ‘Some of the players gave Olsen a hard time. They thought he was getting paid a lot more than a lot of them were and they were jealous and had the shits with him. There was a lot of really petty jealousy and undermining. It’s always easiest to pick on the outsider.’
They were disorienting times and Olsen says it came from all sides, his otherness playing into a fear of change: ‘Opposition players would play harder against me, more viciously and aggressively like they were protecting something — like something new was happening and they didn’t like it.’
Olsen’s only on-field fight was matched by a lone incident off the field. He would be approached in bars and pubs, particularly by drunks who would challenge him to fights or attempt to provoke him. Olsen had an opening line for the would-be heroes trying to make a name for themselves: ‘You’ll have to throw the first punch so make it good.’
Only one person crossed the line and Olsen was disappointed that it was someone he worked with. ‘I was having a drink at the Ermington Hotel when a workmate comes in drunk and starts calling me racial names,’ remembers Olsen.
‘I tried to leave but he blocked me and he made so much noise that I had to take him outside and try to talk to him away from everybody. He was out there with all his cheering mates and he swung first, but it was over quickly and his mates went quiet. I still feel bad about it. I hated fighting, but I knew what to do when I had no option.’
Leslie remembers a dark night of the soul: ‘Olsen came home upset and crying. He was shocked that a person he knew could turn on him like that. He was less trusting and more wary after that.’
For a brief period, Olsen lived in fear of being sent back to New Zealand and an even worse fate — getting caught breaking his promise to his mother: ‘I decked the wrong guy. He was our union delegate and I thought he might go to the police and then my mum would find out.’
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