Grand final justice for McGuire
THE sentiments contained in the following column trouble me to the core of my being.
My fingers are almost twisted in denial as I prepare to type the words. This is because as a proud South Australian I am hardwired to be outraged by the mere existence of Eddie McGuire.
He’s the bloke who puts the V into AFL, a Collingwood-centric, Victoriabiased, Broadmeadows boy who wields inordinate clout inside AFL House, never shy of voicing his opinion and seems genuinely affronted by the existence of interstate teams.
He had a protracted war with the Swans over player payments, denied Port Adelaide its heritage by blackballing its traditional SANFL prison bars jumper and, funniest of all, declared that Adelaide home games are too dangerous for out-oftowners to attend on account of their feral crowd. All this from the former chairman of a club whose fans would habitually urinate on visiting teams above the player’s race at Victoria Park.
Eddie McGuire is a victim of a genuine injustice. McGuire should be allowed to attend Saturday’s AFL grand final in Perth. His banning by the West
Australian government has been treated not as a political story but comic relief, a case of an outspoken type getting his deserved comeuppance, with the WA Premier Mark McGowan taking great delight in making gags at Ed’s expense as he outlined why the Fox Footy and Channel 9 presenter would be barred from entering Perth to cover the game.
I can see how people got suckered into regarding this story as hilarious and in seeing McGuire’s predicament as deserved given his capacity to irritate and annoy. I would urge people to work past all of these prejudices and see this story for what it really is: a remarkable insight into the casual and arbitrary misuse of state authority by politicians who are giddy on the power Covid has afforded them. Just take the name Eddie McGuire out of the equation and forget we are talking about AFL, a grand final or a celebrity many of us outside Victoria love to hate.
Here we have a private sector worker, representing an industry whose workforce is exempt from Covid travel bans and has been uniformly granted permission to cover the GF, being told that he’s not allowed in with no reason given.
Other than for the Premier to suggest only half-jokingly he’s a bit of a pain in the arse.
“I’m trying to protect him from West Australians, I’m doing it for his own good,” a joking McGowan said last week.
It really is remarkable. As I said, every member of the Australian media has an exemption from travel bans and lockdown rules on account of needing to move around to do their job reporting on events. It feels like West Australians have drunk the Kool-Aid in their fealty to a bloke who is drunk on power.
Justice for Eddie McGuire.