Football club owner rues racist remark
PROMINENT television commentator and Collingwood club president Eddie McGuire has been embroiled in a racism controversy, only days after a 13-yearold fan of the club racially abused Sydney Swans star Adam Goodes, during an Australian Football League (AFL) match.
McGuire, who went into the Swans dressing room after the match to apologise to Goodes on behalf of the Collingwood club, suggested during a Melbourne radio programme yesterday that Goodes would be a good person to promote the musical King Kong. Goodes, an Australian Aboriginal, was upset last week after being called an ape by the teenage girl during the AFL match.
The girl was escorted out of the stadium by security.
Yesterday Goodes tweeted: “Morning Australia this is what I have woken up to” along with the hashtag “#racismstopswithme.” He also tweeted a link to a story about McGuire’s comments.
Luke Darcy, a co-host on the Triple M breakfast show, had described a promotional item for the musical and McGuire replied: “Get Adam Goodes down for it, do you reckon?” Darcy replied he would not have thought so.
But McGuire added: “You can see them doing that, can’t you? Goodsey. You know with the ape thing, the whole thing, I’m just saying the pumping him up and mucking around, all that sort of stuff.” Later McGuire clarified his comment and apologised.
“Imagine the old days of trying to get people in for publicity and I’ve mumbled my way through that, so anyone who thought I was having a go or being a smart aleck, I take that back,” he said.
“There was nothing involved in that. I was that exhausted this morning, apologies for that.”
Last Friday, Goodes left the Melbourne Cricket Ground shaking his head late in the match, after pointing to the girl in a Collingwood jumper. “To come to the boundary line and to hear a 13year-old girl call me an ape, and it’s not the first time on the footy field I’ve been referred to as a monkey or an ape — it was shattering,” Goodes said then.
“She’s 13 years old, still so innocent. I don’t put any blame on her,” Goodes said. “Unfortunately it’s what she hears and the environment she’s grown up in has made her think that it’s OK to call people names.” Goodes also said the girl had telephoned him to apologise. Sapa-AP