Australia, and the AFL, are dealing with it big time this week, as Sydney legend and indigenous role model Adam Goodes was once again the target of a preposterous amount of booing from the West Coast Eagle "fans" Sunday when the Swans traveled to Perth and were defeated soundly by the Eagles. While Goodes was one of the few shining lights for the red and white in the game, he was roundly booed every time he touched the ball, and one of his closest friends on the team, young indigenous player Lewis Jetta, showed his disgust to the crowd after a goal he scored by doing a very similar war dance to the one Goodes performed as part of his goal-scoring celebration during the actual Indigenous round two months ago.
Links to a series of articles are here displaying the length and breadth of support for Goodes on the one hand - a two-time Brownlow medalist as AFL player of the year and the 2014 Australian of the Year, for heaven's sake! - and the disgust for the racist behavior of an admitted minority of fans at stadiums across Australia.
Saddest of all, though, is that as strong as Goodes has been for a long time about the bigoted treatment he's been on the end of, it's finally worn him down. This week, starting on Tuesday, he asked for and received a leave of absence from the club for the time being, obviously to try and recover from the unwarranted vilification he's received. For a man with 365 games under his belt in the AFL, arguably one of the five greatest Swans players ever and certainly the greatest in the last twenty years, the four time All-Australian was looking forward to retirement that he may find the need to pull the trigger on prematurely to spare his own team the harsh spotlight of bigotry.
And if that happens, it will be perhaps the darkest day in AFL history, even more so than the murder of Phil Walsh a few weeks ago, because this will be one that their own fans brought upon it themselves.
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