Few Comments around Adam Goodes

Been following the Adam Goodes sage again, that seems to have been regenerated due to the airing of "The final Quarter" which details the systematic booing Adam Goodes experienced in the later stages of his career. The documentary paints a picture that the booing was all based on Adam Goodes race.

Couple of points.

1. There is no doubt that Adam Goodes has an extremely successful career as an AFL player. His stats speak for themselves. 2* Premiership winner, 2*Brownlow Medal winner, 2*Swans Best and Fairest. So it is clear, he certainly hasn't suffered from systematic racism in the AFL organisation.

2. But it is also clear, his career was on the wane before the 2013 season. His last 3 seasons, 2013, 2014 , 2015  produced 5 brownloe votes, compared to 163 in total. He was also 35 in 2015 when he retired. To say the booing prematurely ended his career is a big call. He was on the way out already.

3. Australian of the year is rarely given to a sports person, and is generally when they retire. The last sports Australians of the year were Steve Waugh (2004), Pat Rafter (2002), both when they retired. The last person to receive the award while still in the prime of their career was Cathy Freeman, another indigenous athlete in 1998. And this was 20 years ago. The contrast between Cathy Freeman and Adam Goodes is stark. Cathy, a proud Indigenous athlete always topped the popularity list. Goodes, evidently not.

4. While it is easy to point to his Indigenous ethnicity as the source of the booing, I'm not sure whether that is correct. If it was his Indigenous status, or his conduct in play, the booing would have started a lot earlier in his career. Why only since 2013/2014?

5. It is clear that the sporting public don't believe it is racist booing. In a very unscientific poll from Bigfooty.com only 13% think its racism. A more scientific poll from Essential report in 2015 also said only 29% believed the booing to be racially motivated. So more likely to be "Tall poppy syndrome" than racism. In Australia, we prefer our stars to be of the humble nature, and activists are generally not well regarded.

6.  But again, it comes down the blending of sports business and politics. Should sporting organisations and their players really be at the forefront of human rights agenda's in Australia and be agents of socail change? Both Adam Goodes (hammered by the public) and Israel Folau (hammered by the administrators) have become the casualties of this push into areas I'm not sure sport should be in. Sport always claims to be inclusive, but again, it shouldn't be taking positions in social arguments that even our political leaders struggle with. To paraphrase Milton Friedman, "the only social responsibility of sport administrators should be to run the code".