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Should fans bear weight of AFL’s racism issue?

Getty.

Getty.

In the off-season, AFL fans demanded league administrators do more to make their stadium experience better, but the greatest threat to match-day enjoyment could be coming from the crowds themselves.

During the Richmond versus Western Bulldogs game at the MCG on Saturday, a Bulldogs cheer squad member was evicted for homophobic abuse while Richmond are investigating reports of repeated racial abuse toward Bulldogs player Lin Jong.

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A Western Bulldogs supporter attempted to quieten the pair of Richmond fans for the repeated abuse toward Jong, however he was threatened by them for raising the problem, Channel 7 reported.

Richmond CEO Brendan Gale said on Sunday in a statement: “As a club, we take any suggestion of racist behaviour very seriously, and we followed it up accordingly.”

Police could not substantiate the allegation when they investigated with the MCC on match day and despite the Western Bulldogs supporter appearing on Channel 7 with the allegations, “no further action was taken”, according to Gale.

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Western Bulldogs’ young gun Lin Jong runs away with the ball in his side’s win over Richmond. Photo: Getty

Jong was born in Melbourne to a Taiwanese mother and East Timorese father while his side, the Western Bulldogs, are based in Footscray and represent Melbourne’s wider western suburbs – one of the city’s most culturally diverse areas. 

Elsewhere in the stadium, Richmond full-back Alex Rance reportedly heard homophobic abuse coming from the Western Bulldogs cheersquad.

Richmond confirmed in the statement on Sunday that Rance reported the incident to MCG security.

The alleged perpetrator was ejected from the MCG and on Sunday night an AFL spokesman told The New Daily that the league will be “following up” the incident on Monday.

The Western Bulldogs on Sunday were considering whether they would terminate the accused’s club membership in light of the comments.

The league have recently supported the gay and lesbian community with an AFL-sanctioned ‘Pride Match‘ taking place in the NAB Challenge in March.

The two incidents of fan abuse over the weekend add to a long list of examples where AFL supporters go too far with their ‘barracking’.

The most high-profile incident involved Adam Goodes in 2013, calling out a 13-year-old Collingwood supporter who called him an ‘ape’. The Swans’ legend was then abused again in 2014 while in the same week the Demons’ Neville Jetta was vilified from the crowd.

At the time of the Goodes incident, he was just as widely criticised as he was applauded by sections of the AFL public, with some suggesting he should ‘harden up’.

But how far can AFL intervention go in stopping the problem? Is it something out of their control, something that is symptomatic of failings in Australian society?

Victoria University historian Dr Ian Syson wrote in 2013 in The Age about the AFL’s Multicultural Round.

“The bottom line is that in a multicultural society we are all multicultural,” Dr Syson said.

“We all have ethnic and cultural baggage that sets us up in relation to the fluid process that we call multicultural Australia.

“We are all in it together and none of the imported cultures deserve the priority that is the privilege of the truly indigenous”.

The AFL understands that lower meat pie, beer, ticket and merchandise prices might all make the experience for families at AFL games easier, but the only thing that will make it truly inclusive is a zero tolerance attitude to vilification from fans on any grounds.

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