AFL greats say they wish the sport had done more to stand up for booed Swans legend Adam Goodes, as a documentary on the final years of his football career was broadcast for the first time, reports The Age’s Rachel Eddie.
The Final Quarter aired on Channel 10 on Thursday, and was met on social media with admiration for the two-time Brownlow medallist, and shame for the way he was treated before his retirement from AFL in 2015.
After the film, made up solely of archival footage and directed by Ian Darling, players spoke out to say the AFL did not do enough to stand against racism at the time.
Former Swans teammate Jude Bolton said the code’s “silence was deafening”.
“The overarching sort of feelings and emotions during that film was just the immense sadness, but then just the extreme anger,” Bolton said in a The Project special hosted by Waleed Aly after the documentary.
Another film on Goodes, The Australian Dream, from Stan Grant, will air at the Melbourne International Film Festival next month.
In that documentary, Goodes revisits the incident some believe sparked the campaign against him, when he called out a 13-year-old Collingwood fan after she labelled him an “ape” during the 2013 Indigenous round.