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A man of his people
March 27, 2004
Swan Adam Goodes in action against the Blues and, right, Goodes and his mother, Lisa May, proudly display his Brownlow Medal.
Pictures: Getty Images, Ken Irwin
Brownlow medallist Adam Goodes now has the profile to tackle issues bigger than football, reports Martin Blake.
Standing on the stage at the Palladium in September with the Brownlow Medal around his neck, Adam Goodes looked and sounded like a spokesman for his people, the type of leader his people crave.
And it was no mirage. Goodes starts another AFL season in Brisbane tonight as one of the premier players in the country; moreover, his eloquence and dignity make him potentially the best spokesman for Aboriginal people that the AFL has produced since Michael Long, who now works as an ambassador for the league.
Sydney's jack-in-the-box ruck-forward spends a day of each week chasing a Diploma in Aboriginal Studies at Eora College in Sydney's inner-west, driving through the ugly visage of Redfern along the way.
With a firm knowledge of his past - he hails from the Yutnamatana people around Port Augusta and Port Pirie, and his mother is one of the Stolen Generation - Goodes is eager to learn more and to speak out about injustice. But like Long, whose flat refusal to accept racial taunts in the 1990s led to one of the most significant moral shifts in the league's history, Goodes is able to speak with a moderate tone that helps his cause.
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He has acknowledged that Prime Minister John Howard will not personally apologise to the Aboriginal people. But nowadays, he claims to understand why, and he believes his people need to shift their focus. "It's very hard for John Howard to say 'sorry', but I know the reasons behind it," Goodes said. "Before I started this course, I didn't know those reasons. We need to get more Aboriginal people educated about the issues we do have out there. That's where the breakdown is. One thing I've learned from school is that there's two points of view, and you have to look at both views before you come to some sort of conclusion."
Goodes despairs at the living conditions of his fellow Aboriginal people and wants to see change. "For him (Howard) to say 'sorry', there's a whole lot of other things that need to be dealt with, like reconciliation between the Aboriginal people themselves," he said. "That needs to happen because the way the Aboriginal people out there treat each other, it's not pretty, it's not good. Out in the remote areas, you've got Aboriginal kids getting sexually harassed and things like that. There are bigger issues. Those issues, like health, are more important than John Howard saying 'sorry'. He's not going to say it. So there's other issues that need to be brought before the public through the media. There are Aboriginal people out there living in the equivalent of Third World countries or worse."
To hear a mere footballer speak out so clearly is to know how far the AFL has come with reconciliation. To see his prolonged embrace with Adelaide's Andrew McLeod in an anteroom at Crown a few hours after Goodes had tied for the game's most prestigious individual award with Nathan Buckley and Mark Ricciuto is to know what a strong bond Aboriginal players share.
Goodes has an aunt who has documents that trace the family line, and he has family still living in South Australia who keep him up to speed. And much of his inspiration comes from his mother, Lisa May, who raised him and two younger brothers, Jake and Brett, alone after separating from her husband Graeme when Adam was four. Lisa was his date at the Brownlow night, shedding tears before partying long into the night. She had been taken from her parents at the age of five and raised at Point Pearce in South Australia by an English family, who treated her well.
Lisa May grew up believing her parents were dead, only to hear of her mother's death many years later. She moved from South Australia to Merbein, near Mildura, then settled at Horsham, where Adam began to make his name as a player and graduated from the TAC Cup with North Ballarat Rebels.
She said last year that she had been "mum and dad for Adam", adding that Goodes had needed to grow up quickly. To this day, he is in awe of what she achieved. "How she still is the person that she is today, after what she has been through, it gives me great belief that no matter what happens to me, I can still come out on top," he said.
Goodes saw the award-winning film Rabbit Proof Fence, about three sisters taken from their family in Western Australia, twice. He was profoundly moved. "It's a very telling movie, for me, in the context of the same thing exactly happening to my mum. It's sad and at the same time it's a good learning tool for most people out there because they've got no idea."
His mother implores him not to change too much with the money and the adulation. He doesn't see it as any sort of issue. "If I do start to change in any shape, my brothers, my family and friends will cut me back into line. That's what you need, people who care about you enough to approach you and say something."
For all his deep thinking, he is not a politician; he is first of all a footballer at this point of his life. The Brisbane Lions will have spent long hours this week working out a strategy to combat his mix of athleticism and football skill, for he is the modern-day Anthony Koutoufides, proficient both above his head and below his knees, an extra onballer when the ball hits the ground.
Leigh Matthews won't be thrilled to know that a trouble-free pre-season has enabled him to add three kilograms of bulk compared with this time last year, a statistic he believes will help him compete with bigger men at the stoppages. "He's just going to go to another level from what I've seen," said Stuart Maxfield, Sydney's skipper and a gym rat himself.
Sydney has set all its players a target of improving individually, and Goodes is on that path himself. Can he top such a stellar year? It is hard to see how. But he wants to improve his goalkicking (20.17 last year) and take more contested marks this year.
Coach Paul Roos won't be muzzling him, for the Swans have long since realised that he did not respond well to Rodney Eade's previous approach. Eade once said that Goodes was "playing like a Harlem Globetrotter" in his time with the club, and it was Roos' assistant Peter Jonas, the former North Melbourne forward, who changed the tone when he arrived at the club last year. Jonas said he wanted the Swans to let Goodes flow. The results were patently obvious. "He's a free spirit," said Jonas. "He's like a big kid running around the park having a kick. The more restrictions you put on someone like that, the more inhibited they are."
Goodes knows all about the post-Brownlow blues that have struck down many fine players, but he isn't about to take it on board. He says it struck him the night of Sydney's best-and-fairest count when he saw Bob Skilton and Fred Goldsmith, previous South Melbourne Brownlow winners, and how it was "'like they'd won it again themselves". When he was announced that night as "Adam Goodes, Brownlow medallist", the crowd cheered. "That's when you realise it's something special," he said. "As soon as you use it as a negative, what's the point of even saying you won it? No matter how hard the season will be as an individual or the team, I'm never going to blame anything on last year."
The 24-year-old spent the last part of 2003 in South America, travelling to meet up with teammates Matthew Nicks, Andrew Schauble and Michael O'Loughlin in Buenos Aires. They went twice to see Boca Juniors, the club that spawned Diego Maradona, in action, for Goodes played soccer as a boy and loves the game.
Sitting in the "generales" seats at two pesos a pop, Goodes bought a Boca shirt and stripped down to don the famous blue and gold jersey, only to see the T-shirt he had been wearing was now adorning a man immediately behind him. He shrugged his shoulders, but he could be in no doubt that the man was wearing his shirt. They don't sell too many Rabbit Proof Fence T-shirts in Argentina.
March 27, 2004
Swan Adam Goodes in action against the Blues and, right, Goodes and his mother, Lisa May, proudly display his Brownlow Medal.
Pictures: Getty Images, Ken Irwin
Brownlow medallist Adam Goodes now has the profile to tackle issues bigger than football, reports Martin Blake.
Standing on the stage at the Palladium in September with the Brownlow Medal around his neck, Adam Goodes looked and sounded like a spokesman for his people, the type of leader his people crave.
And it was no mirage. Goodes starts another AFL season in Brisbane tonight as one of the premier players in the country; moreover, his eloquence and dignity make him potentially the best spokesman for Aboriginal people that the AFL has produced since Michael Long, who now works as an ambassador for the league.
Sydney's jack-in-the-box ruck-forward spends a day of each week chasing a Diploma in Aboriginal Studies at Eora College in Sydney's inner-west, driving through the ugly visage of Redfern along the way.
With a firm knowledge of his past - he hails from the Yutnamatana people around Port Augusta and Port Pirie, and his mother is one of the Stolen Generation - Goodes is eager to learn more and to speak out about injustice. But like Long, whose flat refusal to accept racial taunts in the 1990s led to one of the most significant moral shifts in the league's history, Goodes is able to speak with a moderate tone that helps his cause.
advertisement
advertisement
He has acknowledged that Prime Minister John Howard will not personally apologise to the Aboriginal people. But nowadays, he claims to understand why, and he believes his people need to shift their focus. "It's very hard for John Howard to say 'sorry', but I know the reasons behind it," Goodes said. "Before I started this course, I didn't know those reasons. We need to get more Aboriginal people educated about the issues we do have out there. That's where the breakdown is. One thing I've learned from school is that there's two points of view, and you have to look at both views before you come to some sort of conclusion."
Goodes despairs at the living conditions of his fellow Aboriginal people and wants to see change. "For him (Howard) to say 'sorry', there's a whole lot of other things that need to be dealt with, like reconciliation between the Aboriginal people themselves," he said. "That needs to happen because the way the Aboriginal people out there treat each other, it's not pretty, it's not good. Out in the remote areas, you've got Aboriginal kids getting sexually harassed and things like that. There are bigger issues. Those issues, like health, are more important than John Howard saying 'sorry'. He's not going to say it. So there's other issues that need to be brought before the public through the media. There are Aboriginal people out there living in the equivalent of Third World countries or worse."
To hear a mere footballer speak out so clearly is to know how far the AFL has come with reconciliation. To see his prolonged embrace with Adelaide's Andrew McLeod in an anteroom at Crown a few hours after Goodes had tied for the game's most prestigious individual award with Nathan Buckley and Mark Ricciuto is to know what a strong bond Aboriginal players share.
Goodes has an aunt who has documents that trace the family line, and he has family still living in South Australia who keep him up to speed. And much of his inspiration comes from his mother, Lisa May, who raised him and two younger brothers, Jake and Brett, alone after separating from her husband Graeme when Adam was four. Lisa was his date at the Brownlow night, shedding tears before partying long into the night. She had been taken from her parents at the age of five and raised at Point Pearce in South Australia by an English family, who treated her well.
Lisa May grew up believing her parents were dead, only to hear of her mother's death many years later. She moved from South Australia to Merbein, near Mildura, then settled at Horsham, where Adam began to make his name as a player and graduated from the TAC Cup with North Ballarat Rebels.
She said last year that she had been "mum and dad for Adam", adding that Goodes had needed to grow up quickly. To this day, he is in awe of what she achieved. "How she still is the person that she is today, after what she has been through, it gives me great belief that no matter what happens to me, I can still come out on top," he said.
Goodes saw the award-winning film Rabbit Proof Fence, about three sisters taken from their family in Western Australia, twice. He was profoundly moved. "It's a very telling movie, for me, in the context of the same thing exactly happening to my mum. It's sad and at the same time it's a good learning tool for most people out there because they've got no idea."
His mother implores him not to change too much with the money and the adulation. He doesn't see it as any sort of issue. "If I do start to change in any shape, my brothers, my family and friends will cut me back into line. That's what you need, people who care about you enough to approach you and say something."
For all his deep thinking, he is not a politician; he is first of all a footballer at this point of his life. The Brisbane Lions will have spent long hours this week working out a strategy to combat his mix of athleticism and football skill, for he is the modern-day Anthony Koutoufides, proficient both above his head and below his knees, an extra onballer when the ball hits the ground.
Leigh Matthews won't be thrilled to know that a trouble-free pre-season has enabled him to add three kilograms of bulk compared with this time last year, a statistic he believes will help him compete with bigger men at the stoppages. "He's just going to go to another level from what I've seen," said Stuart Maxfield, Sydney's skipper and a gym rat himself.
Sydney has set all its players a target of improving individually, and Goodes is on that path himself. Can he top such a stellar year? It is hard to see how. But he wants to improve his goalkicking (20.17 last year) and take more contested marks this year.
Coach Paul Roos won't be muzzling him, for the Swans have long since realised that he did not respond well to Rodney Eade's previous approach. Eade once said that Goodes was "playing like a Harlem Globetrotter" in his time with the club, and it was Roos' assistant Peter Jonas, the former North Melbourne forward, who changed the tone when he arrived at the club last year. Jonas said he wanted the Swans to let Goodes flow. The results were patently obvious. "He's a free spirit," said Jonas. "He's like a big kid running around the park having a kick. The more restrictions you put on someone like that, the more inhibited they are."
Goodes knows all about the post-Brownlow blues that have struck down many fine players, but he isn't about to take it on board. He says it struck him the night of Sydney's best-and-fairest count when he saw Bob Skilton and Fred Goldsmith, previous South Melbourne Brownlow winners, and how it was "'like they'd won it again themselves". When he was announced that night as "Adam Goodes, Brownlow medallist", the crowd cheered. "That's when you realise it's something special," he said. "As soon as you use it as a negative, what's the point of even saying you won it? No matter how hard the season will be as an individual or the team, I'm never going to blame anything on last year."
The 24-year-old spent the last part of 2003 in South America, travelling to meet up with teammates Matthew Nicks, Andrew Schauble and Michael O'Loughlin in Buenos Aires. They went twice to see Boca Juniors, the club that spawned Diego Maradona, in action, for Goodes played soccer as a boy and loves the game.
Sitting in the "generales" seats at two pesos a pop, Goodes bought a Boca shirt and stripped down to don the famous blue and gold jersey, only to see the T-shirt he had been wearing was now adorning a man immediately behind him. He shrugged his shoulders, but he could be in no doubt that the man was wearing his shirt. They don't sell too many Rabbit Proof Fence T-shirts in Argentina.
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