"Do Better" review made public

[BBHS]

Will they being doing reviews of every single club in the competition or only it's most high profile?

[BEAMER09]

[5 from the wing on debut]

I've just read the report. There's no doubt that it was needed and that there are changes that need to occur. it was surprising that whilst there has been a bullying and harassment policy for many years, there was no racism policy at the club until 2020. Previous CEO's have been asleep at the wheel.

My thoughts on the first quick reading of the report are:

1. It's not very well written. It's poorly structured, rambling and repeats itself in many places.

2. Thirty witnesses were said to be spoken to but they are anonymous. This puts enormous weight on the conclusions drawn by the authors. It's a case of "you don't need to know the detail, we do, just trust us that we are right".

3. The report starts out as an investigation into the history of racism at Collingwood and then seeks to make recommendations in relation to that. Along the way the authors seemed to forget what their task actually was. What actually occurs in the report is a focus on indigenous people, as if they are more important than any other group - how they should be recruited to the club in both playing and non playing capacities (apparently we should have an indigenous specific recruiting pipeline) and how the club should have coaching positions and job opportunities for them when they retire. To give the authors some credit, they do throw in the occasional mention of recent African descended people too.

4. Authors of reports like this like saying buzzwords such as "KPI's". KPI's has quite a few mentions. One, in relation to recruiting to make sure that we recruit players that are not racists. Good luck with that. Will the recruits at draft camp be asked to tick a box asking them if they are Nazis?

5. The lack of the authors historical knowledge of football is apparent.There is a timeline of racism at Collingwood with the first allegation being when Syd Jackson was booed during the 70 GF. It is stated by thec authors that this was due to racism - when the fact was that only a couple of weeks before Jackson had lied to the Tribunal about being racially vilified by Lee Adamson, and was therefore cleared of his striking charge and was able to play in the GF. Many of our supporters knew then that Jackson had lied, and a few decades later he admitted it, and it was well publicised. Glaring errors by the authors such as this puts into doubt what I referred to in paragraph 2 above.

[Mr Miyagi]

[Mr Miyagi]

Re: Jackson lying to get off a striking charge. Not the same issue of lying, but I distinctly remember Winmar saying he was pointing to his guts, it took guts, not the colour of his skin. He still copped awful racial abuse though so it’s semantics. It’s an example of media changing the narrative and not researching deeply enough.

[MatthewBoydFanClub]

Obviously now the wolves are out. Having read the report I think the criticisms are a bit vague. To say it started with Syd Jackson is a bit rich given that Syd admitted he lied at the tribunal to get off his striking charge. I don't think systematic racism exists at the Collingwood Football Club and if it does it's no more prevalent than any of the other AFL clubs. Now that the report is out we just have to wear it. And we need to implement every one of the recommendations in the report and there will need to be an oversight committee set up at board level to ensure this happens. But for people like Gary Lyon in the media to scream out that Eddie should resign immediately is ridiculous. He's already resigned and it will take the following months for the club to complete the process of finding his replacement.

[stui magpie]

I actually think it's a pretty good report. Yeah the language is a bit rambly and clearly written by academics but it hits all the right marks.

Apart from all the recommendations, there's a table of responsibilities for each and implementation timetable.

The opening paragraph on page 29 under the heading "A Final Thought"

[BEAMER09]

Culture under Ed and Bucks has not been good for a long time...AND that's were it starts...

[think positive]

[think positive]

[MatthewBoydFanClub]

[PyreneesPie]

[think positive]

[Dr Pie]

I haven't had time to read the report yet so I will post more later but I want to make three brief comments.

In the early 2000s I thought Mick Malthouse and Eddie had determined to turn the club around on racism, but it was only Mick. Conversation some years ago with a player who was at the club in the 2000s made it clear that Mick was encouraging Leon Davis in the hope that having an indigenous Magpie star might change some supporters attitude. Mick has always been anti-racist and the Eagles were supportive of indigenous players in the nineties and the drug rubbish and poor behaviour mostly happened under Worsfold.

Key players at Collingwood, particularly in the 90s did not understand racism at all. Remember McAlister's comments during the Winmar affair? Tony Shaw as coach, even when it was one of our players (Robbie Ah Mat) being vilified still repeated the outdated rubbish "what is said on the field stays on the field"

I believe at heart Eddie is not racist, but he cannot control his mouth when he is "being one of the boys." In many ways he was a good President but he would have been a better one if he had a day job that allowed him to edit his comments rather than blurt first and regret later.

[David]