It’s a day etched into Australian sporting folklore for all the wrong reasons.
Next week I Was Actually There recalls the moment on a footy field where Nicky Winmar, a proud Noongar man, called out racism.
Thanks to stellar performances from Indigenous AFL stars, Nicky Winmar and Gilbert McAdam, St Kilda downed Collingwood at their home ground, Victoria Park, for the first time since 1976.
Winmar sealed the match with a stunning 60 metre strike and McAdam kicked five goals — while being hurled with relentless racist abuse.
“Swearing at you, spitting at you, calling you everything under the sun, which I won’t repeat,” McAdam recalls, adding that abuse was far from an exception in those days.
“Every club tried it, don’t worry,” he says. As the siren sounded, Winmar faced Collingwood fans, lifted his shirt, pointed his middle finger at his stomach, and uttered the now immortal phrase, “I’m black and I’m proud to be black.”
“I just got sick of it. I just wanted to show them the colour of my skin and who I was,” Winmar says.
Yet the gesture was nearly missed. Had it not been for the quick thinking of two young sports photographers, Wayne Ludbey and John Feder, Nicky Winmar’s stand would never have been captured. “There’s no footage of it, the commentators didn’t address it.
It was left to John and I to record, as it turns out, a very significant moment in history,” recalls Ludbey.
This episode confronts the complexity of that moment and the trauma Winmar, McAdam and their peers have endured. “
It gets me a bit emotional talking to people about that day, and what happened, the bad and the good side,” Winmar says. It asks audiences to reflect on the treatment of Indigenous sports stars — then and now.
Interviewees:
Marlene – Diehard Collingwood fan who was at the game and witnessed racism in the crowd
Joy Damousi – Collingwood fan who was at the game and later withdrew from the club Kate Ring – St Kilda fan who was at the game with her brother
James Ring – St Kilda fan who was at the game with his sister
Alan Richardson – Collingwood player marking Nicky on the day
Nicky Winmar – Noongar man and St Kilda player who stood up to racial abuse
Gilbert McAdam – Arrente/Kija man and St Kilda player who also experienced racism Peter ‘Spida’ Everitt – St Kilda rookie who was later involved in a racial vilification incident Wayne Ludbey – Photographer for the Sunday Age who captured Winmar’s stand
John Feder – Photographer for the Sunday Herald-Sun who captured the same moment
Nick Place – Journalist at the Sunday Age who wrote the article accompanying Ludbey’s photo
8pm Tuesday on ABC.
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