Last week, the Australian Football League (AFL)’s most decorated indigenous player, Adam Goodes, declined an invitation to be inducted into the Australian Football Hall of Fame. It was a protest against the vicious racism to which Goodes was subjected during the final years of his career.

That racism forced Goodes into early retirement at the end of the 2015 season, bringing an end to his club record–breaking 372-game career with the Sydney Swans. “The treatment of Adam in his final years at AFL level drove him from football,” acknowledged AFL commissioner Richard Goyder, who also sits on the Hall of Fame committee. As he continued:

The AFL and our game did not do enough to stand with him at the time, and call it out. The unreserved apology that the game provided him in 2019 was too late, but on behalf of our Commission and the AFL, I apologize unreservedly again for our failures during this period. Failure to call out racism and not standing up for Adam let down all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander players, past and present.