One of the most enjoyable parts of being a sports fan is telling stories about what happens on the playing field. A victory can be lionised as a tale of redemption or the realisation of a lifelong quest. A loss can be described as a great fall from grace or a tragic tale of what nearly-was. Fans celebrate loudest when there's an ending we can appreciate, such as when a favourite hero achieves a fairytale victory, or when a perceived villain gets their just desserts.
The problem with creating stories around sport is that we can sometimes lose sight of the real human beings involved. At worst, a particular story can be damaging to an athlete's life.
Over the weekend, Adam Goodes announced his retirement from AFL football. There have been two competing stories being told about Adam Goodes in recent years.
One is of a player with a unique set of footballing gifts, who achieved everything that a person could want to achieve in his chosen endeavour and became a role model for many Australians both Indigenous and non-Indigenous.
He was outspoken on racial issues, calling out racist remarks whether they were made by club presidents or people in the stands. This provoked the ire of those who didn't like their sport being politicised, and perhaps didn't like their racist attitudes being challenged, and so he was booed relentlessly by sections of the crowd each week. A great player, and an exemplary person off the field, he was undeserving of such treatment.
A second story contained some of those details, but emphasised different points. It made pains to point out that the fan Goodes singled out in the stands was just 12 years old, and didn't understand what she'd said. It ignored his subsequent statements discouraging people from victimising the girl, and the many other times he'd been racially abused by adults who knew exactly what they were saying.
Instead of seeing a player adapting his game to cope with his diminishing physical attributes, this story focused on particular aggressive acts and staging for free kicks to label him a 'dirty player'. The boos were justified because they were directed not at him as an Aboriginal, but at his on-field actions.
The two stories came to a head a few weeks ago, when the detrimental effect the booing was having on Goodes and his fellow Indigenous players became clear. The AFL did everything it could to