On February 10, several weeks before Jamarra Ugle-Hagan reprised Nicky Winmar’s famed 1993 gesture by pointing to his skin in defiance of racist abuse, a large group of teammates from that day gathered at Moorabbin and quietly paid their own private tribute to Winmar.
St Kilda greats Robert Harvey, Nathan Burke and Stewart Loewe were among the 16 teammates from round four, 1993, who went to the St Kilda Football Club’s home to honour the teammate they usually called “Cuz.”
Nicky Winmar and Jamarra Ugle-Hagan.Credit:Wayne Ludbey; Getty Images
It is a measure of the power of Winmar’s moment – and his expression of pride in his heritage, against the appalling racism he and Gilbert McAdam copped that afternoon at Victoria Park – that only five of the 21 living players from that team did not make it for the team’s anniversary and barbeque, in which the Collingwood game was replayed on a TV screen. The team’s skipper, the late Danny Frawley, was represented by his wife Anita.
At the suggestion of Russell “Fly” Morris, the ex-Hawk who had moved to St Kilda, Winmar’s teammates sat down and lifted up their shirts – exposing abdomen that, with few exceptions (Loewe one) were much less ribbed than in ’93.
The teammates imitated Winmar’s act whilst posing for a photograph by Wayne Ludbey, the same snapper whose picture of Winmar at Victoria Park became a watershed in the AFL’s – and much of the country’s – understanding of how Indigenous footballers and people were subjected to racist slurs.
Andrew Plympton, the 1993 St Kilda president who also attended the recent reunion, noted that no one at St Kilda had understood the enormity of Winmar’s act on the day it happened. But, 30 years later, those teammates knew now what Winmar’s pointed gesture encapsulated. It is a self-explanatory image, understood without words; it is an image that grew into something larger, into legend and into the imagination of a 21-year-old Gunditjmara (western Victoria) man who was the first selected in the 2020 national draft by the Western Bulldogs.
On Thursday night, Ugle-Hagan invoked the spirit of Winmar by uplifting his jumper and pointing to his skin after booting the first goal. Ugle-Hagan’s replication of Winmar was a response to two separate racist incidents he had encountered, the first that he heard over the fence, from a woman at Marvel Stadium ]against the Saints five days earlier, the second a toxic direct message that landed anonymously, in his Instagram account later that night.
Unlike Winmar, Ugle-Hagan was responding five days after he copped the racist abuse, rather than on the day. As with Winmar, he surmounted the abuse and produced his best football (booting five of the Bulldogs’ 10 goals) on the day of his gesture.
The stark differences and strong parallels between the Winmar incident and its successor last Thursday (and the previous Saturday when Ugle-Hagan was abused) highlight where the racial and Indigenous landscape has – and hasn’t – shifted over the intervening decades, within football and Australian society.
First, the parallels. A talented Indigenous footballer was forced to endure racism at his workplace, from over the fence, in a way that degrades all of us. It became known the following day, with Ugle-Hagan’s mother, Alice, having made the abuse public on a Facebook post. As with Winmar, the player was upset and needed time away from the club.
Like Winmar, he stood up proudly and produced a brilliant on-field retort.
In 1993, there had been a shift in the zeitgeist for Indigenous Australians, Winmar’s action having been preceded by Paul Keating’s Redfern speech only months earlier and the Mabo case. There had been an awakening of sorts, albeit from a low base of interest.
Ugle-Hagan’s time, too, has a backdrop of a political shift, as the Albanese government attempts to introduce an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, while Australians increasingly display heightened awareness of the First Nations peoples.
For some Australians, these parallels 30 years apart suggest that racism remains prevalent, that there still are insufficient measures against bigotry, and that the AFL – despite education, public campaigning and the huge growth in Indigenous player ranks since 1993 – continues to face embarrassing outbreaks of prejudice, from Taylor Walker’s comments to the Ugle-Hagan incident.
But if the parallels are depressing – described as a case of “one step forward, two steps back” by Nathan Lovett-Murray, the ex-Bomber and Gunditjmara man who spoke to Ugle-Hagan last week – the differences are also telling.
Ugle-Hagan was abused by one woman. Winmar was abused by many Collingwood fans over the fence. Ugle-Hagan was subsequently subjected to a further attack on social media, via a direct message. Social media was not even a glint in Mark Zuckerberg’s eye when Winmar was abused. On Thursday, the Bulldogs had posted Jamarra’s Winmar imitation on their social media pages by quarter-time.
That Winmar’s action was an anti-racist stand was disputed in its immediate aftermath, despite Ludbey’s testimony. The photographer and Nick Place, the journalist who wrote the accompanying story in this masthead, convinced the editors to place it prominently. Winmar’s words to the abusers, long-since accepted as the accurate version, “I’m proud to be black” were quoted.
St Kilda and the AFL have searched, vainly, to identify Ugle-Hagan’s abuser. In 1993, Collingwood did not even ponder such a step and, indeed, their president at the time, the late Allan McAlister, followed with his remark – staggering then, let alone now – that “as long as they [Indigenous people] conduct themselves like white people, well, off the field, everyone will respect and admire [them].”
Ugle-Hagan was comforted in his ordeal by the Bulldogs, and their Indigenous development officer Lachy Edwards. Winmar had the help of the late John King, who filled that role at St Kilda in a less formal manner, and of McAdam. The media was united in condemnation of Ugle-Hagan’s abusers – which was definitely not so in ’93.
“If you go back 30 years ago, it was just overt prejudice,” said Jason Mifsud, who ran the AFL’s Indigenous portfolio from 2007 until 2016, was an assistant coach at the relevant clubs, St Kilda and the Dogs, is a fellow Gunditjmara man and cousin of Ugle-Hagan via their mothers’ families.
“The condemnation from the media alone is a significant shift.”
The Dogs held a smoking ceremony at the club as part of Ugle-Hagan’s healing. Winmar took leave from the Saints.
He told The Age five years ago that he and his family needed security guards to escort them from Victoria Park, that he had been spat on down the race, and that he did not go home, he and his wife staying at Ian “Molly” Meldrum’s place that night.
Winmar’s gesture was novel. It is possible that he drew inspiration from others, such as Chris Lewis of West Coast, who had confronted virulent racism. But he did not have the range of role models that Ugle-Hagan could call upon – Adam Goodes, Eddie Betts and of course, Winmar, to mention a few.
“He was upset, but he wanted to get out let his football do the talking,” Lovett-Murray, who worked with the Saints, said of his conversation with Ugle-Hagan, whom the ex-Bomber had coached in a junior team. Lovett-Murray said the Indigenous Olympian Nova Peris had pushed for life bans for fans who abused players in this way. “That’s a good call. It can’t keep happening.”
The locus of racial abuse in 2023 is not in the stands, but on the internet, where the troll’s identity is hidden. Mifsud, who played reserves for the Saints that day in ’93, reckons there has been major shift in public attitudes to race and Indigenous people, citing a Reconciliation Australia survey that found 87 per cent of those surveyed had “a deepening interest” in Indigenous history, heritage and culture.
“Society has changed,” said Mifsud, who contends that the AFL could do much more in Indigenous/race relations. “And we’re the better for it.”
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