He was paid to drop the case.
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Pardon my ignorance - how much support do indigenous players that were born and raised in major cities need? Are these initiatives more targeted specifically at indigenous players that grew up in remote areas?
Absolutely, youâll find plenty of other non aboriginals that arenât offered the same support, shall we create a group for them as well.
Should all be based around individual needs!!!
Wait a minute⌠Iâd have thought plenty of non-aboriginal players are offered the support they need. Jake Stringer had some behavioral issues earlier in his career. He needed help and the club provided.
Youâre right when you say it should be needs based. But do you take issue with a program that offers specific support for indigenous players?
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Itâs @Brady. Der.
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Brady absolutely does
heâs the blitz universe counter point to ⌠me 
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âWhite lives matterâ.
It writes itself.
Iâd say look at health, education and economic outcomes of indigenous Australians and itâs fair to say if we want people to leave Essendon âa better personâ then resources on supporting all indigenous players is appropriate.
And of course itâs not exclusionary, but data tells a very sad tale of disparity in this country.
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True, he is⌠but you are not alone!
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Totally agree with all of that.
Iâm just wondering how the two groups compare (remote vs non-remote). Iâd argue that we all need help, especially in our younger days. And yeah, the disparity is a shocker.
I canât answer that specific question with any specificity sorry. But it would be interesting to get some data from across the league comparing success of remote vs city vs father son etcâŚ.I suspect the remote and non-pro football families would find it toughest.
Hmmm here we go, someone is triggered 
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Good grief, a 4 month bump by the one and only forum racist
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With the Sir Doug Nicholls round upon us, I was wondering how the club is going with its support of First Nations people.
18 months ago, I was excited by what the club was doing on this front. It had recruited 3 young Aboriginal players (ADJ, Jayden and Munkara), had recruited an Aboriginal board member (Dean Rioli), had recruited several ex and current Aboriginal players (Paddy Ryder and Quinton Narkle) to support the development of Aboriginal players and brought back AMT.
12 months later Rioli, Ryder, Narkle, AMT and Munkara are all gone. We have recruited Gresham, who is Yorta Yorta, but I am not sure what else has been done to address the support structures that had been introduced in 2023.
While I am happy with how we are going on field and wouldnât want to distract from that, this other aspect is important too. I would hate to see another Dreamtime pre-match with such a disparity between the 2 clubs in the connection to Aboriginal culture as I saw a few years ago (2022, I think).
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Your post has some similar flaws to the clubâs new First Nations Hub, in that it focuses on numbers only, and from a subset of the club.
I think (for example) Prespakis is somewhat marketable/influential.
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Youâre right, and I apologise for the oversight. I guess in my defence, I was listing actions/initiatives that the club had been promoting in 2023, and you have highlighted another gap.
It is a shame because it is a missed opportunity for the club.
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My point is we have ~150 players across our various squads, and a crapload of staff as well. The pressure to carry culture should not fall on four players.
Iâm not saying the omissions you list are insignificant. But losing leaders like Clifford and Ugle (in title as captains, and in sheer force of personality) is at least as significant. Noting also that we previously had Ugle and TIPPA in community development roles; those two were cheat code-level for building support.
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Itâs all good and well to be hiring good people to your club to change the culture.
But from my experience, good people wonât stick around long if they arenât being heard or respected. Good people will see through the âtick boxâ or public perception approach. This is a leadership problem. It needs to be embedded by the board, CEO and executives.
As DJR said, You canât expect 2-3 staff to carry the load and change the culture of the entire club, if they havenât been given the power.
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I hope that this means that we agree, but that you are much more informed than me.
I wasnât saying that the changes in 2023 were an endpoint, merely that it showed the club was trying to improve its efforts in this area. The club seems to have gone significantly backwards since then.
There is a lot of spin coming from all AFL clubs during the Sir Doug Nicholls round, but bringing about real change is harder than that and needs a genuine and prolonged commitment to the issue.
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