Almanac Book Review: Nicky Winmar with Matthew Hardy, Nicky Winmar My Story: From Bush Kid to AFL Legend.

 

 

Nicky Winmar with Matthew Hardy, Nicky Winmar My Story: From Bush Kid To AFL Legend, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2023, viii + 312 pp, paper, $34.99.

 

 

Most autobiographies by famous sporting stars provide extensive material on their sporting exploits on the field and pieces of information associated with their life prior to and after their playing career. This book turns this approach on its head. At one level it is a book about a person who happened to be a skilled footballer trying to navigate his way through life. But it is even more than that. It is a book about an Indigenous Australian trying to make sense of living in a racist society. This is a book about hatred, pain, sadness and suffering.

 

Neil Elvis (Nicky) Winmar did something on the football field after the final siren had blown which is possibly the most iconic moment in the history of Australian rules football, if not Australia itself. He and fellow Indigenous player Gilbert McAdam turned out for St. Kilda in a game against Collingwood at Collingwood’s home ground at Victoria Park on Saturday 17 April 1993. At half time in the reserves game they decided to walk out on the ground to examine the playing surface. As they did they encountered a torrent of abuse from the Collingwood cheer squad that neither of them had experienced before. They were also spat upon and showered with urine.

 

After returning to the rooms Gilbert McAdam said to Nicky Winmar

 

Brother, we have got to do something today. We can’t put up with this crap. We have got to make a statement. We will show this mob…we’ve got to make them quiet. Me and you have got to get best on ground out here. The only way we can stick it up them is to be better than everyone else and to win this game. You and I need to lead the way.

 

And they did. Both players starred in what was a rare win for the Saints against the Pies at Victoria Park. Winmar describes what followed as the players prepared to leave the ground at the end of the game.

 

As we walked from the ground, victorious at Victoria Park, the sound coming from the Collingwood supporters scared me, and I don’t jump at shadows.

 

The twisted faces of hostile hatred, the spittle-flying fury, the threats I’ll never forget, all aimed directly my way, combined into a scenario that still makes me shudder. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want them to see how I was genuinely afraid for my safety, worrying that I might not get out alive (truly, that thought ran through my mind). The words ‘black c*nt’ swarmed my way like locusts, from the mouths of thousands, and I thought I might throw up.

 

Then my dad’s words came back to me. ‘Don’t take no shit from nobody,’ he used to say, and so I lifted my St. Kilda footy jumper with one hand, and pointed to my skin with the other hand.

 

‘I’m black and I’m proud to be black,’ I shouted – for the crowd for myself and for my ancestors.

 

For the next ten seconds, I stood still, holding that pose in a moment of pure power. I hadn’t planned the response, but it felt like…love…which always wins over hate. It felt like I sent a message to my elders, and from my elders, past present and emerging. It felt like the land I stood on owned me, and I, in turn, owned the land.

 

Winmar’s stance was photographed and his statement ‘I’m black and I’m proud to be black’ was shown and reported in the media and set off broader discussions concerning the situation of Aboriginal people in Australian rules football, sport and Australia more broadly. It is an issue which was with us prior to 17 April 1993, and will be presumably with us for all time.

 

While Winmar provides details of his stellar football career which includes being inducted into the AFL’s Hall of Fame in 2022, most of My Story provides details of the racism and discrimination experienced by himself and his family and numerous references to the broader experience of Aboriginal peoples since the arrival of the British in 1788. With respect to the former he points out to how he is always on edge fearing another racist slight or attack. He reports how as a child his mother was always worried that he and his siblings would be taken away when a carload of whites turned up where they lived. He is generous in his praise of other leading Indigenous individuals who have been successful in various sports, the arts, the media, entertainment and the arts. He also signals out other players who have stood up against racism; Gilbert McAdam of course and Michael Long, Adam Goodes and Jamarra Ugle-Hagan. And for Saints fans he provides information on his time with the Saints and legendary players he played with.

 

Winmar is quite candid in acknowledging the follies of his early playing days, his drinking and womanising. He fears that the concussions he experienced as a player have left him with brain damage.

 

Winmar told Wayne Ludbey, one of the photographers who snapped his lifting of his jumper and pointing to his skin, that in talking about and recalling what happened ‘I’m having to embrace possibly one of the worst days of my life over and over again.’ Winmar says he is innately shy and does not like public speaking. He talks about having an internal feeling of being unmoored. People often talk to him about his footy career and that moment on 17 April 1993. He says:

 

It’s a privilege to be remembered for any positive contribution you might make to society but it can make you feel you have been frozen in time. Like your current day self is not worthy of the adulation or the recognition your historical self earned…I’m happy that people give a shit about me, but in my mind it’s for who I was rather than who I am.

 

Despite his shyness and diffidence Nicky Winmar keeps on being honoured and celebrated. On 6 July 2019, a 2.75 meter statue of that iconic moment was unveiled at Optus Stadium in Perth. Gillon Mc Lachlan, the then CEO of the AFL said

 

There are moments in sport that capture the public imagination and go beyond the game – and Nicky Winmar’s defiant stance proclaiming his pride about his Aboriginality is one of those moments. It helped change our game, and I hope, change our country. We are proud of this statue.

 

Sport is at its most interesting when it is not about sport. Nicky Winmar My Story: From Bush Kid To AFL Legend is an outstanding example of this. It is about how a spontaneous gesture by a shy First Nations man produced one of the most iconic moments in the history of the nation, told us something about ourselves, something that needed to be told. Nicky Winmar did this. This shy, unbelievably talented footballer. Nicky Winmar will always be remembered as one of the nation’s great Saints.

 

 

More from Braham can be read Here.

 

 

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