Internet says what authorities won’t after banana allegedly thrown at Indigenous athlete

The Australian sporting community is reeling after a spectator allegedly threw a banana at Indigenous Australian player Eddie Betts during an Australian Football League (AFL) game in Adelaide Saturday.

Betts, who plays for the Adelaide Football Club, was apparently targeted by a Port Adelaide supporter. 

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A video posted to Facebook of the incident shows a woman holding up her middle finger at a group of Adelaide Crows players as they celebrate a goal. She then reaches down and picks up a yellow object, flinging it in Betts direction.

Port Adelaide Football Club Chairman David Koch told a media conference Sunday the woman had had her membership revoked into 2017. If the incident is found to have been motivated by racism, she will be banned for life.

"We're investigating the incident, we've identified the person responsible," he said. "In the interests of fairness we need to talk to the person responsible first."

While Koch was unwilling to yet characterise the incident, plenty of Australians on social media were more than able to say the word "racism."
Adelaide Football Club say they are both disappointed and disgusted after an opposition fan threw a banana at Indigenous player Eddie Betts
theguardian.com

AFL- "We definitely thought about using the word racism in our Eddie Betts statement but we fixed that when the Goodes stuff happened."

Bett's club said in a statement it was was "disappointed and disgusted" by the incident.

The spectator's actions come as the AFL struggles to put a history of racism in the past. The incident Saturday reignited conversations most recently focused on the harassment of Indigenous former-Sydney Swans player Adam Goodes.

Goodes was hounded into retirement after being repeatedly booed by AFL fans from rival clubs, many of whom maintained they were simply expressing their displeasure with him "as a player." The jeers worsened after a 2013 incident where Goodes pointed out a 13-year-old girl who called him an "ape" during a game.

At the time, the AFL were willing to call Goodes' treatment "racism," but Saturday seems to prove the code has more work to do to bring the game and its fans into a new era of respect.

Despite the best efforts of the spectator in question, the Adelaide Crows won the match and Betts was chaired off the field by his teammates.