Former Collingwood Football Club president and TV personality Eddie McGuire landed in hot water this week after he said the Northern Territory was in “complete disarray socially” and therefore unlikely to be next in line for an AFL football team.
He was told to butt out of territory affairs, cease making “pot shots” from the comfort of the eastern seaboard, and stop spotlighting Central Australia for all the wrong reasons. But from Alice Springs, Town Councillor and Alyawarre man Michael Liddle called his comments “dead true”.
“I don’t know how across the board Eddie McGuire is regarding Aboriginal lives in the NT, I don’t know what his intel is, but I don’t really care. What he said could not be truer,” Liddle, the town councillor behind the February decision to pause community football in Alice Springs, told Crikey.
“How would it look if an Aboriginal person stood up and said the truth like Eddie McGuire? Well, I’ll say it.”
McGuire left the Collingwood presidency in 2021 following a damning inquiry into “structural racism” under his watch. During his tenure, he also likened former Sydney Swans Indigenous player Adam Goodes to King Kong after he was racially abused by a Collingwood fan. McGuire’s recent comments on social dysfunction in the Northern Territory came on the back of the AFL’s announcement that Tasmania would be home to the nation’s 19th team. In the name of fixture logistics, McGuire talked top contenders for team number 20 with fellow AFL commentator Jimmy Bartel on Nine’s Eddie and Jimmy podcast.
“I would love to see something happening in the Northern Territory,” McGuire said. “But the Northern Territory as we know is in complete disarray socially at the moment.”
McGuire later walked back his words, qualifying that he was “coming from a position of hoping to help, and to build”, with football to play a “huge role” as part of the solution.
Football as the unsung hero of Indigenous affairs has been front and centre to the heated dispute between the Alice Springs Town Council and AFLNT. Liddle, with the backing of other town councillors, said that AFLNT is all too happy to parachute itself in and deliver football to community as a saving grace for social issues without taking on any real responsibility for services and governance.
“AFLNT has dropped the ball and whole management of remote football. They’ve dropped the ball,” Liddle said.
In a matter of months, the Town Council motion to halt community football to allow Alice Springs service providers a chance to draw breath has gone from local matter to legal showdown. AFLNT has taken the council to task for preventing training and game-day access to facilities.
Despite the done deal, it released a CAFL (Central Australian Football League) fixture, business as usual. The town’s Traeger Park was listed as the nominated oval for 23 out of 35. The AFL also pledged to pull the pin on the Round 16 Alice Springs match between Melbourne and GWS if the council did not drop its motion and allow community football to play out on its facilities.
While the tit-for-tat between the council and AFLNT rages, local players, coaches and community members are still struggling to connect the dots. They’re asking: “Why no footy?”
Liddle heaped blame on the AFL for confusing the conversation and successfully turning the community in on itself. He said it had squashed the wants, needs and decision-making capacity of local bodies in order to deliver no-strings-attached footy as a “band-aid solution”.
“Where’s their responsibility? Every year the AFL expects the comp to happen with no structure and no plan in place. They think football’s going to save everything. I don’t think so,” he said.
“If you ever want a band-aid solution, football is it. Football is the biggest band-aid solution for Indigenous disadvantage. What we really need is the blinkers to come off the AFLNT and the sunglasses to come off the remote communities about making change in our lives. The quicker AFLNT stops blaming Alice Springs Town Council and its decision to pause the community competition, the quicker service providers can start addressing the real football — poor disadvantage and social dysfunction.”
