Mitch Brown, the first openly queer AFL player, has continued his criticisms of the Geelong Cats, months after the team courted controversy with their mad Monday celebrations.
The AFL team drew criticism back in October when two of its players, Bailey Smith and Captain Patrick Dangerfield, were pictured embracing while making reference to characters from the movie Brokeback Mountain.
“This is what losing a [grand final] does to you,” Smith captioned the pic of him and Dangerfield in the costumes.
While Brown, who came out as bisexual in August, shared his disapproval of the “homophobic” post at the time — saying losing a game “does not make you gay” — he has now doubled down on his “disappointment” over the mad Monday antics in an interview on the Tell Me More podcast.
“I was most disappointed at the club … The hours kept going in the afternoon, nothing happened … I waited for all those mechanisms to surely kick into place,” Brown said.
“Maybe this is going to be the moment where we stop caring about the sensitivities of talking about other teams and stuff and going, ‘no, this is not on’,” he added.
Brown went on to recall the abuse he copped after Geelong, at the height of the controversy, announced it would cancel Mad Monday celebrations moving forward.
“Once you start to rock this precious hyper masculine game, and then you go one deeper, the sacred Mad Monday, the hate came,’’ Brown said. “After [Geelong’s] statement, that next day, the death threats came.”
Brown said such abuse could’ve been avoided if others in the league, like Dangerfield, carried the “burden” of speaking out against homophobia in the AFL.
“Maybe Patty Dangerfield should have stood up,” he said.
In the wake of the celebrations, Geelong Cats apologised for players’ “inappropriate” costumes and promised to scrap Mad Monday events “in their current form” for future seasons.
Meanwhile, veteran AFL journalist Caroline Wilson shared a scathing message to the team after player Max Holmes dressed up as her, describing the costume as “insulting”.
Lead images: ABC and Instagram
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