Hawthorn player and Kaurna Ngarrindjeri man Chad Wingard has faced abuse on and off the field. In this personal essay with GQ Australia Magazine, Chad explains what needs to change - and how. 

My first experience with online abuse was on Instagram. I was in my second or third year in the AFL and I was new to the platform. I had only been on it for less than a year before I started seeing a few comments on two or three of my recent photos I'd posted, with someone commenting 'monkey' and using the monkey emoji.

That was the first incident. I was playing for Port Adelaide at the time. I remember going to the club and showing them the comments. I just wanted some accountability or some action to come from it. But they decided it was best not to do anything. They didn't want to, as they said, ‘stir the pot.’

Seeing those comments took me back to my childhood, when being abused on the field was fairly commonplace for me. It happened at least two or three times during my younger years. And always from the people you least expect—opponents’ families, their parents, their uncles, their aunties, standing on the sidelines. 

The thing most people don’t realise is how inhuman it makes you feel. From those experiences when I was a kid, to that first comment on Instagram, the underlying thing through it all was how it made me feel like I was less than human. Othered. 

But it is different when it’s online. When I was growing up and copping abuse face-to-face, you always try to brush it off, but at least it's direct—you know who it's coming from and you can deal with it. You can see their faces. You can even try your best to educate them, put them through a cultural awareness session, help them understand why it's offensive and the trauma that's involved. 

But when it's an online troll, or a burner Instagram account, you feel like there's no accountability and you can't do anything about it. You feel uneasy and helpless. These people just do the damage and then go about their day without any consequences.

When you’re a person of colour, abuse has a habit of following you around. It happened to me when I was playing junior footy. It happened at both the clubs I've played at, Port Adelaide and now Hawthorn. I've seen it happen to my close friend and Hawks teammate, Jarman Impey, and other players around the AFL. 

Thankfully, we're a brotherhood. We catch up every two years at the AFL Indigenous All Stars Summit; we keep in contact via Messenger and in DMs. A lot of the senior players talk to each other to find out what's going on, to hear who's been copping it, and how we can best support them. We want to know if their club or the AFL is doing enough for them. 

You see it around the league too often, and sometimes you just don't know what to do other than to wrap your arms around them and try to support them. Many of us have had similar experiences and so as senior players, that's a responsibility that a lot of us take on our shoulders to help others as much as you can.

These days, every AFL club now has an Indigenous Player Development Manager, and that helps to have a person we can feel culturally safe with; someone in our corner who can express to the club what steps are needed to make sure the player is supported and feel comfortable in their workplace. Because as much as it looks fun running around every weekend playing footy, the AFL is our workplace and where we spend the majority of our time. And just like your own workplace, you need to feel safe.

People of colour in the AFL have copped racial abuse for years, not just Indigenous people. Take Adam Saad who was targeted at the Adelaide Oval earlier this year—he's copped a lot of abuse over the years. It happens to a lot of players in the league, whether it's people of colour, or about their sexuality, anyone who is in a minority is getting slandered for simply being who they are.

It definitely puts a dampener on playing footy and I’m not the only one to say that. You question yourself, am I doing the right thing? Do I want to play anymore? Is it all worth it? Sometimes the joy of playing footy can get sucked out of you. I don't know how Eddie Betts did it. And you saw the toll it took on Adam Goodes. He eventually left the game because of it. You wonder with other Indigenous players or players of colour who didn't have enough support or skills to deal with it. How much longer could they have played for? Or even post-footy, how has the mental toll and stress of dealing with this for years impacted their lives, post-career? How much better off would they be?

The negative impact it has on you is unbelievable. Being an AFL player, there are a lot of things to deal with in the first place. Pressure of performance from both yourself and the media, rigorous work hours, the physical toll, the injuries, the travel, the interruption to your personal life. But being an Indigenous person, or a person of colour, you have to deal with that extra pressure of racial slurs and bullying. And it's constant. It’s not here one week and gone the next. It can be weekly, monthly, yearly. 

It chips away at your mental health. It's not something you can just ‘get over,’ or deal with and then it's gone. A lot of the time, older people like to tell you to brush it off, to keep a stiff upper lip. But there is the normal pressure that every AFL player has, and then there's this extra pressure for people of colour that no one else has to deal with, which just isn’t fair—especially for players who come into the system at 18 years old, who don’t have the skills to deal with it. Can you imagine graduating from high school and then having to deal with abuse, in your workplace, in your comments? What about having that abuse follow you throughout your entire career?

And it does happen throughout your career. I'm still receiving abuse. It's happened a lot this year, but I don't always call it out when it happens directly to me. I don’t want the extra attention and scrutiny that comes with it. That’s how I’ve chosen to deal with it, but everyone has their own way. I haven't gone off social media, but I have changed the way I use it.

For most players, the racial abuse and vilification usually comes around game days, over the weekend. So, during the weekend I put my account on private, purely because that is the time when I feel the most unsafe. AFL is my job, I'm here to play footy and I love playing footy, but it's during that time that we can feel most at risk.

It's really brave for people to say something, but once you do call it out, I think that’s when it hits you. I’ve done it before, and have seen others do it as well, and it does become very tiring. It puts a weight on your shoulders that most people aren’t aware of. All the attention is on you again, from the media and fans, about a topic that hits close to home. At times you don't want to call it out because it's hard to carry that burden, and while you do get support, you do need to have time away from it to deal with it and take it all in. I think that’s why I sometimes choose to ignore it.

I know I’m not the only one who feels that way. Players have copped it for a long time and the attacks are often quite calculated. But no matter how someone chooses to deal with it, private profiles, comments on, comments off, I'll support every single player who is racially vilified or abused online. I'll call it out and will push for other people and their clubs to help support them through it—the way other players have supported me.

Thankfully, things are changing all around the AFL, too, not just between players. Now more than ever, I get a lot of supportive comments and find people get behind you and won't stand for it. The more people we can educate and get on our side and push the message, the better. 

On game day, too, you can see a lot more messaging on the big screens to call out this kind of behaviour. We want to make these venues safe for everyone to come and watch football because we have children there, and other people who are impacted by witnessing this behaviour… it’s not just us players. We need to ask: what kind of world do we want to leave behind, and what kind of future do we want to pass on to the next generation? 

I believe that the way Australia—and the rest of the world—has grown regarding social media and the general awareness of equality has been huge. You saw what the AFL stood for with the same-sex marriage vote, and initiatives like Pride Round in AFLW. I think the AFL is now more inclusive and aware of the positive impact it can have on others.

Ten years ago, I’m not sure that was the case as the world was a different place. I don’t think the AFL was alone in that, so I don’t blame the AFL, but I love the way that under [AFL CEO] Gillon McLachlan’s leadership, this has changed.

A number of us Indigenous players have direct conversations with ‘Gill’ and the AFL’s Executive General Manager of Inclusion and Social Policy Tanya Hosch monthly, which gives us a big voice now. Indigenous people represent three to four per cent of the population, but in the AFL men’s competition, we represent roughly 10 per cent of all players, so we know how valuable Indigenous people’s contributions have been to our industry for many years. 

But as valuable as we know we are, that doesn’t stop the abuse. 

I wish there was an identification process before you can get a social media account. I wish we had an ID process, so we could track down these people quickly, without there being weeks and weeks before we might know who it is. If we had a process like that and someone racially vilified me, I could report it, and it could go on their record. I'd love to see in the future that, when that person is applying for jobs, or on their LinkedIn or other social profiles, there is an alert about this. It would be on their record and there would be direct responsibility for it. They might not get a job because they've racially vilified someone or bullied them online. 

But while that future seems a long way off, the AFL’s new formal collaboration with the Australian eSafety Commission now gives us a great avenue to report these instances of abuse or something that you may be concerned about that is not being dealt with by the social media platform itself.

With the eSafety Commission, anyone can report abuse to someone based in Australia and get posts removed within 24 hours. It is definitely a lot quicker than going to the social media platforms themselves—Instagram can take a lot longer. Sometimes they don't take any action at all.

Is it the silver bullet to stopping racial slurs and vilification, on field or off? No. And I don't believe there is one right now. I'm hoping one day we'll have one, but the AFL’s partnership with the eSafety Commission is a step in the right direction to help support players of colour, and anyone who finds themselves abused online, and to help try to hold people accountable.

I would love for this to allow us to take more steps towards slowly nullifying abuse to ensure it doesn’t happen to the next generation. 

My advice for people who are contemplating racially vilifying someone is just to think of a world where perhaps your children or someone in your family was abused, how you would feel if it was happening to them. I think about what our parents and ancestors went through, and the important role we play in shaping the future for our kids. It’s not always what you say, but it’s the path that you’re bringing them up on that’s just as important. 

Be aware of the impact of what you say online. It can affect someone. Not just that week, not just that day, but for a lifetime. I’ve never understood that saying “sticks and stones can break your bones, but names can never hurt you”. Words hurt and mental scars can last a lifetime. 

I still remember what it felt like to stand on that footy field as a kid, and to hear those words, from children on the field, from their parents. I still remember how I felt, walking off thinking, were they right? Is that who I am? I still remember that first monkey comment on Instagram. 

I hope one day there will be an entire generation of players who have never faced abuse, online or off, and who never need the eSafety Commission. But for now, its presence makes everyone feel safer, and allows us to focus on the one thing we all love. Playing footy. 

If you or anyone you know needs help, call  Lifeline (24 hour crisis line): 131 114 or Beyond Blue: 1300 224 636.