I Was Actually There on ABC and ABC iview S1E3 – It’s a day etched into Australian sporting folklore for all the wrong reasons. Thanks to stellar performances from Indigenous AFL stars, Nicky Winmar and Gilbert McAdam, St Kilda downed Collingwood at their home ground, Victoria Park, for the first time since 1976.
Winmar sealed the match with a stunning 60 metre strike and McAdam kicked five goals — while being hurled with relentless racist abuse.
“Swearing at you, spitting at you, calling you everything under the sun, which I won’t repeat,”
– McAdam recalls, adding that abuse was far from an exception in those days.
“Every club tried it, don’t worry,” he says. As the siren sounded, Winmar faced Collingwood fans, lifted his shirt, pointed his middle finger at his stomach, and uttered the now immortal phrase, “I’m black and I’m proud to be black.”
“I just got sick of it. I just wanted to show them the colour of my skin and who I was,”
– Winmar says.
Yet the gesture was nearly missed. Had it not been for the quick thinking of two young sports photographers, Wayne Ludbey and John Feder, Nicky Winmar’s stand would never have been captured.
“There’s no footage of it, the commentators didn’t address it. It was left to John and I to record, as it turns out, a very significant moment in history,”
– recalls Ludbey.
This episode confronts the complexity of that moment and the trauma Winmar, McAdam and their peers have endured.
“It gets me a bit emotional talking to people about that day, and what happened, the bad and the good side,”
– Winmar says.
It asks audiences to reflect on the treatment of Indigenous sports stars — then and now.
Production credit:
A Docker Media Production for ABC. Created by Kirk Docker, Jon Casimir, Aaron Smith. Director, Kirk Docker. Co-Series Producers, Loni Smith and Josh Schmidt. Line Producer, Megan Nass. ABC Commissioning Editor, Julie Hanna. ABC Head of Factual, Susie Jones.
I Was Actually There on ABC and ABC iview – Tuesday 23 July at 8:00pm
TV Central ABC content HERE
Listen to TV Central podcast with creator Kirk Docker HERE
I Was Actually There on ABC and ABC iview S1E3
