Michael Long can truly be called the man who changed the game.
Before he made his stand, after being racially abused in the 1995 Anzac Day game, racism was an unofficial part of Australian football both on and off the field. In the football commentariat of the day, the practice was justified as being part of the rugged, uninhibited nature of the game. What happened on the field, it was said, stayed on the field. This argument conveniently overlooked the great injustice done to Aboriginal people in the history of this country and the deep hurt that racist taunts directed at Aboriginal players tapped into, particularly when coupled with hateful obscenities.
Two years before, photographer Wayne Ludbey captured St Kilda’s Nicky Winmar raising his guernsey and pointing with pride at his black skin in front of a crowd of abusive Collingwood supporters at Victoria Park. That image is now justifiably famous, a part of every anthology of great Australian sporting images, but it was Michael Long who actually forced the game to change and, in the process, catapulted the AFL to the forefront of Australian race relations, creating a consensus of opinion that survived intact until the Adam Goodes booing saga of 2015. Notwithstanding the schism revealed by the Goodes drama, the position pioneered by Michael Long still retains substantial across-the-board support among players and followers of the game.
By 1995, when Michael Long made his stand, he was well-known to the football public as a quirky, unconventional player whose career had climaxed with a dazzling, Norm Smith medal-winning performance in the 1993 Grand Final. He was a considerable personality, gifted with both a guitar and impeccable comic timing. But he was also a man of dignity who, when moved to his core, was capable of expressing himself with great sincerity and a minimum of words.
His position in 1995 was a simple but revolutionary one: on-field racism had to stop. During the stand-off that developed between Long and the AFL, he received the support of the Essendon Football Club, principally from coach Kevin Sheedy, to whom he remains deeply bonded, and also from high profile teammates like James Hird and Matthew Lloyd. The historical irony of the saga was that
Michael Long played in two Essendon premierships (1993 and 2000), captained the club in 1999 and was twice All-Australian (1988 and 1995). He is officially listed by Essendon as one of its greatest players but his impact extended far beyond the football field.
In 2004, deeply dispirited by the Howard government’s indifference to Aboriginal Australia, he set out to walk to Canberra from Melbourne to demand an answer from the nation’s political leaders to a question which he framed in his characteristically succinct and deeply moving way: “Where is the love for my people?”
His walk, abandoned after more than 300
Michael Long is a hero of the game but his legacy has been at risk of being lost because, unlike Nicky Winmar, there is no single visual image which sums up his achievement. After attending a conference for young indigenous people in 2014 and finding that none of those I was sitting amongst knew the story of Michael Long, I resolved to finish a book Michael and I had been working on - extremely spasmodically - for over a decade at the suggestion of former Essendon director Beverly Knight.
The book, titled “The Short Long Book”, was eventually published in 2015. In it, I argued that Michael Long’s impact was such he deserved a statue at the MCG. That didn’t happen, but now Essendon Football Club has stepped in to fill the void. This man is one of the great Australians of his generation, and an inspiration to Aboriginal and indigenous people. When we forget individuals like him, we are dust blown about by the winds of our time.
