Opinion
Meeting the godfather: Why incoming AFL boss sought a touch of ‘Magic’
Jake Niall
Chief football writer, The AgeOn Friday, the AFL’s next chief executive Andrew Dillon sat down in Darwin with one of the game’s most important pioneers and listened to a football life story that remains compelling more than 25 years after the player’s last AFL game.
The story of Michael McLean – the first player to be recruited directly from the Northern Territory to have a major impact and who remains active in mentoring young Territory footballers – is as riveting as that of any Indigenous player of the past three decades.
Michael McLean with Andrew Dillon in Darwin on Friday.
But, for various reasons, “Magic” McLean’s role in blazing a path for Indigenous players, in establishing a stronger AFL club in Brisbane and, not least, in combating racism on the field, has been largely overlooked by the AFL, the clubs and the code’s media, excepting a lengthy Herald Sun piece last year.
That there is no monument or acknowledgement – no grandstand, wing, medal or award or specific recognition via Sir Doug Nicholls Round – honouring McLean’s role in the code should be a source of embarrassment to the AFL. Indeed, Dillon’s meeting with “Magic” – part of a trip to survey the territory’s footy – should be read, in part, as a sign that the AFL knows it has undersold McLean’s contribution.
No figure in football was a more important influence in tackling the on-field vilification of Indigenous players than McLean, whose intervention in 1995 – alongside Essendon great Michael Long and backed up by several players from multicultural backgrounds – was the basis for the AFL finally addressing the on-field abuse.
McLean’s experience of racism had led him to take a forceful position, around the same time that Long went into mediation with Collingwood’s Damian Monkhorst, and the AFL began assembling a vilification code that protected First Nations players in particular.
Former AFL player Michael McLean.Credit: Archives
McLean said his father, a white Queenslander and crocodile hunter, had taught him and his brother to box, knowing that they would cop racial jibes. His mother, a Wuthathi woman from Far North Queensland, had migrated to Darwin and “Magic” – as he would be known at the Bulldogs – was born and reared in Larrakia country in the NT.
Back in the early 2000s, after his retirement, McLean told this columnist he intervened in 1995, in part because he would not want his kids to a play a game rife with racist abuse. The AFL had acted in 1995, he said, after he went public with a threat to name the most egregious racist abusers.
“You name it, we copped it,” he said of the racist taunts he endured in the 1980s at Footscray from both sides of the fence and as a star at the Brisbane Bears (and Lions) in the 1990s.
McLean flew to Melbourne in 1995 to meet AFL officials Ian Collins, Rod Austin and the late Tony Peek, detailing the abuse he and others had copped. “I just told them, ‘This is my workplace. This is not right’.” He met Peek several times that year.
Michael McLean at the Bulldogs.Credit: Fairfax Media
“It’s a human right. That’s why I’m really proud it’s a safe playing field now.” The abuse, though, has shifted to the internet. “The wider community stuff, to a degree, you can’t control it,” McLean observed ruefully.
McLean’s legacy would be considerable, even without his role in combating racism.
He was an exceptionally skilful midfielder and defender at the Doggies (playing on the other wing to Doug Hawkins). But after he got a bad ankle injury, there was a mutual loss of faith, and he left the club in 1990. He went back to Darwin, played in the NT summer season and was so above the level that multiple AFL clubs wanted to draft him.
McLean at Brisbane.Credit: Peter Bull
The Brisbane Bears took him with pick No.1 in the pre-season draft. He would win the Bears’ best and fairest in his first season, playing “in the guts” and finished fifth in the Brownlow. In 1993, he beat a young Nathan Buckley – soon to leave for Collingwood – to claim a second B and F, this time as a defender.
And, as Brisbane acquired the NT as a zone and listed several Indigenous kids, McLean became what his coach Robert Walls described as “a Godfather” to those young men. It is a role that McLean continues to fulfil in his job in the NT pathways for the AFL and also talks regularly to NT alumni Steven May, Jesse Motlop and the Coleman brothers (Blake and Keidean) at Brisbane.
“Just the most outstanding person and football person that I’ve coached,” Walls recalled. “I’m proud to call him a friend.”
McLean captained the Indigenous All-Stars in 1994 against Collingwood (which played to make amends for the Winmar incident and comments by then president Allan McAlister), coaching the All-Stars in games against other clubs three times. He was part of Leigh Matthews’ coaching panel in 1999 and 2000 and would coach multiple clubs in the QAFL and the NT league.
McLean managed “only” 183 games, having been plagued with injuries at Whitten Oval and Brisbane. He said he had 16 operations – knees, ankles, back, shoulder – and effectively “lost” six seasons.
Michael McLean’s contribution to the code, however, cannot be measured in numbers.
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