The persecution of Robert Muir is a story football doesn't want to hear

23 August 2020

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that the following article contains images and names of people who have died.

The first thing he wants you to know is that his name is Robert Muir.

He accepts that life as a professional footballer at St Kilda earned him no privileges, but he will no longer allow it to deny him his name.

“I’m sick of people being frightened to ask for an autograph or talk to me,” Muir says.

“I want my grandkids to be proud of me. I want them to say, ‘That’s my grandfather, he played for St Kilda.’ I don’t want people to say, ‘There goes Mad Dog.'”

The despised nickname that has followed him for nearly 50 years made him a figure of ridicule and scorn. Yet to spend any amount of time immersed in Muir’s life is to understand the inhumanity of the tag.

Speak to those who’ve known Muir all his 66 years and you hear about a man of uncommon kindness. The man who stops to help every broken-down motorist he sees. The coach of RecLink teams for homeless footballers. The victim of unimaginable cruelties who is spending his twilight years teaching himself how to smile.

Look back, too, and there was a sublime football talent — an Indigenous trailblazer whom Ron Barassi once rated among the VFL’s most talented players.

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume.

Robert Muir (no. 32), seen here playing for St Kilda in 1978, was regarded as one of the VFL’s most talented players

“There was no better player than Muir,” says his first coach, Len Templar, who played against Coleman, Whitten and Barassi himself.

“He could have done anything.”

In one final quarter in 1976, Muir gathered 19 disposals, and turned a 13-point deficit into a five-goal win.

“He’s not a fellow,” said St Kilda’s 1958 Brownlow Medallist Neil Roberts, “he’s a happening”.

An official history of the Saints perhaps put it best: “He played football with a cyclonic power that was allied to one-touch skills.”

Yet while the game now celebrates the racial pride of Nicky Winmar, Muir a decade earlier endured nothing but hounding and harassment — a decade-long chronicle of racial abuse and mistreatment, including incidents in which he was spat at, urinated on, pelted with bottles and set upon by mobs of racist fans.

In both the VFL and SANFL, where Muir played for West Torrens and Woodville, football grounds became scenes of unchecked vilification. In private locker room moments, Muir sought the refuge of toilet cubicles to hide the torment and tears.

All people saw was retaliation.

A trading card of Robert Muir from 1977.A trading card of Robert Muir from 1977.
A trading card of Robert Muir from 1977.(Supplied)

It is often stated that Muir missed 22 league games due to suspensions. That doesn’t factor in reserves games, which nudged the figure to 54 and reduced his career over a decade to 68 senior games. That doesn’t factor in the wounds he still carries from leaving the game, feeling so broken and bitter. It doesn’t factor in the neglect since.

Even those who didn’t contribute to Muir’s freefall through life — people who consider themselves his allies — commit an equally damaging error: putting Muir in the ‘too hard’ basket, discouraging the mere mention of his name. They say it’s out of care, that drawing attention to his battles will only make his life worse. In fact, it makes their own lives easier, avoiding an awkward confrontation of the systems of power and privilege that raised them up as Muir was pushed down.

His story is one the football world has never wanted to hear.

To fully grasp the scale and impact of this persecution, it pays to step back in time and assess a mere handful of Muir’s appearances as a professional sportsman — incidents which explain the despair that football plunged him into.

A violent and unruly scene

On May 3, 1980, Muir set off for Victoria Park for the fourth and final time of his senior career in the VFL. It was a trip no opposition player relished; St Kilda had an unofficial rule of never blooding debutants at Collingwood’s bleak and hostile home.

For an Aboriginal player, it was an ordeal like no other. Thirteen years later, Victoria Park would be the scene of the disgraceful racial abuse of Gilbert McAdam and Nicky Winmar, to which Winmar responded with immortal defiance. Before the ball had even been bounced, Muir was being vilified wherever he ran.

“Certain people knew they could put me off my game,” Muir says.

The heckling came in abundance from over the fence, but also from the mouths of Collingwood players.

“Most of the Collingwood players were into me right from the start,” Muir would claim days later.

Nearing the end of the first quarter, Muir was reported for striking. The charge related to an incident in which he turned on his heels in response to a comment from Collingwood’s Ray Shaw, charged at the Magpies captain and threw a punch Muir describes now as “a tap”. Shaw recovered immediately, playing a brilliant game thereafter; 20 possessions and three goals in a 10-goal win.

Muir says his actions that day were those of a man who knew that when it came to the crunch, nobody had his back.

Ray Shaw falls to the ground during a football match.Ray Shaw falls to the ground during a football match.
Muir was sent to and from the bench on numerous occasions after this ‘tap’ as he calls it, which left Ray Shaw on the ground.(Supplied: St Kilda Football Club)

Indeed, in the aftermath of the incident, St Kilda’s playing-coach Alex Jesaulenko broke conventions of the era and sent Muir to and from the bench on numerous occasions, never letting him settle for more than 10 minutes at a time.

Some observers were puzzled, noting Muir’s distress. Most fans, noted Alan Attwood of The Age, strained to make it worse:

Inside the locker room, the chants still audible, police told St Kilda vice-president Graham Huggins it would be best if Muir was given an escort from the ground. Muir decided to wait until the crowd dispersed, then leave with club secretary Ian Drake.

But his ordeal was not over. Muir reached his car, turned towards the exit and thought he was safe, until an enraged Magpies fan rushed towards the vehicle and hurled a bottle, cracking Muir’s windshield. Far from sanctioning the cheer squad when the incidents drew media attention, Collingwood made moves in the following days to secure sponsorship funding for the group to continue its activities.

Before the Tribunal, Muir alleged provocation by Shaw, claiming the Pies skipper had spat in his face before the punch was thrown. Shaw categorically denied it. Contemporaneous reports state that umpire Graeme Fellowes claimed “saliva was floating around”. But that defence got Muir nowhere:

“The chairman of the Tribunal, when I put my case up, said, ‘Yeah, but he’s not here charged with spitting, you’re here for striking him,'” Muir says now.

Suspended for four weeks, Muir thought about sending Collingwood the bill for a new windshield, then decided against because he “didn’t want to look like a whinger”.

A forgotten pioneer of the Australian game

Muir now passes his days quietly on the outskirts of Adelaide.

After bills, his disability pension leaves him with $180 a fortnight. It’s a far cry from his heyday.

Football players leap over each other for the ball in an Australian football game.Football players leap over each other for the ball in an Australian football game.
Muir, who was regarded as one of the most spectacular leapers in the game, and Syd Jackson (left) were the only Indigenous stars at League level.(Supplied: St Kilda Football Club)

In the 1970s, when Muir was in his prime as an athletic and versatile wingman, it was not widely known that North Melbourne champion Barry Cable was a Noongar man, and Alan Bloomfield, Derek Peardon and Colin Graham had only fleeting VFL careers. That left Muir and Carlton champion Syd Jackson carrying the burden of being the only Indigenous stars at league level, weathering more than their share of racial abuse.

Like Sir Doug Nicholls, Muir hailed from the Cummeragunja Mission, an Aboriginal reserve in Yorta Yorta country, near the Victorian town of Barmah.

Muir was acutely aware of its sporting lineage. He knew Nicholls since boyhood, and played under his guidance on the Australian Aboriginals tour of Papua New Guinea in 1973.

At VFL level, nurtured by coaching legend Allan Jeans, his talent was obvious — he missed only three senior games in his first three seasons.

But football offered no tale of triumph for Muir. Noting the marked contrast in his and Jackson’s fates in life, Muir explains the key difference in their responses to the verbal attacks that became part and parcel of the game.

“We did the groundwork. Well, it’s not groundwork, is it? We just got abused. It got bigger and bigger. It needed to be stopped back then, but it wasn’t.”

Jackson, a premiership hero at a successful and stable club, has become a go-to story for a game eager to affirm its progressive credentials.

This weekend, the AFL celebrated Jackson as the honouree of Sir Doug Nicholls Round, its annual celebration of Indigenous footballers and their contribution to the game.

Muir, meanwhile, feels isolated and forgotten.

“There have been 30 or 40 events for Indigenous players over the years, and I’ve never been invited to one,” he says.

A man holds a football under his arm at a park and looks at the camera.A man holds a football under his arm at a park and looks at the camera.
The AFL’s annual Sir Doug Nicholls Round celebrations are the time when Robert Muir feels his estrangement from the game most acutely.(ABC News: Tony Hill)

Muir told some stories at a Saints supporters’ function at Adelaide Oval a few years ago — only his second game attendance in a decade. But he couldn’t get the ear of club staff for more than a desultory few minutes. Interactions felt impersonal. He didn’t want to admit that the $25 annual subscription to be a member of St Kilda’s past players’ association is an expense he can’t bear.

Two years ago, Muir summoned the courage to call the club.

“I said that just in respect for Doug Nicholls, I wouldn’t mind going to the Dreamtime game,” he says.

“And they said, ‘Oh yeah, we’ll get back to you.’ But they never did.”

Muir called again.

“But you’ve gotta go through a receptionist,” he says.

“And they’re young people who don’t even know who you are. ‘Who are you?’ You say you’re a past player, but you’ve got to press 1 or 2, like it’s Centrelink.”

Muir was not consulted when St Kilda published its first Reconciliation Action Plan amid much fanfare in 2019. It contained an image of Muir among the club’s 29 current and former Indigenous players. It is a document opaque with corporate bromides and sprinkled with embarrassing blunders like misspellings of the names of Jim Krakouer and Muir’s revered mentor, Nicholls. It makes no mention of efforts to engage or reconcile with former players, nor ponder the misfortunes they may have encountered as a by-product of their St Kilda careers.

Finding strength

Muir’s mere survival after decades of alcohol-related violence, homelessness, mental illness and despair can be explained by two key factors: his extraordinary strength of character, which the football world refused to acknowledge, and the determination of his partner Donna Pickett, a Whadjuk Noongar woman who has spent a decade offering the love and support Muir needs.

“Thank God I met Donna,” Muir says.

“If it wasn’t for her, I’d be in jail or dead.”

Five years ago, it was Pickett, an Aboriginal mental health professional, who encouraged Muir to seek assistance; a bipolar diagnosis and treatment plan followed. Pickett’s energy and expertise in the time since have pulled Muir back from an abyss.

A man and a woman stand in front of an Aboriginal artwork and look at the camera.A man and a woman stand in front of an Aboriginal artwork and look at the camera.
The love and support of Muir’s partner Donna Pickett has been instrumental in his management of mental health problems.(ABC News: Tony Hill)

“From day one, no-one at the footy club saw anything wrong with me or asked me to see a psychologist or psychiatrist,” Muir says.

“I just thought it was a normal thing.”

Pickett sees Muir’s recovery as an endless process.

“I know his spirit was so shattered, and it’s still shattered,” she says.

“It’s so stupid, but it’s taken me until 10 years ago to talk about my problems,” Muir says.

“They ask me to do sportsman’s shows and I say no. It’s not about making money. It’s about telling my story, and hoping it helps someone.”

An unwanted tag

The ‘Mad Dog’ nickname that has stalked Robert Muir through a life of heartache and pain had innocuous origins.

It was 1974 and Muir had just embarked on his St Kilda career. Kevin ‘Cowboy’ Neale watched an athletic blur tearing around the training track and said, “You’re like a sheep dog, Muir. You’re mad.”

Four men jostle for the football in a VFL game.Four men jostle for the football in a VFL game.
Robert Muir (No.32) was a skilful wingman and half-back flanker in a tough and uncompromising era of the AFL’s history.(Supplied: St Kilda Football Club)

“It just went from there,” Muir says.

“Then the blackfella thing came into it. It was terrible.”

The only prominent football identity who has ever strongly condemned the name is former AFL coach John Northey, who mentored Muir in Ballarat.

“To me, that was a shocking thing to do,” Northey, now 77, says.

“Anybody who has been through what Robert’s been through should be acknowledged by their club. Unfortunately, to me it all started with that name.”

“Only in the last five years did he say, ‘I don’t like that name, Mad Dog,'” Pickett says.

“I said, ‘Well, this is where you have to be strong and tell people that the name was brought upon you because other people thought you were that.’ You can shift that name and say, ‘I’m Robert Muir, and I want to go back to him and find him.’

“It’s a long road.”

A nightmare childhood

The horrors Robert Muir had withstood by the time he reached adulthood gave him a painful glimpse of what lay ahead for an Aboriginal man trying to make it in 1970s Australia.

There were never fewer than 11 Muirs under the roof of Robert’s boyhood home. Adding in foster kids, Muir’s mother Myrtle would eventually parent 43 children. She was tough and resourceful, but she couldn’t spare her son from the violence of his father.

“I had shock treatment when I was about seven years old,” Muir says.

“I used to wake up screaming, but that was only because my father was belting me.”

Father Cyril was a painter, a consistent provider for his family, but aggressive when drunk. Robert Muir says he’s never recovered from this abuse of trust, and still wakes up screaming. He also struggles to overcome the painful memory of being called a “black bastard” by his own father, an Aboriginal man.

A newspaper clipping shows four boys receiving trophies.A newspaper clipping shows four boys receiving trophies.
In 1967, a 13-year-old Robert Muir (middle) was among the cross country champions at Ballarat Technical School.(Supplied: Ballarat Courier)

In one assault, Cyril Muir kicked his son so viciously that Muir’s bowel was twisted. Bullied at school for the resultant symptoms, he carried an extra set of underwear in his bag and began a lifelong ritual of not eating breakfast or lunch on game days.

Only last year — six decades later — did Muir receive the corrective surgery he clearly required as a boy. Such stoicism in the face of unspeakable cruelty would become his hidden hallmark as a man.

“I was self-motivated and self-driven,” Muir says.

“Where did all my energy come from when I had no sustenance in my stomach to play footy? I did it right through my career in league footy.”

One man chases after another man with the ball in a football match.One man chases after another man with the ball in a football match.
Trailed by North Melbourne champion Barry Cable, Robert Muir sets off in pursuit of John Burns during a 1970s encounter.(Supplied: St Kilda Football Club)

Muir was a man at 15, all agree. Too big for his father to push around any longer, and written off by the education system, he set off on his life of manual labour.

By the time he was named captain of Ballarat Football Club’s Under-18s side in 1971, he was a seasoned slaughterman and an athlete of unmistakable brilliance. His dominance of certain games was almost surreal; an account survives of an Under-18s game in which Muir had 40 kicks and eight goals — from the ruck. Wise heads considered him ready for senior VFL football.

“I had a lot to do with Rob in his formative years, and he was as brilliant a player off nothing as I’ve ever seen,” says 89-year-old Len Templar, the former North Melbourne star who was coaching Ballarat’s senior side that season.

Muir’s status as a breadwinner was not the only awakening to the realities of adult life in that period. He says he rarely encountered racist insults at school. On football fields, they came “non-stop”.

His burden was common knowledge in Ballarat; in an extraordinary display of bipartisanship in a region known for its bitter football rivalries, a Golden Point fan wrote a letter to the editor of the Ballarat Courier when Muir was 16, decrying the “filth and abuse” he faced during games. Templar believes “jealousy” was a factor.

Three weeks ago, Muir nodded agreement at a quote by Patty Mills, the Indigenous Australian basketballer and activist: “The better I got in sports, the worse the racism got.”

Yet nothing was ever done. Indeed, the only penalty was paid by Muir.

An astonishing miscarriage of justice

On July 24, 1971, Ballarat played a home game against Redan. In the last quarter, Redan’s Dennis Murnane gathered the ball on Ballarat’s half forward flank and took off. Muir made a reflex decision to trip him. Awarded a free kick, Murnane played on unimpaired.

Both players were bemused afterwards that the central umpire put Muir’s name in his report book for ‘kicking’ — a charge for which a teammate had recently received 12 weeks. Muir was disturbed too that the Tribunal chairman, Tom Scotney, was a senior local police officer who’d had dealings with Muir’s tearaway brother, Fred.

The resultant hearing is still the source of rumour and innuendo. Those present heard glowing tributes to Muir, his leadership, and the talent that was soon to put him in line for VFL selection.

They also heard straightforward evidence from Murnane: he thought he’d been tripped, he took his free kick, thought nothing of the incident.

Muir knew something was amiss when the umpire described his actions as “a deliberate, vicious kick”. The teenager was beside himself once a second umpire, who’d left the game in the first quarter due to an injury, claimed he’d been standing a convenient 15 yards from the action on the sidelines, and saw Muir unleash “a very savage kick”. In a move that enraged Muir’s advocate, Tribunal members adjourned for only five minutes before returning with their verdict: Ballarat’s Robert Muir was suspended for two-and-a-half years.

“You can think about football again in 1974,” sneered Scotney.

Rallying behind Muir, Ballarat appealed to have the case re-heard, but met obstacles at every turn. When they took the league to the Supreme Court, Murnane provided an affidavit stating Muir’s innocence. Club officials alleged racial bias; the BFL angrily denied it. Ballarat claimed collaboration between the Tribunal and the reporting umpires, with their “word-perfect” evidence, then threatened to boycott fixtures. The league stood firm.

“They didn’t care about my life, did they?” says Muir now.

Because the effect was catastrophic.

“I started drinking,” Muir says.

A newspaper photo of two men watching football in suits from 1971.A newspaper photo of two men watching football in suits from 1971.
1971: Robert Muir and his Ballarat teammate Ray Warke watch from the sidelines after Muir’s two-and-a-half-year suspension for kicking, the same offence for which Warke received only 12 weeks.(Supplied: Ballarat Courier)

His football dream kept him going, but only just; too young to oppose his first daughter being adopted out, his emotions unravelling, Muir made the first of numerous attempts on his own life.

Fixating on his football return date, he took whatever sport he could get, including Aboriginal representative games outside the BFL’s jurisdiction. On his return, he played seven astonishing games for Ballarat that made it impossible for the Saints to ignore him.

There is a statistic from this period of Muir’s life that you can’t overlook if you want to understand the disadvantages he faced as a young Aboriginal man in the football world.

Born only months apart in 1953, two boys from rough neighbourhoods of Ballarat would make their names in football, even if it took Muir two years longer to get there. Everyone agreed that Muir was the more dynamic player.

The other boy was named Michael Malthouse, and he would end up in the Australian Football Hall of Fame.

‘As long as they conduct themselves like white people’

It started the day he arrived at St Kilda as a 20-year-old, midway through the 1974 season.

In a humiliating incident that still rankles, a nervy and shy Muir walked into the showers after his first training session and was urinated on by one of the club’s star players. Looking to teammates for support, Muir was crestfallen when they responded with peals of laughter.

Plenty of St Kilda people swear Muir was both respected for his prodigious ability and well-liked by teammates in those years.

A Scanlens trading card of Rob Muir from 1975A Scanlens trading card of Rob Muir from 1975
A 1975 trading card featuring Robert Muir.(Supplied)

Muir himself says he still “bleeds” for the club, and reveres Neil Roberts for his many acts of friendship. Muir can think of no more poignant display of his love for St Kilda than the request that his ashes be spread on the Moorabbin wing, in front of the infamous ‘Animal Enclosure’.

But he finds it hard to forget the lonely moments, the lack of empathy and support.

“What could I do?” he asks.

“No back-up. Nobody standing up for me. People got sick of hearing the excuse that I’d been abused.

Coaches treated Muir “like a kid”. Officials made him feel a nuisance. One day in the Moorabbin social club, a St Kilda supporter made racist remarks about him within earshot of Muir’s sister Jennifer, who smashed a meat pie into the man’s face; rather than evict the abuser, a club official pulled Muir into the committee room, lest he create a scene.

“There are funny stories,” Muir says.

“And I try to joke about it. But it’s not funny.”

Former Saints remember Muir as the life of the party when he was drinking. Muir recalls countless more sober moments of anxiety when he couldn’t break into conversations.

A man sits in front of lockers in a change room.A man sits in front of lockers in a change room.
Suspensions curtailed Robert Muir’s career at St Kilda, and he didn’t play enough senior games to have his name added to his No.32 locker at the club’s Moorabbin home.(Supplied: St Kilda Football Club)

He says teammates didn’t realise the family to whom he sent the lion’s share of his match payments rarely attended games because they didn’t want to listen to the hateful bile in the stands.

The miracle was that he didn’t bite back at the systemic racism sooner.

In 1978, Muir received an eight-week ban for kicking in a reserves game against South Melbourne. Other than the stop-marks on the chest of the Swans player, the main point of interest when the case was heard was the astonishing outburst of obviously racist commentary from VFL player advocate Brian O’Shaughnessy — the man who was meant to be defending Muir.

Appealing for a lenient sentence, O’Shaughnessy said: “He’s one of the few Aboriginal players who’s got a bit of spirit and go — most of them haven’t. They turn it up. He’s got more go than the average fellow has of his race, he bounces back. When his name crops up you hear these comments: ‘Haven’t they hung him yet?’ and ‘Where’s the firing squad?’ I often wonder whether people think this player should go on the field bound hand and foot.”

Muir angrily confronted O’Shaughnessy afterwards.

“I said it was disgraceful.

“He said, ‘I was only sticking up for you.’ He wasn’t sticking up for me, he was putting us down. He was supposed to be on my side. I should have sued him for defamation.

“It was the same as when Allan McAlister was president of Collingwood [in the late 1980s and early 1990s] and said if they behaved themselves like white men they’d be all right.”

O’Shaughnessy faced no punishment. The league looked askance.

‘Robert can’t accept it as a tactic’

As the 1984 VFL season dawned, Muir’s relationship with St Kilda had been an on-off affair for six years.

He’d played with distinction back in Ballarat, then settled in Adelaide. Former Richmond premiership hero Tony Jewell was in his second year as Saints coach and the club was battling. Jewell struck a deal where Muir would train with Cowboy Neale’s Central Districts squad and fly in for Saints games. But time was running out.

In April, Muir kicked seven goals for St Kilda’s reserves against Geelong. His performance was inspired by a torrent of racial abuse from Geelong senior players leaning over the Moorabbin fence as the game progressed. It prompted a forgotten ‘Winmar’ moment.

Two extraordinary images survive from that game thanks to Inside Football.

In one, Muir throws two double-fingered salutes at the Geelong players. In the other, a decade before Winmar, he lifts his jumper into the air in an act of defiance.

A football player holds up his fingers and takes his shirt off while on the field.A football player holds up his fingers and takes his shirt off while on the field.
Playing in the Reserves the weekend before his final senior game for St Kilda, Robert Muir responded to racial abuse from Geelong senior players with acts of defiance.(Supplied: Inside Football)

“They were calling me black this and that,” Muir says.

“So, I took my jumper off and turned it around, gave them the finger, and showed them my skin.”

In round six, Muir touched down in Melbourne and headed to Princes Park to face David Parkin’s Carlton side. After that wild and spiteful game — a 14-point win for the Blues — a dismayed Parkin would call for the league to introduce a send-off rule. If you have seen images of Robert Muir on a football field, they are likely from this day.

Muir was racially abused all day (“every five or 10 minutes”, he told 3AW listeners after the game) and decided he would not take it. He was reported seven times. The violence was not completely unexampled, in a league with a greater tolerance for rough play than today: a year later, at the same ground, Leigh Matthews broke Geelong star Neville Bruns’ jaw with a blow that ended in police charges. Matthews’ name is now on the AFLPA’s annual MVP trophy.

Muir pleaded not guilty to all charges, but was cleared of only one: an alleged head-butting of Bruce Doull, a man he respected immensely. Departing from convention, and against Muir’s advice, St Kilda’s general manager Ian Stewart assembled a defence based on provocation, stating Muir had been racially abused.

Muir was leery of this approach due to the lingering resentment attached to a 1970 Tribunal case in which Syd Jackson was cleared of striking, after Carlton ran a defence stating the blow was in retaliation to racist abuse — a lie, Jackson later admitted. With his reprieve, Jackson became a premiership player; for decades after, white players used the incident as proof racial abuse was a furphy.

Muir’s advocate, Bob Stewart, countered feverish media coverage with a pointed remark: “I think it speaks volumes of a player who has the reputation of Robert Muir, be it rightly or wrongly, that he contained himself so well.”

Even more unusual was the appearance of character witness Mollie Dyer of the Aboriginal Advancement League, whose impassioned plea brought Muir close to tears. Her testimony was followed by a letter from Richmond’s 1982 Norm Smith medallist Maurice Rioli. “It is a sensitive issue,” Rioli wrote, “Robert can’t accept it as a tactic like myself.”

Speaking to The Sun two days later, Myrtle Muir launched a blistering attack on the game’s administrators, claiming her son had been “plainly crucified”. “I’m not talking about this like Robert’s over-protective mother,” Myrtle said. “I’m worried about all the Aboriginal players in the VFL.

“I’ve heard some of the things they have hurled at them during a match. People calling them ‘boongs’ and ‘black bastards’. Most of the Aboriginal players can turn a deaf ear to it. It’s just unfortunate Robert can’t … I never dreamed this sort of thing would go on in major league football.”

The final insult came when The Sun’s Wayne Gregson wrote an article headlined “Racism footy’s ‘professional tactic’.” It documented the widespread use of racist abuse to stymie the brilliance of the Aboriginal players who’d followed Muir’s path to the VFL. Muir was unequivocal when speaking to Gregson: “We do hear the supporters [make racist remarks] a bit, but it hurts when it comes from the players themselves. It shouldn’t be allowed to go on.”

But it would be allowed to go on for another decade, as forewarned when Gregson finished his report with quotes from VFL general manager Jack Hamilton.

“It has never been the subject of report or complaint,” Hamilton claimed. “You’re saying it happens. You may be right. I have no evidence of it.”

Of course, this was not true. Four years earlier, in the wake of the Victoria Park case, Melbourne tabloid The Truth ran an unsubtle headline that captured the attention of everyone in football: MUIR HATE CAMPAIGN.

A newspaper clipping with the headline Muir Hate Campaign.A newspaper clipping with the headline Muir Hate Campaign.
1980: In the wake of Robert Muir’s four-game suspension in round six of the 1980 VFL season, Melbourne tabloid The Truth highlighted the campaign of racist abuse endured by Muir.(Supplied: The Truth)

The accompanying article quoted an anonymous St Kilda player discussing the racial abuse of Muir: “It isn’t only Collingwood,” he said. “It happens to Robert all the time, and we’re powerless to do anything to help him … they’re ruining a fine player.”

With Hamilton’s casual dismissal, the soul-crushing abuse of Robert Muir in the VFL had been written off as insignificant for one last time.

‘No, you’re not welcome here’

With few options remaining in big-time football, Muir returned to Adelaide and signed with Woodville for the 1985 SANFL season, linking up with the lateral-thinking Malcolm Blight, then in his third season as playing coach.

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume.

Robert Muir speaks to a reporter about his 1985 signing with Woodville in the SANFL

Woodville’s round-eight game against Muir’s old club West Torrens at Thebarton Oval hardly counted as a grudge match, but Muir was known to Torrens fans: he’d polled 11 Magarey Medal votes for the club in 1982, playing electrifying football.

The trouble started when Blight instructed Muir to play as an undersized full-back — a position he’d never played — taking on Torrens spearhead John Roberts. It meant standing in the goal square all day, bringing Muir into close proximity with a hostile crowd behind the goals. Instructed by Blight to make Roberts’ day as difficult as possible, Muir was duly reported for striking him.

Nobody reported the crowd. In feral scenes, they showered Muir with spit. One Torrens supporter followed him from end to end all day, not only peppering Muir with racial epithets but hurling cans and bottles at him — in full view of administrators from both clubs. By the third quarter, fearful for his safety, Muir called the runner and told him that police in attendance needed to remove his abuser. No action was taken.

A man looks at the camera from a side-on position.A man looks at the camera from a side-on position.
A season with SANFL club Woodville provided the backdrop to Robert Muir’s infamous departure from League football.(ABC News: Tony Hill)

For the last time in a major game, Muir took matters into his own hands. Struck by another can at the final siren, he jumped the fence and unleashed blows of retaliation. Now the police finally intervened — on Muir.

“I knew I shouldn’t have jumped the fence, but I’d had enough,” Muir says.

“The police said they ‘escorted’ me, but they had me in a headlock, squeezing my neck.”

Days later, Blight and Woodville chairman Bill Sanders called Muir to the club and fired him. This despite what Sanders termed “extenuating circumstances that led to certain incidents”.

In 1990, Woodville and West Torrens merged. A few years ago, Muir heard the club was holding an event for past players and turned up unannounced. He was only half-surprised by the greeting:

Trial by video

For more than a decade after his dismissal by Woodville, Muir was out of the national spotlight. Without a trade to fall back on, he would take any labouring job available, doubling his income playing football at lower levels. It wasn’t ideal but it paid the bills; he played until he was 48. By the mid-1990s, however, Muir had fallen into a spiral of alcohol and violence.

In 1994, St Kilda legend Neil Roberts took the unusual step of using his Sunday Herald Sun sport column to air details of Muir’s “massive personal traumas”, and offer his clubmate’s services to any employer with a heart. No such employer was forthcoming. Despite this public struggle, in April of 1997, Muir was invited by producers of The Footy Show to appear on the ratings-topper for a $700 fee; three years unemployed and estranged from his family, he could hardly say no.

The premise for Muir’s involvement was strange from the outset. For the show’s 100th episode, producers decided to feature “highlight” clips from earlier episodes, but with a twist that would confuse the audience: the incidents in question had never occurred, and were specially pre-recorded. Perhaps Muir should have anticipated the backlash to the vaudeville results when a producer said his fee would rise from $700 to $1200 if he created a memorable scene.

Two men sit on the set of The Footy show.Two men sit on the set of The Footy show.
Muir became despondent after an appearance on The Footy Show in 1997, and turned to alcohol.(YouTube)

Plainly vulnerable and eager to please, Muir walked onto the show’s set, sat next to veteran provocateur Sam Newman and played his part. Asked by host Eddie McGuire to comment on his brushes with umpires, Muir unleashed a stream of expletives, then responded to a pre-rehearsed eviction — “I don’t want to put you in this position and I know it’s embarrassing,” McGuire said, suddenly serious, “but seriously, we’re going to have to ask you to leave” — by upending the desk in front of Newman.

The studio audience, unaware of the setup, roared as though in response to one of Muir’s famous hits. McGuire and Newman feigned amazement. Millions of home viewers had all their “Mad Dog” prejudices confirmed by the mayhem. The incident would later feature on a best-selling VHS, The Footy Show Greatest Hits. “The panel was in on the joke but the audience wasn’t and was horrified,” Newman told the Herald Sun in 2011. “People wrote in and said it was a disgrace.”

After the show aired, Muir became despondent at the likely fallout. He started drinking. At 5:00pm the next day, he was arrested for public drunkenness in Collingwood and subsequently convicted and fined $350 for assaulting one of the arresting police officers. According to a Sunday Age report of the time, when asked why he was drunk in a public place, Muir replied: “No reason. The Footy Show. Blame Sam Newman.”

What started as a piece of old-fashioned TV slapstick had soured badly. Muir’s daughter called in tears of embarrassment and was bullied at school.

Muir says the longer-term impacts were catastrophic. He’d reinforced all the worst stereotypes, making it that much tougher to find jobs, self-esteem and the balance he needed in his life. Incapable of making social connections while sober, he says his drinking worsened. Encounters with police continued. He bounced from town to town and state to state, preceded by his reputation, never far from trouble.

Robert Muir was lost.

The long road back

It is impossible to consider the three-decade fog of violence, mental illness and poverty Muir became trapped in once he departed League football and not feel dismayed at the inhumanity that placed a brilliant sportsman and kind-hearted man on a path to oblivion.

John Northey says too many football people surveyed the human wreckage and said “don’t worry about that”.

Even a rough outline of Muir’s suffering is shocking. He was homeless for long stretches. He made several attempts on his own life, and lost many family members to suicide. Two of his children died in circumstances he finds too painful to discuss; the others battle to escape the stigma applied to their name. All the while, Muir bravely negotiated the trauma of his own childhood. With typical understatement, he says his life has been “up and down”.

Living modestly and with few expectations of life, Muir consoles himself with the overwhelming fortune of meeting Donna Pickett, whose calm but powerful efforts to restore his self-esteem are all the more admirable for the harsh truth that her project can never be completed. She is heartened by Muir’s adoption of the language of self-care.

A man and a woman sit on a park bench and look at the camera.A man and a woman sit on a park bench and look at the camera.
Robert Muir and his partner Donna Pickett now pass their days quietly in the Adelaide suburbs, taking each day as it comes.(ABC News: Tony Hill)

“It took me five years to get him into services like doctors, GPs and psychiatrists, to give him information about the problem he was facing,” Pickett says.

“And the problem is the problem, not the person. I see him as him, not the problem. We’re at the age now where life is about peace and love.”

Muir doesn’t want his connections to football to come via the booze-fuelled backslapping of sportsman’s nights. The self-abusive jokes are no longer funny.

When you speak to those who have helped him in the past decade, a pattern emerges: they are churchgoers, schoolteachers and local businessmen; none is connected to football; overwhelmed by this kindness, Muir “adopted” one as his father.

“Rob needs people that are connected to him and positive, who will be there for him,” Pickett says.

“Not what they saw and heard on TV. All of that stuff in his life… He’s unsure of his identity. In his mind, he probably wants to see, ‘Who is Rob Muir?'”

Muir also wouldn’t mind fixing a few of his football injuries.

Three VFL players jump and jostle for the ball.Three VFL players jump and jostle for the ball.
Robert Muir flies over St Kilda teammate Trevor Barker and Hawthorn’s Michael Moncrieff during his VFL career.(Supplied: St Kilda Football Club)

A few years ago, he secured $5,000 of hardship funding from the AFL Players’ Association (AFLPA) to pay Centrelink debts that were strangling his day-to-day finances.

What shocked was the response when he asked for assistance with surgery on the shoulder he badly damaged at St Kilda. Back then he’d windmill his arm until it popped back into place. Now he requires a $28,000 shoulder replacement.

The AFLPA balked, stating the hard truth: Muir has already received his capped limit of assistance under their Injury and Hardship Fund regulations.

Unable to afford even the consultation fee to seek alternative options, he just lives with the pain, forbidden from lifting objects heavier than five kilograms.

“The league has used my image on TV for 40 years with all those bad hits,” Muir says.

“Biffs, Bumps and Brawlers. They got mileage out of that, yet they can’t fix my injuries.”

“When you look at the AFL, people came along to the football to see Robert Muir play,” Northey says.

Muir would love to recover one of his treasured St Kilda guernseys. There are other small gestures of recognition he would appreciate.

“If you go to North Ballarat football club, they’ve got all their champions on the wall — everyone who has played AFL,” he says.

“But you go to East Ballarat and Ballarat football clubs and they don’t have my photo on the wall. It’s not for me, it’s for my grandkids. I’ve only got my scrapbook, but most of that scrapbook is tied up with racism.”

There have been stalled attempts to move Muir back into the spotlight.

A book was in the works. Donna hoped it would allow Muir to open up about his problems and show people the generous and supportive man she knows as ‘Rob’. But Muir was dismayed by the results, including a prospective title of ‘Mad Dog’ and a mock cover image showing his scars of self-harm.

“It was disgusting,” he says.

He is resigned to a story of squandered human potential and unhopeful that anyone will be held accountable for his abuse.

A man and woman stand together outside a house and look at the camera.A man and woman stand together outside a house and look at the camera.
Pickett focuses on the small victories in Muir’s life, while he remains unhopeful that anyone will be held accountable for his abuse.(ABC News: Tony Hill)

As his childhood mentor Templar puts it:

Aware that her partner might never be acknowledged, Pickett focuses on the small victories in Muir’s life, for which she has a perceptive ear.

“It’s so sad, but when he laughs, in my mind, I can hear a baby.” Pickett says.

“It’s like a baby trying to laugh, but it’s coming out in a different way because he’s been so serious and so entrenched in negative stuff.

“His laugh needs to be pushed out a bit by positive things. His laugh can move something in his spirit and in his soul.”

As his days slowly pass in the suburbs, away from the crashing thunder of his sporting life, there is a memory Muir keeps returning to — a powerful symbol of the lifelong betrayal of people from whom he sought nothing more than warmth and support.

In this flashback, he is a child again. Night has fallen. Fearful of the violence that awaits him inside the family home, he escapes to a tin shed and huddles beside his faithful dog on a makeshift mattress. His only hope is to ride out another night of half-sleep and wish for a better day tomorrow.

But Robert Muir is not a boy anymore. He is a man whose unlikely survival elevates his human spirit to a level that further diminishes those who treated him as less than human. The question is whether the game he loves will ever invite him in from the cold.

This post was reproduced from

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-23/persecution-of-robert-muir-story-football-doesnt-want-to-hear/12553554

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