A White rugby league player was racially abused by an Aboriginal opponent during an NRL match last season, but was not charged and has not been named or held accountable.
The Indigenous player used phrase “White scum” but since the recipient and his club declined to make a complaint and there was no audio or video of the incident the NRL did not investigate further, but confirmed to the Sydney Morning Herald that it did occur.
The incident was revealed in the wake of an eight ban ban handed out to Samoan Sydney Roosters player Spencer Leniu for calling Indigenous Brisbane Broncos star Ezra Mam a “monkey” during a match in Las Vegas on March 3.
The NRL judiciary rejected Leniu’s argument that he was not aware that “monkey” was a racist slur.
“I thought it was just one brown man sledging another brown man,” Leniu said, adding that he and his family and friends used similar words in a light-hearted way.
“All those types of words are used in our language and how we speak to each other,” he said.
“I had no idea what that word meant to Ezra, what it meant to all the Indigenous people in the game.”
Leniu also said Polynesian players routinely call each other “blacky”, and was backed up by Manly player Haumole Olakau’atu, a Tongan international, who said: “We do use those words [Leniu mentioned] for banter, and for a laugh, we don’t use it for anything else, or have any emotions behind it”.
The Sydney Roosters have since lodged their own complaint over the hearing, after the NRL’s judiciary counsel referred to Leniu as “Spencer Luai”, confusing his surname with that of another Samoan player, and incorrectly said that he had played for Tonga.
The revelations of anti-White racism in the NRL come after brown lesbian Matildas captain Sam Kerr was charged with racial harassment in the UK for allegedly calling a London policeman a “stupid White bastard”. Her legal team will argue she used the phrase “stupid White cop”.
But unlike Leniu who was widely condemned for his comments, Kerr was defended by major political figures, academics, the corporate press and left-wing commentators, some of whom even made the false claim that it is impossible to be racist to White people.
