Collingwood has responded to a report revealing that “systemic racism” has occurred within the club.
A 35-page independent report revealed by the Herald Sun has uncovered that the Magpies have “become synonymous with off-field and on-field racism in Australian sport” and their response to accusations of racism “has been at best ineffective, or at worst exacerbated the impact”.
The ‘Do Better’ report was tabled to Collingwood on December 17 and came about following Heritier Lumumba’s claims that he was the target of racist abuse during his time at the club.
Magpies president Eddie McGuire described the report as a “brave new step” towards repairing the culture of systemic racism.
"This is a historic and proud day for the Collingwood Football Club," McGuire told reportrers.
“We have spent the last six years in a deep dive into how we can make ourselves better, provide leadership and conversation in the community as only Collingwood can. We have decided as a club that this fight against racism and discrimination is where we want to be.
“We make mistakes. We learn, we strive to be better.
“We commissioned this report not to pay lip services to a worldwide tragedy, but to lay the foundations for our game, our people and our community.
“This isn't criticism. This is a review. It's very strong because we asked them to go as hard as they could, so we could have a base to build our club on.
“We wanted to seize the moment, look at world affairs over the last 12 months, and put ourselves head of it.
“What's happened on my watch is we've built a fantastic club, we've commissioned this report, we've built all sorts of mechanisms for getting involved in the community. We look back and say, in 2021, what is it we need to do?
“It was not systemic racism, as such, we just didn't have the processes to deal with it that we do now."