Essendon Football Club is investigating a racist social media post targeting champion Wirangu-Kokatha Aussie Rules player Eddie Betts and have called on public support to identify the person responsible for the attack.
In a statement, the club said it would immediate cancel the membership of the person if found to be a paying member and asked people to come forward with any details to assist with the matter.
The racist post, which was posted by user '@M2Aussie', surfaced on the same weekend that all AFL players took a knee in solidarity with the global Black Lives Matter movement.
Betts, a proud Wirangu Kokatha man, took to his Instagram account on Sunday to call out the tweet, using it as an example of why racism must be stamped out.
"If ever there was a time where our focus on this needs to continue more than ever, it's now," he wrote.
"We each have a responsibility to ourselves and each other. To continue to listen. To learn. To educate .. To ignore it is to be part of the problem, to call it out is to be part of the solution."
Carlton captain Sam Docherty said the club stands with Betts, and that the game needed to continue to call out racial abuse.
"He is one of our teammates, one of our most love figures of the club, to see him vilified like that, it does hurt us, so we're to make a difference, this is the exact reason why," he said.
"I can't understand what that does to Eddie, I never will, and I don't think any of us will"
"Being silent hasn't worked, so as an industry and a footy club, we have to stand behind our Indigenous players and a stand."
Racist trope
Last week, the internal culture of one of the code's heavyweight clubs again came under scrutiny when former Collingwood player Héritier Lumumba went public requesting an apology for the way he was treated during his 10-year career with the club.
In a series of social media posts, Lumumba claimed teammates gave him the nickname, "Chimp", and that he was effectively forced out of the club after speaking out against Eddie McGuire in 2013, when the Collingwood president suggested Sydney Swans' legend, Adam Goodes, should be used to promote the musical, King Kong.
Lumumba alleged he endured "a culture of racist jokes" at Collingwood and that neither the club nor the AFL were interested in addressing the issues he had raised repeatedly in the past.
