This week, Roosters’ NRL player, Latrell Mitchell, was the target of a vile, racist post on social media.  Like the 13-year-old girl who called Adam Goodes an ape, the bloke who vilified Mitchell probably doesn’t quite understand.

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Mitchell re-published the post, to make a point, to make a stand. Apparently, he’d been booed by sections of the crowd in Canberra on Sunday when the Roosters played the Raiders there and has been racially abused at other games. The NRL is investigating.

The NRL needs to do more than “investigate”. It needs to come down on the perpetrators harder and quicker than the AFL did in the case of Adam Goodes. The NRL and the AFL are justified in claiming a good record in Indigenous affairs, community development, tolerance and diversity. The Goodes affair showed the AFL’s commitment to be somewhat brittle. The cheap attacks on Mitchell are the NRL’s opportunity to display the same courage we all expect of the game’s players.

For me, there’s a personal poignancy to Mitchell’s situation. On the June long weekend, my wife and three adult daughters (Roosters tragics, all) bumped into Latrell Mitchell at a fish and chips place in Tuncurry (he’d been given the weekend off to visit his family around Taree). He chatted and posed for some great pictures.

Four weeks later, pretty much my entire family (mother and the three daughters included) were at a Roosters game, in front row seats at ground level, right on the fence. After the match, Mitchell slowly and deliberately walked the entire perimeter of the ground, shaking hands, high-fiving, signing autographs. He spots our mob. “Hey! It’s the Roosters family from Tuncurry!” he says.
Classy 21-year-old.

Richard Whitington is a freelance writer in his 54th year following the Roosters.