Raphael Clarke

[Frankencow]

What a load of crap Persevering Saint. I'm sure you'd find most people bag Raph just because he is a dud. I'm not of Aboriginal descent, but my jumper has a number 7 on it, and I'll give you the tip - it ain't for Lenny.

 

[Look2Me4Guidance]

Dude, excellent points - and worth me, and several others, eating humble pie .

I was SOO angry by some of his earlier performances, but if he's playing as well as you're indicating (Sainter, you too), then keep him in.

Let me be the person to let the cat out of the bag, and say what I think a lot of us are thinking.

A few weeks ago my brother and sister were in Level 2 of TD in their members seats, and heard tirade after tirade against both the Clarke boys - and much of those tirades were race-driven. There, I said it. How much of the bagging comes because of racist attacks on two aboriginal players, and how much of it REALLY is to do with their performances. Raph has played terrible footy at times, but rarely seems to get the credit he's due when he has a good one (Sainter's point). The attacks against Xavier made by people like latrine latrell (admittedly a hawks supporter, but there's been plenty of saints fans jump on that train) make no sense at all given his stellar performances this year... unless it's got nothing to do with his performances, but have to do with the color of his skin.

I don't expect any posters to ADMIT that's THEIR reasoning - I'd hope they would, but generally racists are too gutless to admit it when they're called on it. But for those of us judging Raph on his performances as a footballer, do you think this is what's going on for some other posters?

You are drawing a pretty long bow mate, I think you'd better watch what you are saying as those are some pretty harsh accusations.

 

[Persevering Saint]

If I'm wrong, great - this isn't something I want to be right about. Like I said, I'm basing this on stuff my sister heard in the members' area - and as you can imagine, she was just disgusted by it.

 

[sauce_head]

If I'm wrong, great - this isn't something I want to be right about. Like I said, I'm basing this on stuff my sister heard in the members' area - and as you can imagine, she was just disgusted by it.

That is quite an extreme accusation. Our club has a great love affair with indeginous players over the years. If there is any calling such as that, it would be borne out of frustration at performance, just as any other personal "insult" would be, rightly, wrongly or niavely.

 

[Kildonan]

The accusations of persevering saint are nebulous and target no-one in particular. It never occured to me to think that this might be true probably because I don't get to the games too often and when I do I usually am in a rosy world where all is cool. His thoughts are generated by his experience of crowd behavior. I might add that the psychology of crowd behavior does not follow the rules that we apply to individuals. People will say and respond to things in order to be accepted as part of the greater group. It is disappointing to hear, and I'm sure that there are many who will refute the inferences. We'll leave that line of thought because not much good can come of it. It can neither be proven nor disproven.