As a boy, former St Kilda ruckman Lazar Vidovic was advised against playing AFL by his Serbian immigrant father. But at two-metres tall and with a healthy appetite for the rough and tumble of the code, he persisted – ultimately exposing himself to relentless racial taunting when he made the elite level.
“You were getting called racial names such as wog back in the day - you had to - you didn't know how to handle it but later on as you got older you turn to physical violence on the footy field to back yourself up,” Mr Vidovic said.
That has all changed, thanks to the code’s now 20-year-old racial vilification laws, and Lazar Vidovic said it’s a good thing. His own teenage son now plays elite junior football, who he hopes will follow his size 14-boots into the AFL.
“Other cultures are watching their kids play and it's bringing them into the AFL scene, it's bringing them in and more multi-cultural type players,” he said.
Mr Vidovic’s comments coincide with an AFL state government initiative “Many cultures, one game” which Premier Daniel Andrews hopes will help promote diversity in the code’s multicultural round next month.
“The greatest game partnering up with our greatest asset - our rich multiculturalism - I can't think of anything better or more important than that,” Mr Andrews said.
A multicultural festival will be held on the night of arguably the code’s most traditional and brutal rivalry – when Collingwood takes on Carlton. Magpies President Eddie McGuire said it’s most fitting.
“Inner city Carlton with the Jewish migration - the Italian migration the coming together of so many diverse cultures and Collingwood which originally was the melting pot of all the migration coming into this city,” Mr McGuire said.
