Sam Newman lashes out at “woke” athletes “with low IQs”
Former AFL player Sam Newman has weighed in on a string of recent conflicts in the sporting world over million-dollar sponsorship deals, calling out “woke” athletes “with low IQs”.
He claimed the world was “being run by patronising and pompous, arrogant people”, creating a “ridiculous, woke society of nonsense”.
His comments come after the news emerged of controversies involving Netball Australia and the Fremantle Dockers.
Netball Australia, which is in desperate need of funding, is in dispute with some of its star players around a $15 million sponsorship deal with Hancock Prospecting, which is owned by mining magnate Gina Rinehart.
The deal would also see the company’s logo featured on the uniforms of Diamonds players, but opposition came from Indigenous player Donell Wallam and her teammates in relation to the company’s historical stance against Indigenous communities.
Rinehart’s father, Lang Hancock, made a series of racist comments about Indigenous people in a 1984 documentary, Couldn’t Be Fairer, including his solution to the “Aboriginal problem”.
“I would dope the water up so that they were sterile and would breed themselves out in future and that would solve the problem,” Hancock said in the film.
In the AFL world, major Fremantle Dockers supporter Woodside Energy, a natural gas exporter, has left some high-profile fans concerned.
Author Tim Winton and former WA premier Carmen Lawrence are among a group of fans urging the football club to end the agreement with the gas company.
These controversies have become fodder for Newman, who shared his opinions on both with Sky News.
The 76-year-old said he wouldn’t wear a certain sports jersey if he didn’t agree with what was on the front of it, but that “the price of being virtuous is hypocrisy” and that it’s unrealistic to expect sports could continue without money from the mining or energy sector.
“If you think fossil fuels are going to disappear in the very near future then you’re mistaken because that’s the end of the civilised world as we know it no matter what you think of climate and no matter what you think of global warming,” he said.
“I notice one of the netballers said they weren’t happy with Hancock because of their climate record, I mean seriously the world we live in is being run by patronising and pompous, arrogant people who have no idea really what they’re on about.”
He then dubbed the netballers as hypocrites.
“We have people with low IQs telling a sporting body which is on its knees financially that they won’t accept money from sponsorship deals from a company which I’m sure that those people who are complaining use one of those products indirectly or directly that Hancock Mining or Hancock industries have fabricated on a daily basis,” he said.
When Sky News host Chris Kenny suggested that sports stars should just not play if they don’t agree with who sponsors their game, Newman disagreed, saying that those running teams or codes have a “duty of care” to inform players before they sign up.
“[They have] a duty of care [to] say to the rank and file before they sign them up, "We're going to have Alinta Energy or Hancock mining sponsor us, have you got any problems with it?’” Newman said.
“And if they have you could actually sort it out before they did the deal.”
As for the Fremantle Dockers, Newman took the opportunity to slam the sport in general.
“If I could just go a step further (about) the feigned indignation of the AFL who insist on telling us to be the moral arbiters of what we believe in,” he said.
“I've said this before. At the AFL grand final we had three references to Indigenous Australians.
“One of them is absolutely appropriate and no one could agree with it more.
“But they had three separate references... lest we have to be told that we (have to) respect everything that's going on in the country.
“They made a Muslim woman (Haneen Zreika of the Giants) the face of the AFLW, and then... she declined (to) wear the gay pride jumper.
“If you get into the political realm in a sporting organisation, you end up creating a hornet's nest for the people who want nothing more than to go to the football or the sporting event just to watch it for what it is.
“But they keep forcing this moral code onto us, to perhaps appease their own social prejudices and it turns into a ridiculous, woke society of nonsense.”
Image: Sky News (Facebook)