A good presentation of the issues, but Syd’s perception that the Sorry campaign did any overall good is mistaken. A Gratitude movement by the indigenous community would have been more appropriate, and would have had the potential of people like Goodes being grateful for the society brought to them by civilization, which may have meant that he would not make a baseless accusation of racism against a schoolgirl who called him an ape.
That is how Goodes is perceived, and being appointed Australian of the Year, by the same entity that previously selected a disingenuous clown like Flannery for the honour, simply adds fuel to the fire.
Goodes needs to apply his considerable talent to healing his rift with the community, and cease indulging himself in antics which aggravate the situation. In particular, he should forget about the politically correct baseless nonsense term of.”racism”.
As one anthropologist put it, the life of the Australian aborigine was “nasty brutish and short”. They believed that any death of a person was caused by sorcery. If someone died, the witch doctor worked out how to find the perpetrators, so that anyone going about their daily business could be set upon and killed in revenge for a death of which they knew nothing, but they happened to be where the witch doctor had predicted the perpetrators would be. Civilization has changed all this, for what was a stone age culture

Banjo,
The following are quotes from your post:

Many that go to matches are amused by the comments of other spectators and indeed it seems to be a contest as to who can make the most outlandish or wittiest remark about a refs decision or linemans call.

It seems to be part of the game for players and spectators to do all they can to put their opponants off their game.

Why?

I had seen Goodes a few times in clips of AFL games. He always gave the same impression as Geoff Toovey & Benny Elias to me. They all came across as bullying thuggish types, who had high level of football ability. As such I disliked them all. Race obviously had nothing to do with this.

Without his ridiculous outburst at a spectator, I would never have known his name, & had no interest in him. Even after his bit of histrionics I would have quickly have forgotten this footballer if the idiots who select the Australian of the year had not have elevated him to an entirely undeserved prominence.

We can not blame Goodes for this bit of stupidity, but he could have refused, or not made such a production of it. A bit of humility would have engendered an entirely different feeling in AFL fans, & the general public towards him.

He has no one but himself to blame for the dislike most feel for him, his public persona is very easy to dislike.

A few points.
- The popular definition of "Racism" is incorrect.
- Children cannot be "Racist" and any child who attends school actually has to be de programmed of their incorrect views on "Racism" in their late teens lest they look like fools in the real world.
- "Racism" insofar as it exists at all is borne of experience, not ignorance, only extended contact and race mixing can produce the type of negative attitudes attributed to "Racists".
- Adam Goodes was in no way held back by "Racism" or the circumstances of his upbringing, as far as we know he had a normal working class family life in a rural town, as many of us did.

One more.
-The language and attitude of the Social Justice Warrior employed by Goodes has no currency among ordinary, working class people, it's an elitist affectation and you notice that only the upper castes and their media are supporting him.
The commentators whose audience (and therefore revenue base) is drawn from the working classes are the ones refusing to play along with the SJW narrative, Andrew Bolt, Alan Jones, Shane Warne, Jason Akermanis etc.
The reason is simple, working class Australians don't hold the same values as the upper castes and they look more to sporting figures and celebrities for inspiration that they do politicians and elitist media pundits.
Anti Racism and SJW shaming tactics don't work on people who are not even aware of the differences between races and the type of social status signalling employed by, say the Prime Minister, Eddie Maguire or Gillon McLachlan is meaningless to people who will never be admitted to those cliques or strata of society.
Football fans for the most part really do believe that differences are just skin deep and they don't understand why Adam Goodes is behaving like he's, "one of them" and not "one of us".

' Where the hell did she get the idea that it was OK to denigrate someone by calling them an ape?
A good example of monkey hear, monkey do.'

obviously Ponder from those holding to the idiotic evolution theory. Scientist did hold that the aboriginals were he missing link in revision 5508 in trying to justify the idiotic theory. Now they just add a billion years here or there to cover their ignorance and desperation.