Eddie Betts was told to LEAVE a public swimming pool because of his skin colour

Eddie Betts has revealed how he felt like he didn’t belong in Australia after being thrown from a public swimming pool with his kids because of their skin color.

Betts appeared on Fox Sports Wednesday night in response to explosive allegations against Alastair Clarkson over his treatment of Indigenous players. The coach refutes the accusations against him.

Betts, considered one of the greatest Indigenous players the AFL has ever seen, said he believed the allegations against Clarkson and the Hawthorn coaching staff were true, as it is an experience he shared with many Aboriginal Australians. .

Betts was asked to leave because an elderly white couple was uncomfortable about his skin

In explaining his response, Betts related how a lifeguard asked him to leave a pool because an elderly white couple had filed a complaint.

“Well, it just keeps happening, we grew up with it,” he said. “It’s not just in the AFL system, it’s all of these systems.

“I notice I’m being followed by guards in the store. This year alone I was at a pool and the lifeguard came up to me and told me to get out of the pool.

“I was holding my child, my baby in my hand and my two twins were swimming around and I found out that two old white elderly couples were telling the lifeguard to get out of the pool because I was making their grandchild uncomfortable.

“That made me feel like I don’t belong here in Australia because these issues keep popping up that I have to deal with all the time, that all Indigenous people here in Australia are dealing with and I really feel like I don’t belong here.” , but my wife keeps driving it up and telling me that “out of everyone, you should feel like you belong here because this is your country and you should never feel that way”.

“But because I continue to struggle with these issues, I don’t feel like I belong.”

Betts said he was not surprised by the explosive allegations that emerged on Wednesday.

Betts, an AFL legend, has long advocated better treatment of Indigenous peoples in Australia

“It was hard to read, but I wasn’t surprised to be honest,” he said on AFL360. ‘As Aboriginals, we are not surprised either. We have faced these problems in many systems, in the education system, in the legal system, in the health system and it comes back to what I have preached a lot and that is education.”

Betts – who revealed he spoke to AFL chief Gillon McLachlan on Wednesday – has now urged each club to launch their own outside assessments about their treatment of former and current Indigenous players.

“My heart goes out to those players because they were brave, because they cast their vote and also to their families, but it was really hard. That can happen at any club. If Shaun Burgoyne was at that football club and it slipped under the table then as a leader and listening to him he was very devastated that these guys didn’t speak to him, if that was the case this could happen at any football club.

His wife (left) told him he has a better claim than anyone to hear in Australia

‘I think every football club should do such a review. Every club should come out and do an outside assessment, contact the indigenous players, the former indigenous players and see what that football club was like.”

Meanwhile, former Hawthorn player Jordan Lewis – who played under Clarkson at the club – says Wednesday’s revelations have disturbed his former teammates.

“The overall emotion is devastating,” he said. “Because we were involved with that football club and understood the culture and the indigenous players that were there and the love and care that we showed from a playgroup point of view, and then realizing that they had these experiences that we didn’t know and I can honestly say, hand on heart, when it came out this morning… to a man. No one ever heard of such a thing happening during our time there.

“We as a playgroup were never aware of that, so it is clearly disturbing if these allegations are true when it should have been a safe environment.”