Adam Goodes

Adam Goodes (born January 8, 1980, Wallaroo, South Australia, Australia) is an Australian rules football player who was one of the game’s leading scorers. He was named Australian of the Year in 2014.

Goodes’s mother was of Adnyamathanha and Narungga descent, a member of the “stolen generation” of Aboriginal children who were forcibly removed from their families. His father was white, and the young Goodes initially faced insults because of his mixed heritage. His parents split when he was age four, and his mother raised him and his two younger brothers. Goodes began playing Australian rules football while in school, and at age 16 he joined the under-18 club North Ballarat Rebels. Two years later he was drafted by the Sydney Swans of the Australian Football League (AFL). He made his Swans debut in 1999 at age 19 and went on to win the season’s Rising Star Award.

At 6 feet 4 inches (1.94 metres) and 218 pounds (99 kg), Goodes established himself as a solid utility player and one of Sydney’s best scorers. In 2003 he was named to the first of four All-Australian teams (the others were in 2006, 2009, and 2011) and was joint recipient of the Brownlow Medal for the home-and-away season’s best and fairest player. In 2004 he struggled with a recurring knee injury, but in 2005 he played well enough to contribute to Sydney’s 8.10 (58)–7.12 (54) Grand Final victory over the West Coast Eagles. That same year he was named to the sport’s Indigenous Team of the Century. The following season he was the sole winner of the Brownlow Medal, becoming the 12th player to take the award more than once. Goodes set a team-appearance record in April 2012 with his 304th game. He suffered an injured quad that season but still scored a goal in the Grand Final as Sydney defeated Hawthorn 14.7 (91)–11.15 (81).

A proud “Adnyamathanha man,” Goodes often spoke out for improved race relations. He became embroiled in a highly publicized incident during Sydney’s Indigenous Round match against Collingwood on May 24, 2013, when a 13-year-old girl in the stands called him an “ape.” Goodes stopped play and demanded that she be ejected. The girl later apologized and admitted that she had not understood the word’s racist connotations, and Goodes publicly urged that the girl not be vilified for what he believed to have been an unwitting slur. However, in 2015 he was subjected to relentless booing during matches, which some speculated was motivated by racism. He took a brief break from play before retiring later that year. In 2019 the AFL and its clubs apologized to Goodes for failing to act when he was subjected to racist abuse.

In January 2014 Goodes was named Australian of the Year for both his efforts to end racism and his work with indigenous-youth community programs, notably the Goodes O’Loughlin (GO) Foundation, which he founded in 2009 with his cousin and former Sydney teammate Michael O’Loughlin. Goodes provided an eloquent account of his life and beliefs in the essay “The Indigenous Game: A Matter of Choice,” which was included in the book The Australian Game of Football (2008).