I would like to acknowledge that we are on Wurundjeri land, and pay my respects to elders past, present and emerging. Welcome to all the Indigenous people in the room today, among them some North royalty, with current player and deadset champion Mia King, and past player – and deadset champion – Daniel Wells.

Welcome to Sydney Chairman Andrew Pridham and CEO Tom Harley, and to everyone joining us today from the Sydney Football Club.

A big welcome to our friends from Mazda, to Vinesh and the whole Mazda team. As Jodi mentioned, next year we will celebrate 25 years with Mazda, which is about three times as long as the average Australian marriage and I suspect three times as happy. 

And I also want to welcome Rayden Crawley and his wife Pat. Before I get into my remarks, I have a very special duty today, and that is to award Rayden with his life membership. 

Rayden has actually been a life member of our club for a number of years now but somehow, has never actually been presented with that membership. Rayden has been a servant and supporter of the club over many years, a board member when the club won the 1996 AFL Premiership and is now a club Patron. 

Rayden’s contribution to the club has been unwavering but also without fanfare ( - and I’m about to change that). 

Rayden, thank you for all you’ve done. I’m delighted to finally present you with Life Membership of the North Melbourne Football Club. 

It’s a special day in the AFL calendar – Sir Doug Nicholls Round, where we pay tribute to the past and present Indigenous footballers who shape so much of what is great about our game. And while this weekend will – quite rightly – be full of tributes, I felt that today that given what else is playing out in our industry at present – and indeed in our country, that I needed to say something a little bit different.

This week, we announced that Alastair Clarkson would be stepping back from his coaching role for a period of time, to concentrate on his physical and mental health. The past eight months of what I will call the Hawthorn situation has taken an unbelievable toll on him. Alastair will be alright – arguably he’s taken the hardest step, which is putting up his hand and asking for help – and our club will be fine – we’ve got outstanding people in Jen Watt and Todd Viney leading us, and Brett Ratten as senior coach until Clarko returns – but I am genuinely worried about the state of our game and the ability of us all to have the sort of hard conversations we need to have if we are to genuinely progress race relations in this country.

There are two parts to the Hawthorn situation. There are some shocking and substantive allegations in the public domain which I won’t repeat but which go to terminations of pregnancy and separation of families. Those are contestable and are strongly denied and a process was put in place eight months ago to determine whether they happened. I’ll leave what happens next to the process.

But more than that, there is clearly a huge amount of hurt – on both sides. And an adversarial system and an adversarial process does not deal well with hurt. It deals with right and wrong and punishment. Not hurt, not learning, and not the sort of understanding of one another and moving forward that we need to get to if we’re going to have any chance of moving on.

Yesterday, Stan Grant, a man who, in my opinion, makes far more sense than most, said in relation to his own battle with racism, that the Australian media: “only sees only battle lines, not bridges.”

We need to find a way to build bridges, not battle lines. Hawthorn’s report was poor, and its response to it was poor – but I would like to think it was created with good intentions. But it did not create a bridge to deal with hurt. It set up a monumental set of battle lines. The AFL was in an insidious position and its response probably felt like it made sense, but eight months on no one can honestly believe it’s been the right process. And it certainly has not provided a bridge.

What is the right way of hearing hurt and of having hard conversations? I don’t have the answer to this other than to say – the last eight months haven’t been it. But as an industry, we have to front up to that. We can’t just celebrate the good stuff, and not deal with the things that are hard. We need to find a way to start creating bridges. We need to listen. And we need to be prepared for it to be difficult along the way.

To today’s game, where we will get to see one of the greatest Indigenous players of all time in Buddy Franklin, who I sincerely hope doesn’t kick 13 on us today, and one of the newest in Phoenix Spicer. Phoenix is playing just his eighth game for us today, under his fourth coach – we may not be building a bridge but we’re definitely building his resilience! Phoenix grew up in a remote community in east Arnhem Land, a 13-hour drive from Darwin, moving to Darwin with his mum when he was 10 – which is also when he started to learn English – and a year later to Adelaide with his pop. Phoenix’s story is special, and it encapsulates everything that is great and simultaneously really hard about our game. And I’m really looking forward to watching him play today.

So, as Brett Ratten coaches his first game for North, George Wardlaw plays his first, and we’re wearing Emma Bamblett’s jumper for the first time, I just want to say -  it’s going to be a ripping day. Enjoy your lunch, may the best team win, and go Roos.