Ex Collingwood Player Héritier Lumumba Says He’s “Terminating All Communication” With Club

Ex-Collingwood player Héritier Lumumba has announced he and two other former players are “officially terminating all communication” with the AFL club, citing their failure to implement structural change to address past incidents of racism.

In a post on Twitter this morning Lumumba stated that Leon Davis and Andrew Krakouer had all formally notified the club of their decision.

1/2 After 15 months of dialogue to address past incidents of racism at the Collingwood Football Club, Leon Davis, Andrew Krakouer and I have formally notified the club that we are officially terminating all communications with CFC.

— Héritier Lumumba (@iamlumumba) April 12, 2022

While Krakouer and Davis are yet to give an official statement, Lumumba said that the decision was due to their dissatisfaction with how the club has handled their experiences with racism by fellow players and club management.

“Nothing has changed. It is our firm belief that the Collingwood Football Club has no intention of acting in good faith to achieve a just outcome for past players who have experienced racism at the Club.” Lumumba posted on Twitter.

Lumumba called out racism he experienced while playing for Collingwood back in 2020, telling reporters he was regularly called racist nicknames such as “chimp” over his ten-year career with the club. An independent review into racism at Collingwood was released in February last year and identified that the club indeed had a problem with structurally embedded racism.

The report titled ‘Do Better’ found that comments from the club’s president Eddy McGuire “exacerbated the impact of the racist incidents” at Collingwood. After the report was leaked to the media, the ex-Who Wants To Be A Millionaire host officially resigned from his position at the club.

Leon Davis has previously spoken to The Guardian about the racism he experienced from his fellow teammates while playing for Collingwood. Davis’ recounted an incident where he discovered a player profile he was required to fill out had been vandalised with racial stereotypes and left by his locker.

After attempting to reach a resolution with club management after the incident, Davis said he was left feeling ostracised from the team and considered leaving.

“It’s a football club mentality. You’re all on a team and you’re supposed to have everyone’s back. After that [incident] it changed dramatically, where it was hard to be there,” Davis told The Guardian. “It was really hard for me to be there, not only as an 18-year-old kid but being a First Nations man, where there wasn’t any understanding of what I was going through.”

Lumumba’s announcement comes as a 12-month review of the ‘Do Better’ report found that Collingwood has been making “significant and genuine progress” in adopting its recommendations to combat racism at the club.