All booing is infantile but not all boos are equal – that’s why Lance Franklin became the story | Jonathan Horn

There’s no need to bemoan a sport gone soft, just reflect on what it means to an Indigenous footballer

Richmond supporters will be waiting for Tom Stewart on Friday night. It’s been coming for nine months. He’ll be booed as vociferously as a footballer can be these days. He’s fair game, apparently. He’s a magnificent footballer and a big boy. He rearranged Dion Prestia’s face and now it’s payback time. “Good, clean fandom,” the broadcaster Gerard Whateley called it this week.

But what happened at the MCG last Sunday was more complicated than good, clean fandom. It was a particularly spiteful beginning to the Magpies v Swans game and the Collingwood crowd was riled up. At first the booing of Lance Franklin seemed benign. They booed the umpires, they booed Tom Papley (whose entire on-field persona invites opprobrium) and they booed Franklin. It was puerile and it was tedious, but it wasn’t all that unusual. In recent years, duckers, hitmen, smart arses, Christians and No 1 draft picks have all been booed. So why did Franklin become the story? And why was he booed in the first place?