Here is some of what Adam Goodes said to the media on Saturday morning following his vilification by a young girl at the MCG on Friday night
"I'm pretty gutted to be honest. The win, the first in 13 years, to win by 47 points against Collingwood, to play such a pivotal role just sort of means nothing.
"To come to the boundary line and hear a 13-year-old girl call me an 'ape', and it's not the first time on a footy field that I've been referred to as a 'monkey' or an 'ape', it was shattering.
"I turned around and I saw it was a young girl, and I thought she was 14, that was my initial thought. I was just like 'really?' How could that happen? This week is a celebration of our people and our culture. I had the absolute privilege of meeting the great man Nicky Winmar two days ago now, and what he was able to do for us 20 years ago. To be able to make a stand myself and say 'racism has a face' last night, and it was a 13-year-old girl."
"It's not her fault. She's 13, she's still so innocent. I don't put any blame on her. Unfortunately it's what she hears, in the environment she's grown up in that has made her think that it's ok to call people names."
"I can guarantee you right now she would have no idea how it makes anyone feel by calling them an 'ape'. I think it was just the name calling that she was doing, and unfortunately it cut me deep, and it affected me so much that I couldn't even be on the ground last night to celebrate a victory, to celebrate Indigenous round. I'm still shattered, personally, it's tough. I'm loving the support of my friends and family, and people in the social media, it's fantastic, but I think the person who needs the most support right now is the little girl. People need to get around her. She's 13. She's uneducated. If she wants to pick up the phone and call me and apologise I'll take that phone call, and I'll have a conversation with that girl about, 'you know what, you called me a name, and this is how it made me feel'. And it's school stuff."
"It is school stuff and that's what it took me back to last night. I felt like I was in high school again being bullied, being called all these names because of my appearance. I didn't stand up for myself in high school. I'm a lot more confident, I'm a lot more proud about who I am and my culture, and I decided to stand up last night, and I'll continue to stand up because racism has no place in our industry. It has no place in society. Hopefully any person out there who has been name-called, has been verbally abused can stand up for themselves after seeing what happened last night."
"I don't know if it's the lowest point in my career, but personally, I don't think I've been more hurt by someone calling me a name than I was last night. Not because of what was said, but because where it came from: a 13-year-old girl. It just hit me that it's not a Collingwood issue, it's not an AFL issue, it's a society issue. It's an issue of what are our parents teaching our kids?"
