Gday Nathan Buckley, Mason Cox, Brayden Maynard, Scott Pendlebury, Jeff Browne, Major Brendan Nottle and Craig McRae,

with this open letter, I extend an invitation to each of you to help me in my military heritage based efforts to form a small, initially primarily artistic team to support Jordan De Goey to deal with the bullying he has recently faced and which, if it escalates, could become worse than what was done to Adam Goodes and drove that champion out of the game.

In my opinion, Jordy has been bullied because what I presume is his heterosexuality was exposed in public.

That bullying is wrong.

Brayden, you publicly described Jordy like this:

Brayden, I believe you. Thank you for standing up for your mate and letting the world know what he is really like.

We must not let virtue-signaling people, whether lone trolls online or lazy, self righteous, insensitive individuals, trash human rights from within the safety of paid positions in large organisations. This can really hurt kind, good-natured souls like Jordan De Goey.

We must not let the bullies create a situation where “Side By Side We Stick Together” becomes “Side By Side We’re Sick Together”

Jordy himself has publicly warned how much damage what I am calling mob bullying of athletes could do.

Is a safe place for bullies what we want Collingwood and Australia to be?

Or do we want to channel the spirit of WW2 and seek victory for human rights just like the diggers and their allies achieved in WW2.

If a bookish bloke like my dad could help do that in Balikpapan in WW2’s last major battle, we can all do it now.

Geoff Fox, 29th June, 2022, Greater Collingwood (a.k.a. Melbourne)