INDIGENOUS hero Eddie Betts wants greater attention to stamping out racism — to all races — on the terraces at AFL venues.

The Crows specialist forward is citing last year’s jeering of Brownlow Medallist Adam Goodes to a sour retirement and this year’s sledging of Richmond midfielder Bachar Houli by a Collingwood fan as warnings the AFL still has much work to do with its much-admired social agenda.

Betts, a uniting figure with his fan appeal, at the weekend will play his 250th AFL game holding pride in the players’ work in ending racial sledging on the field, but concerned for how the cause is still not won on the terraces or in society.

“There are still people out there — just a certain amount of people — who come to games to racially abuse players; and it is stuff like that we have to stamp out of our game,” Betts told The Advertiser.

“Adam Goodes had a voice against racism; he spoke about it, he brought it up — and the reaction he got was to be boo-ed. He was such a champion player (in 372 AFL games with the Swans) that his career — a two-time Brownlow Medallist, premiership player — should not have ended like that.”

Betts is admiring of the AFL’s commitment to indigenous issues — as highlighted by an “Indigenous Round” each season, indigenous football academies across the league and indigenous community programs — that has allowed him to achieve his football dreams decades after other Aboriginal footballers were denied by racism.

“They have been so supportive the AFL, particularly to stamp out racism in the game — and that is not just towards indigenous. That is multi-cultural as well,” Betts said. “We are okay on the field; there is nothing being said (of racial slurring) on the field.

“It is little things (off the field) but altogether, we have to stamp out racism.”

michelangelo.rucci@news.com.au