Eddie Betts was told to LEAVE a public swimming pool because of his skin colour

Eddie Betts has revealed how he felt like he didn’t belong in Australia after he was kicked out of a public swimming pool with his children because of the color of their skin.

Betts appeared on Fox Sports on Wednesday night in the wake of explosive allegations against Alastair Clarkson over his treatment of Indigenous players. The coach denies the allegations against him.

Betts, regarded as one of the greatest Indigenous players the AFL has ever seen, said he believed the allegations against Clarkson and Hawthorn’s coaching staff were true because it is an experience he, along with many Aboriginal Australians, has lived .

Explaining his response, Betts recounted how a lifeguard asked him to leave a pool because an elderly white couple complained.

“Well it keeps happening, we’ve grown up with this,” he said. ‘It’s not just in the AFL system, it’s all these systems.

‘I find that I am being followed by security guards in the store. This year alone I was at a pool and the lifeguard came up to me and told me to get out of the pool.

‘I was holding my child, my baby, and my two twins were swimming around and I found out that two old white elderly couples told the lifeguard to tell me to get out of the pool because I was making their granddaughter uncomfortable .

‘It just made me feel like I don’t belong here in Australia because these issues keep coming up that I keep facing, that all Aboriginal people keep facing here in Australia , and I honestly feel like I don’t belong here, but my wife keeps driving it into me and keeps telling me that “out of someone, you should feel like you belong here because it’s your country and you should never feel that way”.

‘But because I keep facing these problems, I don’t feel like I belong.’

More to follow.