Several members of Australia’s Penguin Football Club have apologized for appearing in in blackface as Serena and Venus Williams, according to the New York Post.
The much-maligned photo features footballers Mitch Stanley and Matt Chamberlain as the Williams sisters, and Beau Grundy as Sydney Swans Australian rules footballer Aliir Aliir.
This is the level of sheer ignorance we are dealing with in Australia when three Tasmanian footy players decided to do a Blackface stunt to make a mockery' of non-white people @alexisohanian @serenawilliams @newscomauHQ pic.twitter.com/RCD0HZuizS
— This Fernandez Rocks💃🏽 (@HA_Fernandez) September 19, 2018
The club issued an apology, the paper noted:
‘The Penguin Football Club were not aware that three of our players intended to dress in this manner and the incident did not happen at our facilities,’ the Tasmanian club posted to its website.
‘It was not their intention to upset anyone, and all they meant to do was dress as one of their sporting idols. Their actions were never intended to be racist in any way.’
The Post added that the club said the players have been reprimanded and “will be given support to make sure they understand that their behavior was racist and hurtful and that it will not happen again.”
“The players concerned have acknowledged that what they did was completely and utterly unacceptable and would like to apologize unreservedly for their lack of judgment… Sometimes players make mistakes, and for that, we apologize,” the club concluded.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston.
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