"After all we've done for him," McGuire would be saying - and we can only hypothesize because just as he failed to address Lumumba's version of events two weeks ago the Collingwood president has again maintained his silence regarding Krakouer. Despite sitting behind his Triple M microphone on Monday for three hours.

It is well known within the club that McGuire has helped out Krakouer financially after he retired as a player. Less well known, but equally true according to the club, is that the president personally helped Lumumba's younger siblings with their schooling. In an interview with the Herald Sun at the weekend, McGuire said Collingwood's only concern was for "Heritier's short-term and long-term health".

But while neither Krakouer nor Lumumba have denied the support Collingwood has given them in the past - support many at the Magpies have subtly conveyed was sorely needed by the two often troubled individuals - surely that does not remove from them the right to introduce a conversation about racism.

Instead the club is defensive and angry. Some past and present players are privately threatening retribution. The nature of that retribution appears to be to discredit Lumumba's claims by exposing his past alleged bad habits. Many say they have no relationship with him anymore. He is being portrayed as an outcast.

The Magpies vehemently deny Lumumba was regularly nicknamed 'Chimp'. The club says it addressed the issue with past and present players four years ago when the allegations were first raised by Lumumba and the only evidence that surfaced then related to a short-lived period which followed a party, a small group of players and some dance routines.

One former player told Fairfax Media Lumumba laughed it off at the time as an 'in joke'. Lumumba says in his 'Fair Game' documentary that he was only trying to fit in. Coach Nathan Buckley is the only club spokesman to have addressed the issue publicly and he says he never heard it.

Now Andrew Krakouer has backed Lumumba but because the Magpies helped resurrect his career as a player with a criminal record and other personal problems and failings his message too is being subtly discredited.

McGuire's silence is remarkable given the newsworthy if highly sensitive nature of the allegations made by both players and their direct relation to McGuire and his fateful insult directed at Adam Goodes.

The club seems convinced the 'Chimp' nickname has been grossly exaggerated but it cannot deny it rallied around the president at the expense of a major cultural and social error on his behalf. No one is suggesting McGuire should have been cast aside but perhaps more sensitivity could have been shown to those at the club who were horrified by what he had done.

Clearly McGuire rules his radio team the way he has run the Collingwood board in the past. You may recall the phone hook-up the president organised with his directors after the King Kong comments and how for the club it was fairly quickly business as usual. Or so it seemed.

But McGuire and his football club would do well to think more carefully about the message on this occasion and concern themselves less with the messenger.

Because there are too many consistencies in both players' stories regarding the Goodes incident when it came to protecting the president.

Lumumba believed it was his move in taking McGuire to task which marked the first significant moment in his breakdown of relations with Collingwood. That he was accused of "throwing the president under the bus." The Magpies say that erosion was caused by the realities of his ageing as a footballer. We suspect there is truth in both versions.
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Krakouer said he did not want to play in the game that followed the King Kong scandal but that he was pressured to do so in part to protect the president. So Krakouer played, he says now, feeling his spirits has been broken.

That the club put its 'side by side' mantra ahead of the strong social views of two black footballers leaving them disenchanted while the the Magpies rallied around the president exposes a poor period in the club's history that continues to haunt it. These players appeared genuinely torn by divided loyalties over what took place.

No one is suggesting Collingwood led the way in being a racist organisation. Lumumba himself pointed out that as the biggest club in the land it follows that the Magpies were one personification during his time there of a national characteristic.

McGuire in the past has spoken of understanding the indigenous Australian experience better having suffered the public scorn that followed his Goodes comments.

What a pity he has avoided any meaningful analysis of the collateral damage which took place among his own black-and-white brethren.