League caller gone with the wind

An ABC commentator has refused to apologise for using the word 'darkie' on air. It was a reference to 'Gone with the Wind'. Photo / AP

A clumsily recalled line from Gone With the Wind has cost a veteran rugby league commentator his job, after Warren Ryan refused to apologise for using the word "darkie" on air.

The ABC suspended Ryan, a former player and coach, and his fellow commentator, David Morrow, after Ryan made the comment during an NRL match a fortnight ago between the Roosters and Bulldogs.

Morrow - who was suspended himself last year for joking that it was difficult to see people in Darwin without the lights on - could be heard laughing at his colleague's remark. The ABC is investigating the incident, but Ryan told Fairfax Media he had resigned "to save them the trouble of conducting it".

During a stand-off between a referee and a player towards the end of the match, Ryan recalled "a line in a movie where the old darkie says, someone says, 'Quittin' time.' He said, 'It's not quittin' time, I say quittin' time.' Then he yells out, 'Quittin' time!'"

The 73-year-old was referring to the 1939 movie set in the Civil War-era American South, and an exchange of dialogue on the Tara cotton plantation between a worker and a foreman (both black, neither elderly).

As the bell rings to signal the end of the day, the worker says: "Quittin' time!" The foreman retorts: "Who says it's quittin' time? ... I'm the foreman, I'm the one that says when it's quittin' time at Tara ... Quittin' time!"

Neither man uses the word "darkie", but it does feature in the movie, and even back then was controversial. Producer David Selznick chose to retain it in the script, but bowed to pressure to remove the 'N'-word following a heated debate. Many black activists regarded Margaret Mitchell's book, on which the film was based, as demeaning.

This week, Ryan - who was planning to retire at the end of this season - insisted that "the word used to describe the character was a direct quote from the film ... There was no offence intended, so I won't be apologising. It would be insincere."

Linda Burney, a former NSW state minister and chairwoman of the National Indigenous Rugby League Council, described his comment as "inappropriate" and "belittling" yesterday. She told the ABC: "He needs to understand that there is absolutely no place ... whatsoever in today's society for that sort of language."