Now Andrew Johns is back in the rugby league fold just in time for this year's State of Origin.
League officials in New South Wales have brought former star player back into the Blues' squad as an assistant coach.
The Aboriginal elder Sol Bellear says he supports the move and that Johns has now helped to educate the public about the hurt caused by racism.
Simon Santow has our report.
SIMON SANTOW: State of Origin is rugby league's showpiece - sell out crowds, spectacular football and plenty of media hype.
Last year a racism row took some of the gloss off the attraction and distracted the New South Wales camp.
Legendary player turned assistant coach Andrew Johns used some racist, inflammatory language in describing a star Queensland Aboriginal player.
In doing so he offended one of his own and caused more damage to the game.
Blues' player Timana Tahu walked out of camp and the team and Johns was booted out as well.
Now he's back and forgiven according to the general manager of the New South Wales Rugby League, Geoff Carr.
GEOFF CARR: Now Andrew obviously made a comment not anticipating the number of people he would have deeply hurt by those comments. So it was a throwaway line to him at the time with fairly dire consequences.
He has learnt, along with a lot of other people due to this experience, that inappropriate language takes a real risk of offending people when you don't necessarily mean to offend.
SIMON SANTOW: He's one of a number in the game who believe good can come from exposing hurtful behaviour.
GEOFF CARR: Andrew has learned a valuable lesson. Andrew has certainly been punished for it and certainly gone through some trauma over it, and hopefully the plus out of the incident is that a lot more people are aware you know, what you can say can be quite hurtful people that are offended by it.
Andrew is working through Mick Gooda at the Human Rights Commission, he's working through Smiley Johnstone at the Indigenous Council and he's made it very clear that the language was inappropriate and that he's resolved his issue with Timana.
As I said the council takes the view that it's been, the end result, obviously the initial comments weren't beneficial but the end result and Andrew's attitude since has been quite educational.
SIMON SANTOW: What do you say though to people who might consider well, it's about New South Wales maximising its chances of winning the Origin this year and that's more than the settling of the racism issue?
GEOFF CARR: Look it's more about appropriate penalty. I mean as I said, Andrew couldn't have been, he was in a bad space personally and emotionally after it because he realised you know, what he'd said, although he didn't believe it had malice, had a devastating effect on others.
SIMON SANTOW: Aboriginal elder Sol Bellear is on the National Rugby League Indigenous Council.
SOL BELLEAR: I don't think that we should forever lock out people like Andrew Johns, lock them out of the game or lock them out of the camp.
SIMON SANTOW: He helped the parties come together to sort out their differences and believes a lot's changed in the last 12 months in terms of awareness of racism.
SOL BELLEAR: I've spoken to a lot of players. I was in camp with the Indigenous players at the Indigenous All Stars match and I've been in touch with quite a few players over the 12 months and they have spoken about the issue.
And I mean it's certainly brought the issue out into the open. I think it opened the whole issue or racism up but not just against Aboriginal players but against Polynesian and Maori players as well.
It's out in the open and it was discussed and I think that the discussion was very, very frank, very open, and people have now moved on.
And I think because we've now moved on, it was a discussion that rugby league had to have, we now welcome Andrew Johns back.
ELEANOR HALL: Sol Bellear is on the board of the National Rugby League Indigenous Council. He was speaking to Simon Santow.
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