Sydney: An "appalling" meme comparing a high-profile Australian indigenous sportsman to a gorilla killed in a US zoo was removed by Facebook yesterday after a complaint by the Australian Football League.

The meme, recently posted on the "AFL Memes" page which has almost 200,000 likes, showed an image of the 400-pound silverback Harambe, which was shot dead after a child fell into its enclosure in Ohio, along with former AFL star Adam Goodes' name and other comments.