As a woman who loves AFL, the events of the last few days have left me wondering if there is a home for me in this game.
It has been hard to stomach watching allegations of sexual assault that may be linked to some Sydney Swans players being framed as an “unmitigated disaster” for the club’s finals chances.
Five players have now been sanctioned by the AFL for the rest of the season, independent of the police investigation. But since news broke on Monday, the football commentariat’s early coverage of the allegations has largely been about how the incident “threatens to derail Sydney’s season”.
One senior commentator said the thing that made him most angry was that the Swans players may miss out on their last chance of winning a grand final.
Any alleged victims have largely been erased, as pundits wring their hands about how “mortifying” the allegations are for “player, club and code”.
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When I spoke about this publicly, many men were quick to defend the framing, arguing that it was because commentators were constrained by what they could say legally.
Frankly, that’s a cop-out.
The palpable despair many women are feeling is not driven by a desire to condemn these men before police investigations are complete.
We respect that legal processes should take their course and that the players deserve the presumption of innocence. We also don’t expect football journalists to be experts on Australia’s epidemic of violence against women or apportion blame before knowing the full facts.
But at the very least, we expect some basic human empathy.
We expect that allegations of sexual assault will not be reduced to a mere footnote in a story about missed sporting opportunities.
We expect not to see them framed as inconvenient timing for the AFL finals series – as if a sexual assault investigation would have been more palatable in round three or during the off-season.
We expect not to hear the club’s chief executive express disappointment that his players “have found themselves in this situation” – casting them as unfortunate victims of circumstance rather than grown men in positions of power with agency to make their own decisions.
When Swans CEO Matthew Pavlich fronted media on Monday, he could have expressed compassion for the women involved without compromising the presumption of innocence.
He could have made it clear that violence against women would not be tolerated at his club, and that strong action would be taken if any wrongdoing was found to have occurred.
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He could have acknowledged many of his club’s female players, fans and staff may be distressed, and reaffirmed the importance of a culture where women feel safe and welcome.
He said none of those things.
With a few exceptions, neither did most of the men in the AFL fraternity, who ordinarily have an opinion on everything.
Instead, it was once again left to the women in the AFL community to speak out against a culture that has a long history of protecting its male heroes.
AFL CEO Andrew Dillon has now called for care and privacy of the woman who made the report to police, and the Swans have acknowledged the allegations impacted people other than the players.
Commentators are slowly starting to acknowledge the woman at the centre of these allegations, and the impact on women more broadly.
But why did it take so long?
As former AFLW star and Triple M commentator Kate McCarthy pointed out, when former Geelong player Sam Newman remains in the Australian Football Hall of Fame after describing the experience of a woman who was raped by AFL sports agent Ralph Carr as potentially having “buyer’s remorse”, we should be asking “serious questions about what and who we continue to celebrate as a league.”
Newman’s comments came as former West Coast star Ben Cousins embarked on a press tour to promote a drug and alcohol program.
Cousins was previously jailed for aggravated stalking and breaching restraining orders. He now works for Channel 7 and has been lauded for his redemption efforts.
When a man is valuable to the game, football will always find a way to rehabilitate his image and protect his legacy. For the women harmed along the way, their stories are too often forgotten, or simply not believed.
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Journalists help frame whose experience takes centre stage, and how public perception on complex issues is shaped.
As a former health journalist involved in revising guidelines for the responsible reporting of mental illness and suicide, I’m acutely aware of how profoundly damaging careless language can be.
The reporting of the Sydney Swans case has made it painfully clear that journalists, commentators and AFL leaders need training on how to talk about sexual assault in a way that doesn’t minimise violence against women or erase it entirely.
Until women’s safety is valued as much as the commercial interests of the game and the sporting success of its male stars, there can be no real home for us in football.
