The AFL's eight-step guide to minimising homophobia

By Paddy Carey

The AFL claims to be cracking down on homophobia, so why was Adelaide Crows star Izak Rankine only dealt a four-game suspension for his use of a slur during gameplay? Let’s take a look at how things might have played out behind the scenes.

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The AFL is good at two things. Number one: organising some of Australia’s best male and female athletes into a competitive framework. Number two: completely shitting the bed whenever a social issue hits their desk.

Last Saturday, Adelaide Crows star Izak Rankine said a homophobic slur to an opposing player from the Collingwood Magpies. It’s probably the slur you’re thinking of. The incident was reported by opposition players to club officials, and then escalated to the league’s head office at AFL House. Rankine quickly admitted to using the slur, and called the Collingwood player to apologise. An investigation began to determine the length of Rankine’s suspension.

The standard length for a homophobic slur, when not self-reported by the offending player, is five weeks - i.e. you can’t play for your team for the next five games. In 2025, AFL CEO Andrew Dillon said that sanctions on homophobic language would get more severe ‘until we don’t have [the language] anymore’. This was said after a St Kilda player was suspended for six weeks for homophobic slurring.

Remember those numbers - five and six. And remember the promise - that the sanctions will get more severe.

Photo by Damien Tait on Unsplash

So how did Rankine only get suspended for four games, per a verdict handed out on Thursday?

It was a compromise. AFL House, after having the case challenged by the Crows, came to the conclusion through a beige smokescreen of press conferences, pseudo-legislative approaches, and opacity at crucial moments.

If AFL House had a manual on their current approach to minimising homophobia through a low level of institutional complacency that’s well rehearsed, this eight-step guide is how it would read.

I’ll use Rankine case as a case study, but reference other incidents that have helped perfect the playbook. By the way - you could also use this playbook for other forms of bigotry. Get creative!

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NB: Before we begin - it would be boring, condescending and typical of football discourse to discuss Why a Homophobic Slur is Bad. The media’s done enough of this since Rankine offended - going out of their way to pretend we’ve forgotten the last few decades of being… in the world, I guess.

You can specifically read about how pervasive homophobia locks young queer men from Australian rules, or the heartbreaking first-person perspective of the NBL’s Isaac Humphries, who broke his personal cycle of shame and guilt by becoming Australia’s first openly gay professional basketballer. Alternatively, you just need to utilise 0.000001% of the attention and empathy required.

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Step 1: You’ve found out the act of bigotry has been leaked to the media. Don’t panic! You’ve been here before 🙂

Oops! A footballer, probably through cultural conditioning you’ve co-signed before, has said something awful. The media has published this before you have a chance to handle it yourself. Don’t worry, you’ll have time enough to express discontent about this.

Step 2: Say you’re launching an investigation, and mention the AFL Integrity Unit. Integrity is a really nice word that should calm everyone down.

Excellent. Really good. You’ve decided to take this seriously, and can swiftly determine the facts and hand out a sanction aligning with a precedent you’ve set. You’ll hand out a sanction aligning with a precedent you’ve set, yeah? All good if not, though. We’re all human.

Step 3: Forget any precedent you’ve set, and pretend football-based factors are relevant.

Remember that precedent? Your CEO handed out a six-week ban, and said sanctions on homophobic language would get more severe ‘until we don’t have [the language] anymore’. I mentioned it a few hundred words ago. You might forget it, so I just want to make sure you remember it… but all good if you forget it. We’re all human.

Let’s look at the previous five players who’ve been suspended for homophobic language over the past two seasons:

• Jeremy Finlayson (suspended three games, April 2024)

• Wil Powell (five games, May 2024)

• Lance Collard (six games, July 2024)

• Riak Andrew (five games, July 2025)

• Jack Graham (four games following a self-report, July 2025)

Remember, Rankine didn’t self-report.

Now we come to a few important points - one that’ll come up time and time again over the next few steps. The first is that, while the above players are quality footballers, they are not as good as Izak Rankine. Rankine is a mesmerising player, who puts bums on seats and turns games on their head.

In any other workplace, in any other part of the country, this wouldn’t matter. But this is the AFL! And he is really, really good at footy! So somehow this is significant. Watch this cool goal he kicked against the Bombers. Hopefully that makes people forget about the homophobia bit.

The next point is also pretty important if you work at AFL House - Rankine said the slur with only one game left before the finals start. The Crows will play at least two games in the finals series, because they finished on top of the ladder. Before this all went down, they were premiership favourites.

Again, there are annoying voices that say this doesn’t change the fact he said a homophobic slur. Do they not understand the magic of September footy? That community harm is pending until the Grand Final’s done?

Step 4: Begin your ‘investigation’. It’s important you call it an investigation. It’s investigative! It’s definitely not a bunch of blokes in navy suits saying ‘what do you guys reckon?’ in an air-conditioned room.

Ah cripes, he did admit to using the slur. After not self-reporting. This makes it hard to obscure the facts. We’ll have to move on to the bit where you decide how long to suspend him for. Somehow the Crows are allowed to ‘challenge’ or ‘appeal’ the case, even before you’ve made the call.

Alright, we’re on - the Crows have decided to challenge the case. They’re already compelling to remind the jury of Exhibit A (Rankine is really good) and Exhibit B (there are some really big footy games coming up). I’m sure the LGBTQIA+ community will understand.

By the way, the Adelaide Crows’ AFLW team is made up of many proudly gay players. Thankfully, Crows CEO Tim Silvers has decided to not take their opinion into account. Business as usual, fellas.

Step 5: Over the next few days, allow the media to create the dumbest, most football-centric discourse imaginable. It’s imperative, particularly in the Rankine case, that barely any openly queer media members talk about it.

Below are snippets of how various media figures have reacted to the Rankine suspension:

• Damien Hardwick, Coach of the Gold Coast Suns: “We cannot say this… but it’s probably the penalty that I have an issue with… it’s a significant penalty… I think we’ve painted ourselves into a corner with the length of penalty’.

• Leight Matthews, Fox Footy: “What’s the fair penalty for something like this? It’s a big number of weeks in terms of the on-field suspensions… maybe a fine, and a few less weeks, is reasonable?’

• Gary Lyon, Fox Footy: “Do you think [part of the Crows’ appeal] would be that four or five weeks [of home and away season] is equivalent to about three in the finals?”

• Gerard Whateley, Fox Footy: “Adelaide would be derelict in their duty to not try [to appeal the case]”.

Fun fact, all of the links above go to the same YouTube video - it’s an episode of AFL 360 that created a supercut of these comments. As a member of AFL House, you need to write this sort of stuff in your nightly gratitude journal. Media partners are excellent at aggregating the most desirable opinions, shifting the goalposts of the debate, and ensuring a centralised de-politicisation of the issue.

So, we’re doing great - the impact of the slur is lost in the soup. Instead, we’ve defaulted to football-focussed language. Admittedly, all the commentators have stressed that the issue is ‘bigger than footy’ before they make a statement in football-focused language.

It’s also essential the Crows don’t let any of their players or staff say anything that sounds like calling Rankine out for the slur. Thankfully, they’re off to a great start. Of all people, they’re going to get Darcy Fogarty to face the media - who, when questioned about the incident, looks like a kangaroo staring at a Hilux barrelling towards him on the highway. He immediately used the phrase ‘not ideal’ to describe the incident. I’m not sure this is the kind of thing Plato had in mind when he invented the concept of ideals.

Coach Matthew Nicks did enter the danger zone when stating Rankine ‘wasn’t the victim’, and that he was keen to support all players at the club affected by the slur. But rest assured, Nicks will play Rankine at the first opportunity you give him. He won’t go too far publicly.

Ah bugger! Openly gay commentator and AFLW champion Kate McCarthy has spoken about it, and rightly claimed your actions haven’t aligned with a supposedly ‘zero tolerance’ policy. She’s also mentioned that the Crows have an AFLW team packed with openly gay players, who are no doubt disappointed and angry at the club and the AFL.

Step 6: Deliver your verdict as opaquely as possible. Don’t worry about making it time-sensitive! Just don’t forget to say you really, really care about the social issue at hand - just not that much on this particular occasion.

So you’ve taken 96 hours to deliver your decision, after an excruciating back-and-forth between yourself and the Crows. And you’ve given the world’s weirdest people lots of space to vent about ‘the league going soft’ in Facebook comment sections. And you’ve allowed the media to spin their heteronormative opinions for four days, meaning the biggest issue has now become how the Crows ‘bounce back’ in time for finals.

Now, it could be honourable to front the media and say this stuff in-person - but then one of you will have to have your face associated with the decision, and that won’t look great for LinkedIn.

Try a written statement:

‘Following an investigation and submissions from Adelaide and Rankine including compelling medical submissions, Rankine has received a four-match sanction’.

Well done! You’ve just achieved a compromise between yourself (the AFL) and the victim (the queer community) (a club who wants to play really well over the next few weeks). This is great for all involved.

The ‘compelling medical submissions’ will never become public. Per confidentiality rules, you don’t have to get more explicit than this. Fans will create pervasive theories on social media that’ll gain legs of their own.

Now, don’t forget to acknowledge the LGBTQI+ community:

‘We know people in the LGBTQI+ community and allies hurt when an incident like this happens. One incident of this nature is too many, and the fact there have been multiple this year shows we still have more work to do and we are committed to that.’

That last sentence is a work of art. One incident is too many, but multiple incidents this year are…. also too many, I guess? It’s also really cool you’re committed to doing more work. Now, what’s that work? You guys at the AFL haven’t verbally committed to doing anything, per that statement, but it sounds like Rankine will:

‘Rankine has received a four-match sanction and has been ordered to undertake further Pride In Sport training.’

This is really, really important - with the right education, Izak would never have used the slur. It’s such a pity he presumably couldn’t make it to the mandatory education programme that the AFL introduced for all 787 players in March 2025.

Step 7: Make your fans conflicted about supporting the game.

On Saturday, I made the trek to Marvel Stadium to watch the Crows play North Melbourne. Despite everything, I love watching the Crows play - it’s a constant, something to set my watch to during long winter months. The game inspires a deluded fervor in me I can’t explain.

But the Crows have disappointed me, for football and non-football reasons, far more than they’ve granted me pleasure. This is true for fans of lots of other clubs. I was at Marvel with a friend who’s supported North Melbourne their whole life, and has only witnessed them win one game in-person. What compels someone to still invest such energy, time, and money in such a pitiful team? There are many theories - but I’d briefly theorise that footy unlocks something in me I can’t deny or suppress. There’s a tribalism, a beauty, and a spectacle that some part of me is desperate for.

In Helen Garner’s The Season, she marvels at the bodies crashing through on-field packs, comparing them to heroes of a Homer epic. Garner also acknowledges she barely knows the rules, and couldn’t tell you the first thing about strategy. I’m in the same boat. If you asked me to name a ‘tactic’ employed during a game - any game, for that matter - I’d shrug and change the subject to something trivial. For example, who has footy’s best full name? The answers, of course, are Laitham Vandermeer for the AFLM and Zippy Fish for the AFLW.

I’d estimate most AFL fans have a similar relationship. We barely understand the chaos of the game, but love its aesthetic and character. So a controversy like Rankine’s is one of the few things we can put words to. This is one of those times where we can express an opinion on a footy-based issue that isn’t ‘wow, sick mark’. As a lifelong Crows supporter, having to deal with the social consequences of being a fan isn’t new - there are many, many, many, many, many peers in the last decade.

Reconciling these thoughts with such non-verbal affection is impossible. But Andrew Dillon’s AFL, and all the administrations that have come before it, specialise in making us do this. The price to go to the footy is cash first, and blindness second.

Step 8: Do nothing further - you’re probably already distracted by Step 1 happening again.

Oops! A footballer, probably through cultural conditioning you’ve just co-signed, will say something awful. Don’t worry - you’ve been here before 🙂

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About the author

Paddy Carey

Paddy is clinical psychologist living in Naarm/Melbourne.