The AFL cannot catch a break this week, and frankly, it does not deserve one given how it’s handled recent matters. Now, we have an AFL team appearing to mockingly re-enact what’s alleged to have occurred in a Melbourne hotel last week.
Just days after the Sydney Swans scandal broke, five Swans players (Isaac Heeney, Chad Warner, Nick Blakey, Riley Bice and James Jordon) were suspended from the Sydney Swans for breaching club standards and over sexual assault allegations linked to an incident in a Melbourne hotel room, and while police investigations continue, footage has emerged of Richmond players at their own “Mad Monday” celebrations at the Garfield Hotel, a small pub southeast of Melbourne, appearing to re-enact exactly what was alleged to have happened.
In the video, a player mimes shock as a teammate spanks him on the backside. It happens three times. Then a fourth slap lands, and his reaction changes, an apparent nod to claims that one woman was allegedly slapped four times when only three had been agreed upon. Another teammate is filmed whipping a fellow player across the back with a belt. There is no suggestion the players broke any official behavioural rules, which tells you everything about how low the bar is set.
The Garfield Hotel, for some reason, rushed out a statement defending the players, insisting it could not speak more highly of how they conducted themselves and calling them a respectful, fun group of boys.
The pub went on to complain that journalists staking out the event were hoping to capture “a misstep.”
Seriously, a “misstep”.
As if mocking alleged sexual assault survivors mid-investigation is a stumble on the footpath, and not a gleeful bit of theatre. If that is a misstep, I would love to know what the venue considers an actual problem.
Meanwhile, on the very same Monday, AFL CEO Andrew Dillon stood up and insisted the league does not have a wider cultural problem.
He said the actions of a few do not erase the good work of the thousands involved in football at every level, while conceding the AFL “can do things better.” “Better” is doing an enormous amount of heavy lifting for an organisation that has just watched players at one club allegedly assault a woman and another club film a re-enactment of it for laughs, in the same week.
The narrative and rhetoric that has followed both incidents amongst commentators and fans has been depressingly familiar. The idea that boys will be boys.
The media is making a big deal out of nothing.
Mocking a woman referred to in some corners as a “whore” is not a crime.
The boys have had a hard season and worked hard; they deserve to let their hair down. The narrative that “boys will be boys” is why sexism and misogyny are allowed to thrive and continue to do so in 2026. This is what we say to justify bad behaviour. I am raising two boys of my own and I am guilty of having said it myself, but it is wrong, and every time we say it, we hand another generation of young men a free pass.
Also, can someone explain what was going through the minds of those Richmond players? They had just spent a week watching this story dominate every television bulletin, every social media feed, every newspaper in the country, and their response was to turn it into a comedic bit.
The players thought it was okay because they exist inside a culture that has taught them it is okay. A culture of poor treatment of women, of drugs and alcohol and enormous money handed to very young men, all of it shielded inside institutions that love a box-ticking exercise but have never done the hard, unglamorous work of actual cultural change. I see the junior version of this every single weekend at my child’s footy match, in the comments hurled at the young female umpires who are already rare enough on those grounds.
Further, can we please retire the “hard season, let their hair down” defence? I am not an elite athlete, and I respect the discipline it takes to get there, and I do feel for how early these young men are put on a pedestal simply for being good at something they love. Like it or not, that pedestal makes them role models to a lot of young boys and men watching closely.
I work a job, I write, I am doing a PhD, and I am raising three children while trying to hold a house and my own sanity together, and yes, I have had a hard season too. Mine does not end. When I want to let my hair down, I book a massage, or a spa weekend, or I have a couple of beers with a friend and laugh too hard or demolish a cheese platter and some cake in front of a streaming service. I do not go on a drunken ritual and mock an alleged sexual assault survivor.
Mark Twain reportedly warned against arguing with fools, and “boys will be boys” might be the most foolish argument still being wheeled out to justify bad behaviour in 2026.
The AFL does not have a few bad apples. It has an orchard it has refused to properly tend, and we will be back here again next Mad Monday, and the one after that, because this is not a one-off. Last year I wrote about this exact same tradition, when Geelong’s Bailey Smith used a sexually suggestive emoji to mock and degrade a female journalist during his own club’s Mad Monday celebrations. Different club, different year, and if this is not a pattern of behaviour in an organisation l don’t know what is.