There is a sentence buried in the AFL Tribunal’s original decision on Lachie Neale that deserves more attention:
Neale had been found to have intentionally struck Hawthorn player Jack Ginnivan during Brisbane’s preliminary final win. The Tribunal found the contact was a forceful blow, not simply a “bump” or “body check”.
Neale knew the rule. He knew the possible sanction. And he knew exactly what was at stake: a Grand Final. He acted anyway.
Then came the appeal. His clean record and circumstances were deemed exceptional enough for the suspension to be replaced with a $10,000 fine.
For many football supporters, this is a debate about tribunal consistency. For others, it is simply cause for celebration: one of the game’s biggest stars gets to play on its biggest stage.
But viewed through a feminist lens, there is a bigger question: What do we teach men about accountability when consequences remain firm only until they become sufficiently inconvenient?
This is not an argument that an on-field strike between two men is equivalent to violence against women, it plainly is not. It is an argument about culture. Because violence does not emerge in a cultural vacuum. Neither does entitlement.
And culture is not built only through the rules we announce, it is built through the exceptions we are prepared to make. We tell boys and men that aggression has consequences. We talk about respect, accountability and challenging harmful forms of masculinity.
Yet when those consequences threaten something we “value”, a career, a reputation, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, the conversation can quickly shift from what follows this behaviour? to what will accountability cost him?
Hasn’t he already suffered enough? Should one mistake define him? That shift matters.
Because every exception teaches something too. It teaches us whose future deserves protecting. Whose reputation deserves preserving. And when a boundary can be redrawn because enforcing it has suddenly become uncomfortable.
Our Watch identifies sport as an important setting for preventing gender-based violence because sporting institutions help shape norms around masculinity, power, aggression and respect. This debate is also occurring during Grand Final week, when domestic violence services are preparing for an increase in demand.
Football does not cause domestic violence. But football does not sit outside Australian culture either.
Sport is one of the places where we teach boys and girls what strength looks like, what aggression means, what gets celebrated and what gets sanctioned. It is one thread in a much larger social fabric.
And if enough threads carry the same message, eventually they become the pattern. That is the ecosystem of male entitlement. It is not one football incident. One workplace. One courtroom. One family. It is the accumulation of messages, sometimes loud, often subtle, about when men can expect rules to bend around their reputation, status or future.
That is why Neale’s clean record is worth examining. He had never previously been suspended across 320 games.
Good character can reasonably matter in disciplinary systems. But feminist scholarship has long asked us to interrogate the social power of the “good man”: the respected man, the successful man, the man for whom harmful behaviour appears “out of character”.
In New South Wales, reforms passed this year removed good character as a mitigating factor in criminal sentencing, reflecting concerns that reputation and social standing can soften consequences.
An AFL Tribunal is not a criminal court. An on-field strike is not domestic or sexual violence. But the underlying cultural question is still worth asking: How much should being a “good man” yesterday reduce the consequences of what a man chose to do today?
Because perhaps one of the most persistent myths surrounding male violence is that “good men” do not cause harm. That harm belongs to monsters. To obviously dangerous men. To men somewhere else.
But people are more complicated than that. A man can be respected and still behave wrongly. A man can have an exemplary history and still make a choice for which consequences should follow. A man can have an important future without that future automatically outweighing the principle we said applied to his conduct.
That is why primary prevention asks us to look upstream. The cultural conditions underpinning violence against women are shaped long before a woman is harmed. They are shaped through everyday lessons about masculinity, aggression, entitlement, boundaries and consequence.
If we only become interested in male entitlement once a woman has already been harmed, we have arrived far too late. And perhaps that is the uncomfortable thing this moment exposes.
Australia is very good at condemning violence in principle. We are less comfortable with accountability when accountability costs someone we admire something they desperately want.
But principles that disappear when they become inconvenient are not really principles. They are preferences. Sport matters because people are watching. Boys are watching and learning what accountability looks like. Girls are watching too, learning what institutions will excuse, whose futures are protected, and how seriously boundaries, harm and their own rights may be treated when they come into conflict with someone else’s status, reputation or opportunity.
And all of them learn as much from the exceptions institutions make as they do from the values printed on posters.
If we genuinely want to change Australia’s culture of violence, respect cannot be something we promote only when it is convenient. Neither can accountability.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views, positions or policies of her employer, Adelaide University, or any organisation with which she is affiliated.