Australian sports media is compounding the AFL’s homophobia problem

The AFL is facing a monumental stress test in its efforts to tackle homophobia, with one of the league’s biggest stars facing a season-ending suspension on the eve of the finals series.

Adelaide star Izak Rankine has joined a growing number of AFL players and coaches who have been sanctioned for anti-gay language in the past two seasons.

These offenders have been hit with suspensions, fines and mandatory sensitivity training.

However, Rankine’s case is putting the AFL’s policy under increased scrutiny because he is a star player on a league-leading team gearing up for its first finals run since 2017.

High stakes as finals loom

There is a high-stakes, on-field storyline here. The length of Rankine’s suspension will have a significant impact on how the finals play out.

Indeed, much of the coverage and commentary across AFL media is focused on how many games he will miss and how this will affect the Crows’ chances.

This demonstrates a shortcoming in how the AFL media understands and communicates cultural homophobia.

We have spent the past ten months researching homophobia in the AFL, specifically looking at how a cultural issue like homophobia is understood and communicated across AFL media.

We analysed news and commentary about instances of homophobic abuse across the 2024 season, from mainstream outlets including The Age, AFL Media and FoxFooty.

We found the reporting prioritised on-field consequences, precedent and punishment. This imagines homophobia as a problem of individual players to be “solved” with the right length of suspension.

While anti-gay slurs on the field clearly need to be stamped out, reporters and commentators also need to be telling a broader story about the AFL’s attempts to change its culture.

Homophobia and elite sports

There has long been a link between elite sports and homophobia.

Australian sporting institutions, such as the AFL or rugby league, have been accused of marginalising gay players. When violent masculinity is a valued attribute of a sporting culture, traits such as femininity or queerness can be seen as threats to a team’s success.

Indeed, homophobia is difficult for the AFL to reconcile, given it’s believed to be the only major sporting code in the world where no past or present male player has identified publicly as gay.

A slur isn’t a high bump or tackle

Researchers have noted how the Australian public’s appetite for year-round AFL news has empowered the league to act as a gate-keeper to stories and players, leading to favourable coverage.

In our yet-to-be-published research, we also found the decision-making processes of the AFL tribunal and the league’s integrity unit dictate the terms by which stories about impropriety or misconduct are constructed in AFL coverage.

This has implications on how a cultural challenge like homophobia is understood. It also affects how meaningfully the AFL is then compelled to respond.

Themes of “precedent”, “consistency” and “fairness” are overwhelmingly represented in coverage of homophobic incidents.

All of these themes are focused on punishment against a player for their transgression.

This is inadequate for understanding long-held cultural problems, because it presents intolerance as contained and solvable. Punishment may be deemed “too soft” or “an overreaction”, but it is then the end of the story.

The tribunal is generally a mechanism for dealing with physical harm during play. This means reportage also encourages a strange debate in football media about the severity and context of using anti-gay slurs.

We observed this when the integrity unit was investigating Port Adelaide player Jeremy Finlayson’s 2024 on-field use of a slur, months after North Melbourne coach Alastair Clarkson used a different slur against an opposing player.

In speculating on the precedent that Clarkson’s suspended ban set, AFL media voices – such as ESPN’s Footy Podcast – were awkwardly debating which homophobic slur was worse and why. One slur was likened to “striking” and the other “bumping”.

Notably, the reportage often falls short of interrogating the issue of homophobia beyond the incidents in question.

A high-profile investigation from Louise Milligan for Four Corners in 2023 was the most robust attempt so far. She observed the league was so resistant to her enquiries that the report was titled “the silence”.

That so many reports of anti-gay language and resulting suspensions have occurred since Milligan’s story is a promising sign the AFL is taking the issue seriously.

Yet, in obsessing over precedent, context and on-field consequences, coverage of anti-gay slurs individualises these incidents and moves the conversation onto the AFL’s terms.

A stress test on the AFL

The Rankine case is a turning point given the stakes: a star player of the ladder-topping team.

If precedent dictates a five-match suspension, he will miss a potential Grand Final.

Media figures have expressed sympathy for the Crows. What is missing is sympathy for closeted gay players, umpires, staff or fans who have been historically ostracised from the game.

The AFL has a reputational problem with homophobia that it has neglected for too long, and which likely dissuades gay players from coming out.

How the league responds to the high stakes of the Rankine case will be telling.

The story should not stop at a penalty against an individual, and the AFL needs to front harder questions about ongoing efforts to improve its culture.

Our research into the AFL media’s coverage of anti-gay abuse advocates instead for stronger and more consistent scrutiny into proactive measures by the AFL across all levels of its playing culture.

Problems such as homophobia require collective solutions: continuing to rely on punishment frameworks would be too soft.