The underbelly of football

By Maria Millers This article was written before Sunday's double-header at the SCG. The game was originally intended as a landmark celebration—the first AFLW home-and-away match back at the SCG since 2022 and a major statement about the two programs sharing the club's home. But the events of last week have put a different slant on the occasion. It's not that long since I wrote about football, its inordinate place in our cultural life often to the exclusion of all else and the seemingly cavalier attitude to player welfare regarding injuries and concussion. The recent Geelong concussion controversy raised the question of what happens when the welfare of players becomes subordinate to the machinery of elite competition. A player was reportedly involved in an agreement absolving the club from responsibility for future concussion-related injury, prompting calls for substantial governance reform. But it was last week's incident involving the Swans, flushed with victory and the promise of premiership glory within grasp that exposed the underbelly of football culture. Five Swans players were stood down for the rest of the 2026 season for breaches of the club's standards, The current Swans situation has two distinct layers. First, there are the specific actions of the players. The five players were suspended for breaches of the club's standards including drinking, staying out late and bringing women back to their hotel. Separately, Victoria Police are investigating an alleged sexual assault; no player has been charged, and the club's disciplinary process is separate from the police investigation. What seems to have been swiftly put in place was protecting the club to the exclusion of all else. While the women at the centre of the police investigation received comparatively little attention. The Swans have prided themselves as well-run and tightly held together by the club's Bloods culture, developed around principles like respect, discipline, accountability, and sacrifice for the team. Standards applied on and off the field. The most important being accountability to your mates. Your teammates are your moral community. But what does 'looking after your mates' mean when something goes wrong? The club itself has acknowledged that its culture has been damaged and that trust needs to be rebuilt. Can a culture built on loyalty to the group maintain its integrity when loyalty requires confronting one of its own when a line has been crossed? The current Swans situation has two distinct layers. First, there are the specific actions of the players. But the second layer is the culture that surrounds those behaviours and how it reflects the broader Australian society. The offending players will have to answer to their teammates for sabotaging the possibility of victory at the Grand Final – the Holy Grail of football. They may have to repair damaged personal relationships and reputations in their home communities beyond the club. This of course is personal territory and should not be of any concern to anyone but those involved. And there's an uncomfortable irony here: the Swans may not be an aberration so much as a particularly visible example of problems that exist elsewhere. We should acknowledge the highly sexualized society we live in where anything from a toothbrush to an expensive car is promoted with explicit or implied sexual context. Bars with topless waitresses are commonplace as are numerous massage parlours. So it could be seen as hypocritical to be shocked by the behaviour exposed. And I'd argue that the AFL has a responsibility as well as an opportunity here. Rather than merely asking how it can repair its reputation after this scandal, it could ask a much more fundamental question: What sort of men and what sort of citizens does Australian football want to produce? And there is a serious argument for reconsidering the way Australian sporting culture confers moral and celebrity status on elite athletes leading to a culture of entitlement. A key question for the AFL then is: What sort of values are we teaching those hundreds of thousands of children who are playing and watching the professional game and imagining themselves one day being at the top of it? It is also disturbing when adulation becomes akin to religion, dominating everyday life and discourse, excluding all other activities. From Life Cycles by Bruce Dawe: When children are born in Victoria they are wrapped in club-colours, laid in beribboned cots, having already begun a lifetime's barrackin The current incident has also shown how extensively sporting achievement has been converted into personal celebrity and commercial influence. The problem isn't admiring sporting excellence. An elite footballer has usually demonstrated enormous discipline, courage, teamwork and perseverance, but so too have many in other fields that do not garner the same attention as football We should strive for an Australian culture in which a brilliant scientist, engineer, teacher, doctor, composer, poet, artist, mathematician or humanitarian could become a national hero without first having to become a celebrity. In poet Naomi Shihab's Famous, Nye completely overturns the idea of celebrity, instead arguing for being valued because you reliably do what you are meant to do. What if the real sporting hero isn't the spectacular player but the person who never forgets what he is supposed to do? I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous, or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular, but because it never forgot what it could do. We routinely take a young man who is exceptionally good at kicking a ball, give him enormous financial rewards, advertising contracts, children's book contracts, celebrity status and millions of admiring followers — and then, almost inevitably, some of that admiration becomes moral admiration. But celebrity status does not automatically translate into ethical behaviour. The Greeks did not necessarily equate physical excellence with moral goodness. Achilles is extraordinarily brave, but also proud and destructive. Ajax is heroic but falls through wounded pride. Odysseus is clever but morally complicated. And Keats reminds us that the trappings of greatness are indeed transitory. John Keats' Ozymandias: My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!' Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away. Sadly the culture around young male athletes can amplify rather than compensate for immaturity. Surrounded by teammates, coaches, agents, sponsors and fans who reinforce the idea that he is extraordinarily important because of his physical abilities, there may be relatively little incentive to develop less glamorous qualities like humility, empathy, emotional regulation, responsibility and respect for boundaries. The modern AFL player isn't simply an athlete anymore. Players are brands, clubs are entertainment businesses, and matches are surrounded by broadcasters, sponsors, betting markets, influencers and advertising. AFL is big business. The double header on Sunday may give the AFLW team an unintended possibility. Perhaps the future of football culture lies not in making women fit into the old football culture, but in allowing women's football to help change it. There has already been criticism along precisely those lines, with former AFLW figures arguing that the league needs to examine a 'boys first' mentality rather than treating women's safety as secondary to football's interests. And suddenly culture, discipline, respect, and leadership could become much more important than goals and Brownlow votes. We construct a magnificent spectacle around human beings, anointing them as heroes, role models without acknowledging that underneath the spectacle they're still ordinary, vulnerable and imperfect people. We should also accept not just success but also failure. We build our footballers into Icaruses—and then express astonishment when we find them fallible. The High Mark by Bruce Dawe: begins with the nod of a head or flicker-signal of fingers and a run that gathers in the green day and the grey crowd that rolls on its great humble tides and the run is a thinking to the ball's end-over-end parabola that has sinews tough – tensioning for the upward leap, hands now eagle claws, god's hooks, hungering for the leather dove, the run among mere mortal men in time, in place, become the leap into heaven, into fame, into legend – then the fall back to earth (guernseyed Icarus) to the whistle's shrill tweet. Dawe's great insight is that Australian football has always had a religious dimension. The contemporary difference is that television, social media, sponsorship and celebrity have made the footballer seem even more exceptional. The AFL has had repeated opportunities to ask whether its broader culture is producing the right incentives — particularly around masculinity, alcohol, drugs, sexual behaviour, gambling, celebrity and the protection of the players. In a hierarchy of values, player welfare and reputation and community expectations should trump winning, revenue and club reputation. It is hoped that they will take this incident to initiate some needed change. Woorilla Poetry Prize 2026 is now accepting entries. Visit woorilla.org.au.