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AFL boss Craig Drummond has declared a zero tolerance approach to “poor behaviour” in football saying players either toe the line of the game’s “high standard” or find a job outside of the sport.
“We don’t have any, and should not have any, tolerance for poor behaviour,” the AFL chair told the SportNXT conference in Melbourne on Tuesday.
“Whatever that behaviour is, we should not have any tolerance for it …
“It’s not just about getting paid lots of money, although that certainly is an aspect to it, but they’re public figures.
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“We have, and they should have, and their clubs should have a set of values and expectations that these young men and women adhere to.
“And if you don’t want to adhere to those values and expectations, then there’s other opportunities outside sport.
“But within sport, as within business, we have high standards, high expectations, high values, and we expect people to behave.”
Drummond doubled down on his position later in the seminar hosted by Eddie McGuire, saying the AFL industry as well as the players needed to behave.
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“Just back on the behaviour thing, we need to enforce our standards and our values, both at a club level, for managers with their players, for the Players Association with their players, for clubs with their players, for the AFL,” Drummond said.
“And it’s not just the players, it’s also administrators. It’s staff within the AFL system, within clubs, that we do need to maintain those sort of standards.”
Drummond’s comments come after the AFL has this year been faced with a variety of issues both on and off field, including a night of wild partying by five Sydney Swans players at the Pullman hotel in East Melbourne in August, after their round 23 win against Essendon, where they and two other men engaged three women to entertain them as topless waitresses.
Four of the Swans players – Isaac Heeney, Chad Warner, Nick Blakey and James Jordan – are persons of interest in a police investigation stemming from the night. Each of the three women have variously alleged they were sexually assaulted and touched inappropriately without consent.
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The three other men – Swans player Riley Bice, retired former teammate Taylor Adams and a mystery man – are now being treated by police as witnesses to the pre-dawn events.
Separate from the police investigation, the five players were suspended by the Swans for the remainder of this season for breaching the club’s behavioural standards. The sanction did not relate to the women’s allegations.
This masthead this week revealed that the five suspended Sydney Swans players, all of whom have denied criminal wrongdoing, will have to foot their own substantial legal fees for their roles in the Pullman hotel episode.
Drummond told the conference that upholding standards meant not taking supporters for granted.
“We’ve got an amazing game, an amazing fan base, amazing supporter and sponsor base, we’ve got amazing broadcasters,” he said.
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“We can’t take it for granted, so we do need to learn, we need to get better, we need to understand.”
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Fiona Byrne is the CBD columnist for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via email.AdvertisementAdvertisement