The flinch response to Izak Rankine’s homophobic slur was the sheer stupidity of it. Perhaps more than any other section of society, footballers are educated, counselled and warned. And it still didn’t get through. The laws of the game, particularly around ruck contests and holding the ball, are increasingly incomprehensible. But the rules in this instance couldn’t be clearer.
What’s more contested is landing on an appropriate penalty. It’s easy cracking down on players who transgress in scratch matches, lower tier competitions and struggling teams. It’s more fraught when it’s a superstar. For this player, for this club, and at this stage of a long, grinding and finally fruitful rebuild, four weeks may as well be four years.
Part of the problem here is that the AFL has forfeited much of the moral high ground. To be a fan, player or administer is to wrestle with a lot of paradoxes. It’s the coach bemoaning his team’s lack of effort as he stands in front of a sponsors board festooned with hamburgers and fried chicken. It’s the Swans fan sitting at the SCG – one of the most LGBTQ+ friendly venues – while signs for Qatar Airways flash in the background. It’s the league CEO who cracks down on homophobia, and then spends millions luring Snoop Dogg, hardly a model of rectitude himself.
Many prominent football people seem reluctant to vocalise what they really think on this issue. An off-the-record snapshot would run roughly like this; that the AFL has overcorrected when it comes to homophobia; that they painted themselves into a corner; that the arrival of Greg Swann was an opportunity to change the paradigm; that champion players shouldn’t be missing grand finals because of name calling.
Damien Hardwick skirted around it this week but pulled his punches. He has sponsors, an adjacent women’s programme and an upcoming finals campaign. But Eddie McGuire is beholden to almost no-one in football. His podcast is therefore a good insight into what many people actually think, but are loathe to say publicly. It often makes for extraordinary listening, especially for his co-host, where the emphasis is on listening.
“I’d rather that he issues an apology and does community service and plays,” he said. “Because you know what, I want this [the MCG] to be filled with the best players, not being done for parking tickets. Now some people might say, a homophobic slur is far bigger than a parking ticket. No one heard it, OK? And I don’t think anyone was offended.”
As someone who writes about sport, I’m often asked whether I know of any gay footballers. There are gay men commentating games, running clubs, breaking stories and winning premierships. And still, not a single footballer has come out publicly. After Saturday night, is it any wonder? Is it any wonder that a talented young male footballer grappling with his sexuality would follow this story and question whether there is a place for him in the sport? And amidst the equivocating, the negotiating and the prevailing sense that it’s always the same self-selecting people who get to determine what is and isn’t offensive, surely the likelihood of a gay footballer coming out now is even more unlikely. Something Rebecca Shaw wrote a few weeks ago got to the nub of it better than any of us in the footy bubble could ever manage – “homophobic slurs very clearly communicate your disdain for us, more effectively that your disdain for your opponent.”
Rankine isn’t the first footballer to make a monumental mistake and miss an opportunity to win a premiership. The preternaturally talented and volcanic Phil Carman whacked Michael Tuck and probably cost his team a flag. Following the 2018 grand final, Andrew Gaff stood like a ghost on the margins of the celebrations. “I’ll get over it. It’ll be tough,” he told Andrew Stafford. “You feel pretty numb watching it. You don’t know what to think.”
If Adelaide wins the premiership, Rankine could say something similar. He is a sublime footballer. He was born for the big stage. And he may yet pay the biggest price a footballer can pay. He knew the stakes. And he knew the rules. When the race is run and when this tinderbox of a story simmers down, hopefully the biggest takeaway is not his stupidity and not his penalty. Hopefully it’s a chance to reflect on the reason the rule was there in the first place.
