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Adelaide Crow's star Isaac Rankin is set to miss a number of matches that could rule him out of the AFL finals. This comes after he used a homophobic slur against a Collingwood player during their match last weekend, and it's the sixth homophobic slur incident in the AFL since
April of twenty twenty four. On today's podcast, we're going to dive into the incident itself, the widest sporting and social context dominating conversations in the sport, only two weeks out from the season's final series, and what happens next.
We will get into all of that and more after a quick message from today's sponsor.
Sam.
We're talking today about this homophobic slur incident in the AFL, But before we get to what happened, let's talk about the player at the center of this controversy. Now, for myself and novices alike, I had not heard about Isaac Rankin until this incident. I am not really an AFL girly, but it's certainly a story that's been dominating headlines, so I really want to understand more.
But tell me about Isaac Rankin, the player.
Well, I think it's fair to say that if you are an AFL fan, but also if you're from Adelaide, you would know the name Isaac Rankin. Ok He's a twenty five year old forward and midfielder for the Adelaide Crows. He's considered one of their best players. He spent four seasons his first four seasons at the Gold Coast Suns before he made the move to Adelaide in twenty twenty three. He's one of their highest paid and most marketable players, so the type of player you would see on the
poster as you drive through Adelaide or fly into Adelaide Airport. Now, many AFL observers say that this year has been his best season in the league, and if we look at the team in general, it's fair to say Adelaide is the best team in the competition right now. Okay, they are top of the ladder and they're set to play in their first final series since twenty seventeen. They haven't
won a premiership since nineteen ninety eight. So for a football mad town like Adelaide, this is a really big deal and a very big time of year.
Okay, So we're talking about a really high performing player on the most dominant team on the ladder this season. He's having a great season, the club's having a great season. But this isn't really a story about football. It's not a story about how high performing a player he is.
It's about something much more sinister, right.
Yeah, So during Adelaide's match against Collingwood on Saturday nights last weekend, it's alleged that Ranken directed a homophobic slur at an opposition player. The AFL's Integrity Unit launched an investigation, and on Tuesday night, Channel nine's Eddie McGuire reported that Rankins season is over. His theory there is that the AFL sets a hand down a five match suspension.
Okay, So why would a five match ban be so significant for Adelaide at this time?
Well, Adelaide, as I said, is sitting on top of the ladder. They're heading into finals. There's one match left in the regular season. Then they have a maximum of four games in the final series, the qualifying final, semifinal, preliminary final, and then the Grand Final, obviously assuming they
make it there. So what that means is that a five match suspension would rule Rankin' out for the entire finals campaign, and for a team with their best show at the Trophies since the late nineties, that is a big blow to the club.
Okay, Now, of course this is all context for the media storm that has ensued around this incident. It's not necessarily excusing any of the alleged behavior, but I think it's helpful to understand this side For me, kind of being an outsider, understanding all of the controversy in hype around this decision. That finals context is certainly critical.
Yeah, and you and I had a chat about that before we came in to record this. It felt funny to start this podcast with an explanation of the football side of things. But as you say, I do think it's important in placing this story in the context of the discussions that we're about to have.
Yeah, pausing there though, specifically about the Isaac Cranken decision, This isn't the first incident of its kind.
When we're talking about the AFL is it.
No, And that's also important context. So this is the sixth recent homophobic slur incident in the competition, and the pattern shows that escalating penalties, So a five match ban six match ban isn't actually working. So the latest string of incidents began with Port Adelaide player Jeremy Finlayson in April of last year. He received a three match ban.
A couple of weeks after that, Gold Coasts will Be Howe got five matches when the AFL explicitly warned at that stage of further consequences for other players who would be found guilty of something like this.
Okay.
Then this year we had Saints player Lance Collard, he got a six match ban. West Coast Eagle player Jack Graham got four matches in July. His ban was lower because he self reported the incident to the AFLA and that was taken into account by the body as a bit of a mitigating factor there. Sure most recently, Sydney's Reac Andrew received five matches and that was just weeks before his club's pride game.
Okay, so a very concerning pattern of behavior across the league. We're not talking about an isolated culture problem within one club. You could argue that there is a culture problem right across the league. So we have a precedent of this behavior, We have a precedent in terms of penalties for that behavior. What has the Adelaide Football Club said about the incident regarding its player.
Well, in the statements released by the Adelaide Football Club since the incident, they have come out and said that they don't condone any sort of homophobia in sport, and they've given kind of the cavets we expect now from clubs responding to this kind of incident. But at the same time, they've launched a major defense to the AFL,
hoping to get the length of the ban reduced. At the moment, it sounds like what they're hoping for is a four match ban instead of five, to make Rankin potentially eligible for the Grand Final should they be there. And one of the primary arguments is that Rankin faced aggressive verbal attacks from Collingwood players before the incident, including comments allegedly made regarding Rankin being knocked out by competing player Dan Houston last year when he was playing at
the time for crosstown rival club Port Adelaide. He signed with Collingwood this season.
Okay, So hang on, just take me back for a second. There, we're saying that Adelaide Football Club are kind of trying to defend the slur or defend the place that Ranken was in when he made the comment by suggesting that he was agitated, That he was agitated because he himself had suffered a really horrific head knock last year by
a Collingwood player. He wasn't a Collingwood player at the time exactly, but that he was face to face with that player and that that may have stirred up certain feelings in him.
Well that more than that, that the player and other players were taunting him about that injury, okay, and basically kind of riling them up. To put that in context though, of professional sport, I think that players do this all the time to each other without crossing lines that lead to, you know, being the feature of a podcast like this is today. So that's not particularly unusual behavior.
So not to take away from you know, the seriousness of these comments, but there was a serious head knock last year for him. But what you're saying there is, you know, that doesn't excuse responding with homophobia.
I mean, it's up to the IFL to decide whether it does or it doesn't. What I would say though, is that I think if you asked any sample of AFL players or players across any sport, there would be a fair bit of verbal combat on the sporting field, in the sporting arena. I think that's probably the same case for the AFLW as well, and so they're mounting
that as their primary argument. Their secondary argument is, hang on, it's not the same to ban a player for five games, including four finals, as it is to ban a player for five games which are just as part of the regular season. And that case has never been really put to the AFL before in this context. It's the first time in the context of a homophobic slur, and they're basically arguing that the nature of the games should be considered.
Okay, puts the AFL in, I'm sure an incredibly difficult position. But what about the reaction from players. Have we heard from all those involved?
Well, the captain of the Adelaid Football Club, his name is Jordan Dawson, and he said that there wasn't a cultural issue in the AFL. He said the situation was not ideal. Those were his words. Then a teammate, a senior teammate, Taylor Walker. He was on Triple M in Adelaide, and he said that Rankin is quote very remorseful and understands he's made a mistake and has isolated himself at home during this investigation.
Okay, So a couple of maybe contrasting reactions from within the same club, you know, one kind of dismissing that there is a cultural issue across the league, another more directly confronting the issue and reflecting remorse. But what about Isaac Rankin himself? Has he responded directly?
We haven't heard from Rankin himself. We understand that he called and apologized to the player at the receiving end of his homophobic comments. We don't know who that player is, oh, okay, but we do know there has been contact between Rancan and this player. Rankin hasn't released any statement publicly though, at the time of recording to do with this incident.
All right, So, Sam, you've given us a really good insight into what happened last weekend what's followed in terms of the fallout and the reaction. But I can't help but think about those string of homophobic slurs that you explained dating back to kind of April twenty twenty four, several similar incidents in the year and a half.
Or so that has followed.
I guess to put it in simplest terms, does the AFL have a homophobia problem?
Well, in April they released their first LGBTQI plus Inclusion Action Plan, and in the front statement from the CEO, Andrew Dillon, he writes, we know that historically the game of AFL has not always been a safe space for LGBTQI plus people, and if you look at the report overall, it clearly acknowledges that not enough has been done in the sport to make it a safe place not only for players on the field, but coaches, staff and fans, and it outlines the step that it wants to take
to improve that. Now, the really important piece of context here is that the AFL remains the only major professional male sporting code in the world to have never had
an openly gay or bisexual player past or present. Wow, it's a remarkable statistic, especially when you consider that tens of thousands of players have come through the game since it started in eighteen ninety seven, and in April of twenty twenty three, then CEO Gillan McLaughlin said there were gay players in the sport, but and this is his words, the pressure and the weight of being that person, of being the first afl player who comes out and plays
as an out gay man was too much. It is also worth mentioning that several members of the AFLW, the women's competition, which only started last weekend, are openly part of the LGBTQIA plus community.
Yeah.
I wanted to draw that comparison because I think it says a lot. We've got the afl W and all of the kind of inclusive messaging around that league, that competition. You know, it's all about visibility and empowering young girls and including as many people as possible. And then this really stark contrast of a league that is over one hundred years old but hasn't yet had a player comfortable or confident enough to openly come out.
Well. Advocacy organizations point to the use of pride rounds as an example here. So the AFLW has a pride round. It's in its fifth year now, and you know, this provides a conversation point in the season, both visibly and
in the conversations happening in media and within clubs. But this contrasts to the men's game where currently there's only a single pride game, so one game within one round that's played each year that's hosted by the Sydney Swans, and that's in its ninth year, so we haven't seen the expansion of that pride game format across the men's COMPETI.
It's interesting, and you know, I'm sure a lot of experts, a lot of people more qualified than me, will have fascinating takes on you know, why the game is this way, But any elite sport I think to understand its culture, it is helpful to go back to the more grassroots community club level to understand the future of that game. And there is some concerning data in that respect. When
we're thinking about Ozzie Rules. There was this Australian first study I just quickly want to tell you about into the participation of LGBTQ plus youth in sport, and what we learned from that is it over half of LGBTQ plus young people have witnessed discrimination in sport, forty percent have experienced it personally, and a twenty nineteen report found seventy three percent of male amateur AFL players aged between sixteen and twenty had heard their teammates using homophobic slurs.
Yeah, I mean, this is kind of the bigger conversation to have and possibly its own episode of the podcast. Is that we're talking about the elite level of sport, but these are the role models of the game, and we know that behavior is mirrored through all levels of sport, way down to junior sport for kids in primary and high.
School, and all the way up to things like halftime entertainment. There is a bit of a conversation going on right now about Snoop Dogg. He's been named as this year's Grand Final entertainment. That decision has proved to be relevant to this story.
Yeah, how so. Well, Snoop Dogg has a documented history of homophobic statements, and I wanted to kind of encapsulate this with a line from an editorial published by the Age newspaper in Melbourne yesterday. It says Snoop Dogg came up through the ranks of rapidom on a platform of sexist, misogynistic views. That may well have been the audience to which he was performing, but context comes into play here.
Many are questioning the choice on a day of family entertainment interesting and basically it makes this case that on one hand, the AFL is suspending players for homophobic slurs while simultaneously paying a large sum of money to an artist who has used similar language. Now the AFL has come out the CEO and said that Snoop would perform quote family friendly songs and suggested that some critics might actually be converted after the performance. It's not just LGBTQI
plus organizations raising concerns about Snoop Dogg performing. We've also heard from violence prevention organizations with some of that misogynistic context in Snoop Dogg's lyrics too.
Okay, not that it's funny.
I was just trying to imagine Snoop Dogg performing a family friendly version of drop It like a toot or Gin and Juice. I look forward to seeing what they come up with, Sam. This is a very serious case though, So where does this leave us?
What happens next?
So the AFL is expected to announce the penalty today. These backroom conversations have been happening between the club and the Code. Adelaide is expected to be given a bit of time to respond and potentially appeal the verdict. It's a bit of an unorthodox negotiation process happening regardless of the band, though we are now having this broader conversation. Clearly, you know this is eleven years after the AFL made
a public commitment to eradicate homophobia. We're seeing a trend at least in the last two years that is going the wrong way. So I guess what happens with Rankin's penalty today is of course going to be significant for Adelaide's premiership hopes, but the broader cultural issues here clearly are going to require more than individual punishments to resolve.
A fascinating story, and we'll keep an eye on it and you can find all the updates in our sport newsletter every single day that drops in your inbox. There'll be a sign up link in the show notes if you want to get around that.
That's all for today's deep dive.
We will be back later on with your evening news headlines, but until then, have a great day.
My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda Bunjelung Calkatin woman from Gadighl Country. The Daily Oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torrestrate island and nations. We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries, both past and present.