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Updated 3 hours ago
You almost felt sorry for him as he was interrogated from a variety of directions. Asked how he discussed the allegations with his daughters, he looked like the proverbial deer in the headlights.
“Oh, look, like any parent, you would describe what you can,” he stammered. “As I said, the actions of a few don’t reflect the actions of the many people in this industry.”
Dillon trotted out that last line so many times during the media conference it wouldn’t have surprised if the AFL media department was standing at the back of the room holding a banner to remind him to stay on message.
Image is all that matters to the AFL. The great con of the game is that it supports Indigenous Australians, fosters inclusivity among the LGBT community, and protects women. It likes to tell us it does these things when, in reality, it’s smoke and mirrors.
It chokes on its own wokeness. The welcome to countries, tokenistic rainbow-coloured initiatives, and so-called respect and responsibility policies for women can’t hide the game’s appalling track record on so many of these issues.
Indigenous playing numbers have fallen through the floor, its players drop homophobic words like they’re Ted Bullpit from Kingswood Country, and it has long ignored, as Kate McCarthy called it, the “horrific misogyny” that courses through the football industry.
The AFL has spent two decades promising to improve its treatment of women, yet the same themes keep returning: misogyny, sexualised behaviour, abuse and a male culture that too often treats women as collateral damage.
In 2016, Eddie McGuire and others joked about trailblazing journalist Caroline Wilson being held under water, years after Sam Newman had used a lingerie-clad mannequin to ridicule her on The Footy Show. Last year, Geelong’s Bailey Smith posted a mocking image of teammate Max Holmes dressed as Wilson having twice verbally abused veteran female photographer Alison Wynd at Geelong training. Dillon’s response was to give him a cuddle.
Footy fans are just as naff. In 2019, Tayla Harris was subjected to vile sexual abuse online after an iconic AFLW photograph.
Then came GWS’s 2024 Wacky Wednesday during which players performed offensive skits, including one referencing NRL player Jarryd Hayne and a sex act involving a blow-up doll.
Jordan De Goey repeatedly dragged Collingwood into controversy, while Tarryn Thomas was suspended for 18 matches after the AFL found he had repeatedly threatened a woman.
Different clubs, different eras, same underlying question: how much has football’s culture really changed when women keep becoming the punchline, the target or the aftermath of the latest scandal, despite repeated promises of lasting reform?
The Swans are the greatest con of all. A towering club, no doubt, but for chairman Andrew Pridham to continually tell us the Pullman Five aren’t representative of the club’s “culture” has brought a collective eyeroll from the people of Sydney who know better.
Those outside the Swans bubble – in other words, the lower north shore and eastern suburbs of Sydney – are more than aware of the nocturnal shenanigans of past and present players.
What about the player nicknamed “2.9” because that’s how close he went to breaching the AFL’s three-strikes policy for illicit drugs? Or the player who openly wanted to reach triple figures in one season for the number of women bedded?
For years, the Swans looked down their noses at NRL clubs and the loose behaviour of their players, ignorant of the fact that a small section of their players were rocking and rolling in similar fashion, whether it was the Beach Road or the Clovelly Hotel.
Coach Dean Cox’s predecessor, John Longmire, had his squad on a tight leash for a reason. Those close to Cox report he was trying to clean up the culture, only to let himself and the club down by letting a handful run amok in Melbourne on the eve of the finals.
The legal process needs to run its course, but the sheer arrogance and entitlement of players to bring strippers back to the team hotel in late August, with drugs allegedly being used in the room, prompts the question: was this really a one-off?
Maybe the “cultural review” Pridham announced at the SCG on Sunday before the Swans’ AFLW match will unearth the answers.
Last week, he claimed the club didn’t have a cultural problem. Now, he’s apparently not so sure.
He also defended how the club had handled the crisis.
“While we are deeply shocked and disappointed with what transpired, we believe that since it occurred we have acted with honesty, dignity and urgency,” he said. “We have not sought to hide.
“We have sought to protect and care for those impacted and make clear our intolerance for the actions of those who have done the wrong thing.
“Now we begin the process of healing and moving forward. Moving forward involves gaining a better understanding of how our cultural pillars failed to prevent such a thing from happening.”
Pridham’s media cheerleaders hailed these words as proof of “strong leadership”.
The cynics among us see it for what it is: brand protection. At the SCG on Sunday, several corporate suites full of food and beverage sat unattended, boycotted by the people who had paid for them.
In some perverse way, the men’s team is now being positioned as the victims.
The sight of captain Callum Mills in tears, embracing Cox, illuminated how hard the week has been and what has been lost. But Mills said something last week that exposes the bubble in which these people live in.
“This has caused us to put the mirror up to all men in society and inside the football club,” he said. All men? Speak for yourself, mate.
