{"id":73776,"date":"2026-08-17T08:06:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-17T08:06:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/73776\/"},"modified":"2026-08-17T08:06:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-17T08:06:14","slug":"sydney-swans-alleged-sexual-assault-will-players-miss-out-on-afl-finals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/73776\/","title":{"rendered":"Sydney Swans alleged sexual assault: Will players miss out on AFL finals?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sydney Swans alleged sexual assault: Will players miss out on AFL finals?<\/a> originally appeared on The Sporting News<\/a>. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Several Sydney Swans<\/a> players are under police investigation after a sexual assault allegedly occurred at their team hotel Pullman East Melbourne<\/a>.<\/p>\n

With only one round of the AFL home-and-away season remaining, Sydney’s players involved in the alleged incident face an uncertain future regarding their participation in AFL finals – pending the result of the investigation.<\/p>\n

However, there has been a recent precedent involving an AFL player and a sexual assault investigation in the past 12 months.<\/p>\n

The Sporting News looks at that story and how the AFL and the player’s club handled the issues.<\/p>\n

MORE:Sydney Swans alleged sexual assault: Pavlich speaks, who was involved?<\/a><\/p>\n

Geelong’s Tanner Bruhn misses entire 2025 AFL season<\/p>\n

Geelong<\/a> midfielder Tanner Bruhn eventually had sexual assault charges dropped in November 2025 after being charged by police at the start of the year.<\/p>\n

With Bruhn’s name suppressed by a court order during the saga, the 23-year-old was forced by the AFL to sit out of the 2025 campaign with the result of the charges still pending.<\/p>\n

The Cats listed Bruhn on their injury report as having a finger injury during this entire time.<\/p>\n

In November 2025, the charges against Bruhn were scrapped after a key witness admitted lying in a police statement and under oath.<\/p>\n

Bruhn has played 20 games in 2026, becoming a key fixture in Geelong’s midfield.<\/p>\n

Will Sydney’s players miss the 2026 AFL finals series?<\/p>\n

The future of Sydney’s players involved in the incident is completely up in the air while the police investigation continues.<\/p>\n

The AFL do not have a no-fault stand down rule, like the NRL and Football Australia, and judges every incident on a case-by-case basis.<\/p>\n

Once findings are made in the police investigation, the AFL and Sydney will decide if any action needs to be taken against the players.<\/p>\n

Judging by the reaction of Sydney chief executive Matthew Pavlich<\/a>, the club has already expressed their disappointment in the player’s behaviour before the investigation has reached any conclusions.<\/p>\n

Bruhn’s story ultimately proves that an AFL player can miss significant amounts of football but might not actually be convicted of an offence in the end.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sydney Swans alleged sexual assault: Will players miss out on AFL finals? originally appeared on The Sporting News.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":73777,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[99799,106141,106142,106139,5388,1712,247,5009,106140,74956],"class_list":["post-73776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sydney","tag-afl-finals","tag-afl-player","tag-pavlich","tag-players-involved","tag-police-investigation","tag-sexual-assault","tag-sydney","tag-sydney-swans","tag-tanner-bruhn","tag-uncertain-future"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73776\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}