GWS’ women’s side has released a statement expressing its anger and disappointment at the “unacceptable” behaviour of its male counterparts.
Thirteen of the club’s AFL players learned their fate on Thursday after their “Wacky Wednesday” dress-up party, which featured simulated sex acts, racial characterisations and other “terrible choices”.
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Those last two words were uttered by AFL chief executive Andrew Dillon, who appeared to still be trying to comprehend the actions of the players involved when announcing the details and punishments.
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Josh Fahey was given a four-match suspension for dressing as Jarryd Hayne and simulating inappropriate acts on a blow-up doll, with five other players handed two-match bans for acts that included simulating the September 11 attacks and a slavery scene from the Quentin Tarantino movie Django Unchained.
Five club leaders, including captain Toby Greene, Tom Green and Sam Taylor, were fined $5000 each for failing to intervene and stop the acts from continuing.
On Friday, the club’s AFLW captain Rebecca Benson released a statement on behalf of her playing group, which was then shared by the majority of the players on social media.
The women’s team made it abundantly clear they were appalled by the actions of the players that share their Sydney Olympic Park training centre and orange and charcoal uniforms.
“It is important that we make it known that we were deeply hurt and angered when learning of the behaviour that occurred,” the statement read.
“Playing the game we love gives us a platform to speak to the community, fans and young people.
“As the AFLW playing group, we feel it is of great importance to stress that the behaviour that included references to gender-based violence is completely unacceptable under any circumstances.
“The values of respect, diversity and inclusion are as important off the field as they are on it.
“We look forward to the AFL playing group learning from this incident and as a club, we are united in ensuring everyone feels safe within our game.”
Dillon expressed his shock when he first learned of the decisions made by the playing group at the function.
“When the complaint came through, I had a range of emotions,” he said. “Disbelief, disappointment and then a range of emotions since then.
“Our clubs celebrate the end of their seasons and do it in good spirits most of the time.
“Some terrible choices were made a couple of Wednesdays back.”
The AFL Players’ Association (AFLPA) has since released its own statement, condemning the conduct of the Giants while also calling the league’s investigation into question.
In a long statement from chief executive Paul Marsh, the AFLPA acknowledged “the conduct of the sanctioned GWS Giants players is unacceptable and raises important matters of respect, inclusion and safety”.
It also offered support to the club’s women’s teams and the AFLW community in general.
The AFLPA also said it provided a detailed submission to the AFL over the incident, where it “raised concerns with the AFL’s commitment to cultural change within the industry, the process undertaken by the AFL, the proportionality and consistency of their sanctioning, the lack of a sanctioning framework despite repeatedly raising this with the AFL, and an inconsistent approach to how player leaders have been dealt with as compared to the broader club leaders”.
It continued: “For many years, the industry has walked past this type of behaviour and accepted it as a part of footy culture, and this is the culture that we all are now responsible for. We include players, clubs, the AFL and the AFLPA in this.
“For more than 12 months, the AFLPA has been trying to work with the AFL to establish a joint committee, as agreed in last year’s CBA (collective bargaining agreement), inclusive of players, experts and industry people to address these issues proactively and improve our industry.
“This is yet to happen and until we get serious about changing our culture, the industry will continue to send mixed messages that will let our fans, our players and our community down.”
The Players’ Association also took exception to the way the investigation was conducted.
“We have serious concerns with the way the AFL has conducted their process around this issue,” it said.
“They sought to interview players without independent support, did not make relevant materials available to players as part of the interview process, and imposed unreasonable timeframes on players to respond to their proposed sanctions.
“This process lacked procedural fairness, and procedural fairness is critical to ensuring integrity and confidence in AFL processes.
“With respect to the proposed sanctions, we believed these were disproportionate, and again made without reference to any sanctioning framework. We note the AFL revised some of the sanctions in response to ours and other submissions.”
Players were initially looking at up to six-game suspensions and $20,000 fines before those proposed penalties were revised.
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