Saints Pay the Price, and Good Footy Had to Follow
Look, I’ve spent a good chunk of my adult life watching my football club navigate the AFL’s disciplinary system with the grace of a shopping trolley on a hill — so when the Tribunal and the MRO come up in conversation, I tend to pay attention. And this week, the fallout from the Lance Collard case has given us something genuinely worth chewing over.
St Kilda have been removed from the annual AFL Pride Game. The fixture — which celebrates LGBTIQA+ inclusivity and has become a meaningful part of the league calendar — was originally scheduled for Round 13 at the SCG, when the Swans were set to host the Saints. That’s gone. The AFL has shifted the Pride Game to Round 17, when Sydney takes on the Western Bulldogs instead. St Kilda are out. And I reckon most fair-minded footy people, once they’ve thought about it for five seconds, will understand why.
What Actually Happened With Collard
For anyone who needs the quick refresher: Saints player Lance Collard was banned after the AFL Tribunal found him guilty of using a homophobic slur on the field. This wasn’t one of those murky, he-said-she-said situations that drags on through three appeals and ends up in the Almanac under “what were they thinking.” The Tribunal handed down its finding. The AFL’s process ran its course. Collard was sanctioned.
Now, I want to be careful here — and not just because FootyTalk’s legal team would have my head on a spike — but because it’s genuinely important. The Tribunal made a finding. That’s the process working. You can debate the grading, the penalty, whatever you like. But the outcome is what it is, and St Kilda now have to live with the reputational consequences of one of their players using language that has no place in the game.
The AFL Had to Do Something — And They Did
Here’s where it gets interesting from a governance standpoint, and yes, I realise that sentence makes me sound like I work in corporate risk. But hear me out.
The Pride Game isn’t just a match with a rainbow guernsey and a halftime performance. It’s a statement of intent from the AFL — a league that has, let’s be honest, had a complicated history with LGBTIQA+ inclusion. It took a long time to get here. There are people within football communities, both playing and supporting, for whom this game carries real weight. You can’t on one hand stage a celebration of inclusivity and on the other hand hand that stage to a club whose player was just found guilty of using homophobic language. You just can’t.
The AFL made a call that was uncomfortable but correct. St Kilda are out, the Bulldogs are in, and the Round 17 game at the SCG gets the Pride Game designation instead. It’s not a perfect solution — no solution in footy ever is — but it’s a sensible one. And frankly, as an Essendon supporter who has witnessed my club stumble through more than its fair share of scandals, I can tell you: sometimes the institution has to draw a line, even when it’s awkward.
What About St Kilda as a Club?
Now, I’m not here to pile on the Saints. Anyone who barracks for Essendon and tries to pile on another club for a messy period is living in a glass house the size of Etihad Stadium. St Kilda, as a club, have generally been pretty good on inclusion issues. They’ve had players and staff who’ve spoken publicly in support of the LGBTIQA+ community. None of that is erased by one ugly incident.
\p>But here’s the thing — and I say this with all the sympathy of someone who once watched his own club make front page news for reasons that had nothing to do with the football — you are judged, in part, by what your players do on the field. That’s the deal. And right now, the stain from the Collard case is going to follow them into conversations about this particular game and what it stands for. That’s not unfair. That’s consequences.
The Saints will move forward. Clubs always do. But this is the kind of episode that you don’t want to define your club, and the way to ensure it doesn’t is to do the hard internal work — not just the press release stuff, but the genuine cultural stuff — so it never happens again.
Where Do the Bulldogs Fit In?
The Western Bulldogs, it should be said, are a pretty logical replacement. They’ve got strong form on inclusivity — the club has been vocal and consistent on these issues for years. Their community programs and their general culture around inclusion are well regarded. If you were drawing up a shortlist of clubs who fit the spirit of what the Pride Game is trying to do, the Bulldogs would be near the top of it.
There’s no sense in which this is a punishment for Sydney, either. The Swans get to host the game, it just moves to a different round with a different opponent. In a way, the fixture potentially has a cleaner narrative now — both participating clubs can stand behind the values of the day without any background noise.
The Broader Point About On-Field Language
I’ve banged on about the MRO and Tribunal so many times on this site that my editor checks in on my mental health whenever a charge sheet drops. But I genuinely think the way the AFL handles on-field language matters, and not just symbolically.
Footy grounds are loud, physical, competitive environments. Blokes say things in the heat of it that they’d never say sitting down for dinner. That’s human and, up to a point, it’s part of the game. But there’s a category of language — racial abuse, homophobic slurs — where the excuse of “heat of the moment” runs out pretty quickly. The Tribunal taking these cases seriously sends a message to every player at every level of the game. It’s a signal worth sending.
And look — as someone whos watched the MRO system produce some truly bewildering outcomes over the years (don’t get me started, seriously, I’ve been advised not to), seeing it function correctly on something that actually matters is, in its own small way, reassuring.
What Happens Now
Round 17. Sydney versus the Western Bulldogs. The Pride Game. That’s the new reality.
For St Kilda, the work is internal. Clubs don’t come back from these moments by waiting for the noise to die down — they come back by demonstrating that the culture has genuinely shifted. That might mean more than a workshop and a statement. It means sustained, visible commitment to the values that the Pride Game is supposed to celebrate.
For the competition, this was a test of whether the AFL would hold the line when it was inconvenient. The answer, this time, was yes. I’ll take it. We don’t always get clean decisions in this game — as any Essendon fan will tiredly confirm — but occasionally the system does what it’s supposed to do.
The Pride Game will go on. Which is, honestly, the most important part of all of this.
