‘Heart ripped out on repeat’: Auskick parents say they have been failed by AFL

Source : ABC NEWS

Like many little boys his age, 12-year-old Dustin* lives for Australian rules footy.

On a property in the Goulburn-Murray region in northern Victoria he ducks and weaves, playing solo with his Sherrin.

His socks are covered in signatures of AFLW players and he can recount moments from all the weekend’s AFL games. He watches every match, his bedtime permitting.

Dustin has autism spectrum disorder level 2 and footy is his special interest. It brings him endless joy, but it has also caused significant distress. At times, he hated it.

Dustin’s parents Angela and Dave* signed him up for Auskick, the AFL’s junior footy program in their local town. But they noticed towards the end of his club’s under 12s footy season at Seymour Junior Football Club last year, something wasn’t right.

Angela says there was a culture of bullying on the team, particularly around ‘rough’ training sessions.

“A lot of stomach punches … one child in particular who would continuously punch Dustin on repeat, and there was another child who was a lot physically bigger than Dustin was, and he punched him quite severely at one point,” she says.

Angela says these kids would call him names, including homophobic slurs, make jabs about his weight, calling him ‘big back’ and c*** on a regular basis, and ostracise him from group activities.

She says it is hard for Dustin to get social cues sometimes due to his ASD but this was given no consideration by the club.

During one game in the Goulburn Murray Juniors competition, Angela says one of his teammates kicked the ball into Dustin while going for goal.

A massive tirade ensued that Angela could hear from the sidelines. Five kids ran at Dustin shouting ‘What the f*** are you doing? Why are you in the f***ing way?’

A week or two later, Dustin marked the ball right on the goal line and kicked it through.

“They were so angry at him for doing that,” she says.

“He went to high five people and they just turned their backs.

“So we got to the point where this one particular child that would always stomach punch, and we said, no, we’re done. We’re going to have to say something.”

Angela became even more worried when she saw Dustin self-harming in the car on the way to training, picking his skin anxiously until it bled.

The parents say they raised the bullying behaviour with club officials but describe a compromised process, with these same officials also the parents of some of the alleged bullies.

The child who they say punched Dustin in the stomach played on each week.

“I think that was probably the start of us going, no, we can’t cope with this anymore, and he shouldn’t have to deal with this. And we didn’t see any level of consequence; that player played the next game,” Angela says.

“If something was said … to him, we don’t know.”

‘Get your kids and leave’

It reached boiling point when an allegation was made that Dustin had touched another boy’s genitals.

When Angela and Dave asked Dustin what happened he told them there was a scuffle in the clubrooms where a teammate called him a ‘gay bitch’. 

Dustin pushed him and the pair fell to the ground. Dustin said he thought his hand might have grazed the other boy by accident on the way down.

Dave called a club official to ask if this was the incident in question but couldn’t get an answer on the substance of the allegation or how it happened.

A meeting with club officials was arranged the following night to discuss it.

Dave felt hopeful the bullying and homophobic language might also be addressed but instead a heated conversation ended with the official telling Dave to “get your kids and leave”. The family didn’t return to the club.

“That was quite confronting to us, because we weren’t able to work through it. We weren’t able to say to his team, how do we help him? It was just, he’s this person that he’s most definitely not and too bad he doesn’t get a voice,” Angela says.

Watching from the sidelines she says she felt helpless.

“Dreadful. Just like your heart’s been ripped out on repeat,” she says.

‘They’re genuinely doing nothing about this’

Dave and Angela decided they wanted to escalate the issue beyond the club hierarchy.

Dustin still desperately wanted to play footy and there weren’t many other options in the area.

So they called the AFL’s regional manager for Goulburn Murray and were instructed to fill out a form on the AFL Integrity portal online.

The Respect and Responsibility portal is a little known online complaints form participants in the AFL can use to report integrity issues directly to AFL house.

After not hearing back for weeks, Dave and Angela followed up and eventually got a call from AFL Integrity.

Dave says the integrity officer told him making a complaint would make things worse for Dustin.

“Interviews will be conducted against everyone at the team, and that includes your son, and they will allege that things have happened, and they will accuse you of doing things as well, and you need to understand the impact that it will have on him,” he says.

The dad of three says it felt like victim blaming and that they were being dissuaded from pursuing a complaint.

“I remember just feeling so deflated, like, really, this is it? This is where we’ve gotten to this. They’re genuinely doing nothing about this,” Dave says.

“With the lady on the phone … it was made very clear that nothing was going to happen … you’ve got a kid that’s completely deflated by football right now and hates football and can’t even look at football at the moment.”

They were told AFL Victoria would be in touch but “we just never heard from them”.

Dave says the process with the AFL was “a debacle”.

“It felt like there was no clear end to it, apart from them trying to remove us from being a problem,” he says, with Angela adding they “were just not interested”.

Seymour Junior Football Netball Club (SJFNC) confirmed it attempted a resolution with Angela and Dave, which was ‘ultimately unsuccessful’.

In a statement provided to the ABC, the club said it did not intend to publicly respond to or provide commentary on private matters involving minors.

It said it works within the policies, procedures and governance frameworks applicable to community football, with the support of AFL Victoria and Goulburn Murray Juniors.

“Community clubs are run by volunteers who are required to manage complex and sensitive matters, and the Club does understand the importance of continually strengthening education, safeguarding practices and support for volunteers, players and families,” the statement said.

The AFL said it would not comment as “it does not provide commentary regarding particular integrity matters”.

In a statement AFL House said “community clubs have their own safeguarding policies and can access extensive resources that the AFL has created to assist”.

AFL Goulburn Murray assisted Seymour in navigating the case.

It would not comment on the specific matter raised but said: “We have and continue to provide support to all clubs in strengthening their understanding and management of safeguarding practices, understanding we are dealing with volunteers and small communities.”

Culture of grassroots football investigated

Earlier this year the ABC asked to hear from grassroots families and players about cultural issues within football and netball clubs.

The ABC has been told stories of drug use, bullying, racism and sexism, and families left to their own devices with a lack of process when issues arise.

Many of these stories are hard to verify as those who contacted the ABC feared speaking out in small communities.

Many expressed concerns about ‘going against’ the football club in places where clubs are central to community life.

They also raised issues with the AFL’s integrity process, describing an opaque, confusing or bruising process that failed complainants in order to protect the brand reputation as a priority.

Some complained to the AFL and never heard back at all.

The AFL is classified as a not-for-profit sporting organisation, with its tax-free status linked to its role in promoting and developing Australian football at all levels.

It oversees the game from the grassroots through to the elite, with participation reaching a record 624,503 registrations last year, a significant proportion of whom were children under 14.

At the same time, the AFL generated $1 billion in revenue and recorded a $67.9 million surplus.

‘You’re just a coconut’

Toni Cooper signed her kids Imogen, 3, and Clark, 5, up for Auskick at Kilcunda-Bass Football Netball Club when they moved to Corinella just south-east of Melbourne.

As a Maori family in the area, Toni was hoping her kids would integrate into the new community through the sport.

“You turn up blind. You’re not told how the format of the whole thing goes. So there were kids of all different ages, and it was packed. It’s huge and it was quite overwhelming,” Toni says.

“You don’t know who’s just a parent helper and who’s actually an official coach.”

One training session in 2024, Imogen was standing in line waiting to have a turn at a drill when Toni noticed another kid “pushing her around, twisting her hand and just being really aggressive”.

Toni stepped in to say ‘Hey, that’s not OK’, and the kid became even more aggressive.

“He was like, you can’t tell me what to do. You’re just a coconut,” Toni says.

“I was like, ‘Excuse me? … You mean like the tropical fruit?’ And he was like, ‘No, it means you’re nothing. You have nothing. You are nothing’.

“When he said that it meant you’re nothing, that’s when it clicked that it was racial.”

Toni says he then became “really, really aggressive” and charged towards her with both hands.

“As one of the only brown families in the area — there’s not many of us — it was really shocking. And the place was full of people, and no-one stepped in. I feel like everyone almost pretended not to see it because they didn’t want to be a part of it,” she says.

Toni says she felt at a loss when the harassment of Imogen continued, including her being physically hit and told “you don’t belong here. You’re not allowed to play here” at training.

Unsure who to turn to, she started messaging other parents asking for help and eventually was given the number of someone at the club who told her they would take the matter to the committee.

Toni and her husband were told the kid would be watched at training, but after the aggressive behaviour continued she approached the child’s father directly and says she was berated by him in front of the other parents.

“Like, really, really aggressive, really awful,” she says.

Toni and her partner sent an email to the club explaining what was happening and pleading for something to be done.

“And then nothing,” Toni says.

‘I’ve lodged my complaint … but nothing’

At a loss for help from the club, Toni wanted to make an official complaint and landed on the AFL Integrity portal, where she remembers filling out a form.

“It takes you a while to find it on the website when you don’t know where to go, it’s really, really hard. So I remember being really frustrated,” Toni says.

“I remember thinking, OK, I’ve lodged my complaint. Someone will see it. They’ll get in touch with the club, then they’ll get in touch with me, and then there’ll be an official outcome. But nothing.”

They never did hear back and Imogen and Clark never returned to Auskick. They moved over to the MiniRoos, where they now play soccer in what she describes as a completely different environment.

But Toni is still surprised by the handling of the incident and the lack of action from the AFL.

 “Surely it’s part of your guidelines, especially with children involved, that if there’s a serious incident that’s physical and racial aspects, that it would be taken to a higher level so that they don’t get in trouble,” she says.

“I just felt really sad for my kids, because footy is a huge culture in Victoria, and so I feel like now that my kids are going to miss out on that because we don’t feel safe.”

Toni says the AFL’s integrity process is not transparent.

“There’s no real structure. There’s no accountability. You don’t even know where to start when you have an issue … it’s like, you’re in charge of children and you’re paying money for your kids to learn how to play sport and there’s no real teaching really,” she says.

 “It’s just throw them in and see if they can swim, kind of thing. It’s like survival of the fittest.

The ABC approached Kilcunda-Bass Football Netball Club for comment and was told it was advised by the AFL and West Gippsland Football Netball Competition to make no comment on the alleged matter.

The AFL had no record of Toni’s complaint.

‘This is a systemic issue’

Catherine Ordway is a lawyer and sport integrity consultant whose work spans almost three decades and across many sports including working for the Australian Olympic Committee in anti doping.

She says there is insufficient transparency in how the AFL is handling integrity matters at the grassroots.

The AFL is not a direct signatory to the Sport Integrity Australia (SIA) National Integrity Framework (NIF).

Signatories are bound by a set of mandatory safeguarding policies, including child safeguarding, and have access to independent handling of complaints. This includes high-risk allegations, including child safeguarding and discrimination.

Instead of adopting the federal government’s standardised sports integrity policies, the AFL has its own independent Integrity Unit, and runs many investigations in-house.

“They’re quite a non-transparent national sporting organisation like you can’t find their documents on their website, if you write to them and ask them for copies of things, you don’t get them unless you know someone inside the organisation who will provide it to you,” Dr Ordway says.

She says the AFL has a strong interest in maintaining their reputation, to the detriment of a transparent integrity process.

“When there is pressure on the AFL from the outside to answer questions, whether it’s coming from the media or coming from clubs or coming from spectators of the general public that they quite often, just won’t respond,” she says.

Dr Ordway says both Dustin’s and the Cooper’s cases were examples where Sport Integrity Australia, under the National Integrity Framework, could have played a role stepping in and providing support.

“The AFL is in a unique position. It’s a standalone organisation in that it is not an international federation,” Dr Ordway says.

“It makes its own rules and it governs its own show.

“If you compare the same rigour that you could for the International Federations in terms of transparency, democracy, gender equality and so on, it doesn’t stack up.”

Harder to maintain integrity in small towns

Dr Ordway says clubs often want to do the right thing, but don’t know where to turn and don’t have the skill set and tools in their toolboxes to do the right thing.

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She says it’s often harder to maintain an uncompromised integrity process when issues arise in small towns where the dynamics of club loyalties, familial and business connections are impacted by allegations.

“Retaliation might be shunning and silence, not being invited to things, not being included into things or it could be memberships not being renewed,” Dr Ordway says.

“It just has a whole ripple effect to work and social life and living in that small community when an allegation or a complaint is made.”

Dr Ordway believes the AFL should have a top down approach to handling these issues.

“This is a systemic issue, and we need to take a big picture approach,” Dr Ordway says.

“It’s not individual, it’s not ad hoc, it’s not one off. This is a systemic issue, and yes, it’s part of a broader community issue.

“But in the same way that the AFL have approached the illicit drug problem, which is a community problem, they should take that same kind of lens to the whole ecosystem in community club land to protect everyone and to make sure that it’s a safe, fun and family friendly place for everyone to participate in.”

‘Nobody won out of it’

The saga of the Wedge-Tailed Eagles Football Club brought into sharp relief the difficulty community club members can face when dealing with AFL house.

The Wedge-Tailed Eagles, formally the Kyneton Women’s Football Club (KWFC), was embroiled in an 18-month long public saga after more than 30 women and gender diverse players left their former club, Kyneton Football Netball Club (KFNC), following allegations of a toxic environment.

After struggling to get any traction with AFL integrity or a meeting with AFL executives, the team launched a public protest on the steps of AFL house. Their complaints included serious misconduct allegations at their former club, including a league president reported over alleged ‘gender weirdness’ comments, but the saga was investigated with no public conclusion.

Natalie Korinfsky, president of the Wedge-Tailed Eagles, says even to this day “it’s hard to know who AFL integrity is firstly, so I’m not sure of the structures and the systems there”.

The AFL conducted a review of the circumstances that caused the players to leave their club, led by Taryn Lee, general manager of First Nations engagement and inclusion at the AFL.

As part of that review, KWFC provided a 43-page dossier describing allegations of intimidation, threats, misuse of grant funding and drug use.

The AFL met with club figures to discuss the report but no one outside the AFL got to see the results of the report, including the Wedge-Tailed Eagles. The club asked for the findings to be publicly released.

Korinfsky says players may never have left KFNC had they received adequate intervention from the league.

Korinfsky says it was a horrific and damaging 18 months for the players at her club.

“Nobody won out of it,” she says.

She worries about the next time a complaint is made.

“The thing is when we know clubs might not be able to handle it, who do we go to? Who is actually going to step in and handle it now?” she says.

“I think we’ve got to ask ourselves, what do we need to change to ensure that we are doing the bare minimum so that everyone can feel safe and respected?”

‘He lives and breathes for these people, do they know what’s happening?’

Dustin is back playing footy again, at a new club a half hour drive away. And by all accounts he’s kicking goals.

What’s more important to his parents is how he is treated by the team.

“He just feels included. They say to him, go there or do that, and he responds great and brilliantly, and he enjoys that,” Angela says.

“These kids have really supported that and harboured that. It is just phenomenal. The difference between the clubs.”

After their experience with AFL Integrity, the family wants to see a better system for complaints handling, one that has a focus on genuine diversity inclusion and transparency of process.

Angela recalls the AFL website for the complaints portal she landed on when trying to first report the bullying.

It features pictures of the AFL stars Dustin idolises.

“It was all about how AFL celebrates respect, inclusivity, ‘It doesn’t matter how different you are, we celebrate different, we love it’,” she says.

“I opened that screen up trying to put a complaint in and it made me feel sick. I was like ‘do these players, who my son idolises, he’s got pictures of them above his bed, he lives and breathes for these people, do they know what’s happening here (at grassroots)?

“Because it is gross, and it is not OK.

“There’s always something in the news about homophobia or racism or something that’s come out at AFL level.

“How could people learn if they’re not being taught by adults (that it’s wrong)? So it is a huge failure of adults that filters though.”

*Dustin, Dave and Angela have been changed to protect their identities.

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