The AFL Players’ Association has questioned the league’s commitment to cultural change and insisted the AFL’s process for determining the punishments for the players involved in the GWS post-season party scandal lacked “procedural fairness”.
“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.The AFLPA acknowledges that the conduct of the sanctioned GWS Giants players is unacceptable and raises important matters of respect, inclusion and safety. These matters are critical to the AFLPA and the wider playing group.
As an industry, we have had too many cultural issues and we have not worked hard enough to set and role model the standards expected. This does not excuse individual choices and decisions but they are not made in a vacuum. 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.
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. “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.