Footy Gods and Hot Garbage Takes: The Alleged Sexual Assault by Sydney Swans Players
So what do we know about the Sydney Swans' sexual assault allegations?
What we do know is that an alleged sexual assault took place in the early hours of Monday, 17th August 2026 at the Pullman Hotel in East Melbourne.
The Sydney Swans men's AFL team stayed at the Pullman after winning a match against Essendon at the MCG in round twenty-three of the 2026 AFL fixture.
Three women made a report to Victoria Police regarding that incident.
The players alleged to have been involved who have been named publicly are Isaac Heaney, Chad Warner, Nick Blakely, James Jordan, and Riley Bice. These five men were known to be in the hotel room where the alleged sexual assault occurred.
It's unclear or unproven whether there were more than five Sydney Swans players or officials in the room at the time of the alleged sexual assault.
It also remains unclear which combination of the named five men or others possibly present were directly involved in the alleged sexual assault. Four of the players have been interviewed by members of the Victoria Police's sexual crime squad.
We know this, as Victoria Police publicly confirmed that they travelled to New South Wales to speak to a twenty-six-year-old Randwick man, a thirty-year-old Maroubra man, a twenty-five-year-old Randwick man, and a twenty-five-year-old Paddington man.
ABC reporting indicated those men were understood to be Isaac Heaney, Chad Warner, James Jordan and Nick Blakey. ABC reporting also indicated that Riley Bice, who was stood down at the same time as the other players named, is not being investigated by police in relation to the sexual assault allegations.
Football players in Australia hold positions of respect in the community because of their sporting prowess. Whether they like it or not, they are leaders in our community by virtue of their public-facing roles. They are held out as role models to children, particularly boys. If you're looking at Isaac Heaney and his children's book series Little Isaac Footy Fever, they are quite targeted towards young boys.
Isaac Heeney / Instagram
I'm really sick of hearing about how this incident is impacting the footballers. A lot of the public and footy fan discourse has completely sidelined the victims' experiences altogether and the impact the incident has had on them, instead focusing on how this has ruined the Swans' prospects of a finals campaign.
There has been an awful lot of male and sadly female keyboard warriors jumping online and getting themselves into a right state, sharing their full opinions after the incident.
This mass of footy fans have been expressing a range of choice views about the women who have reported the alleged sexual assault, including that the women should expect to be treated this way given their line of work, which is suggesting that because the victims work in the adult entertainment industry, this automatically makes them less credible and they should assume the risk of non-consensual behaviour being perpetrated against them, and that by virtue of their chosen profession they deserved the alleged violation.
There's also been en masse victim blaming, malicious public shaming, and the doxing and public identification of the victims, to the point where Victoria Police have had to issue formal warnings to journalists and to parties in the community who have been sharing that identifying information online.
The women who have reported the allegations have engaged lawyers, and even their actions in engaging legal representation have been subject to a “metric f#ckton” of unsolicited male opinions online.
Particularly vocal online males believe that a woman who is allegedly sexually assaulted who is now being attacked by members of the public “does not need a lawyer to help protect her own interests in the matter.”
They also believe that seeking legal support is a sign that victims are just money grubbers and that they've only reported the assault for financial reasons.
In news to very few people, this is an absolutely garbage hot take.
Work in the adult entertainment industry is real work. Workers in the adult entertainment industry deserve the same workplace protections we all do. And work in the adult entertainment industry does not come with an expectation that workers should expect or put up with assault - even if the alleged perpetrator happens to be a football god.
Having had time to reflect on the AFL's response to this incident, my view is that the response was weak as piss, too slow, and insufficient to clearly establish that the AFL does not condone the alleged behaviour.
Where you wait too long to establish a clear stance on players' alleged behaviour, you are tacitly approving that alleged behaviour.
Aside from the AFL's lukewarm response, responses from football fans have also been concerning. We’ve been hearing a lot about “the game will struggle to recover from this” “, the Sydney Swans will struggle to recover from this”, “the players involved will struggle to recover from this” “, they're losing sponsorship deals.”
To that, I say - good. I hope there is a real, long-lasting negative impact on the AFL and the Sydney Swans men's team.
And the specific players alleged to have been involved in this incident. I hope they all take a long, hard look at themselves and how their behaviour and culture cements their role in normalising violence against women in our society.
The players genuinely deserve to lose their godlike status in our society.
Australians love an opportunity to excuse violence against women when it's perpetrated by a footballer or a former footballer.
Case in point, look at the lovely little media career that Wayne Carey secured for himself despite having committed multiple proven incidents of family violence against women.
And it took a further high-profile incident in a WA casino with some white powder in late 2022 to finally get him off the mainstream media channels.
It horrifies me that these are the men who are being held out as role models whose behaviour should be emulated.
I certainly don't want my nieces and nephews idolising public figures who think that violence against women is acceptable.
These men do not deserve a public redemption arc. They simply don't.
The impacts on the AFL and the players should be viewed as very public consequences of incredibly poor behaviour and culture, and those cultural views about how women deserve to be treated.
This behaviour and culture has been allowed to flourish unchecked in the AFL and in our community for far too long.
I was really delighted to see football fans rally around the Sydney Swans AFLW team following the incident, with a record-breaking attendance at the Sydney Swans AFL match against Essendon on the 22nd of August at the SCG.
I hope that fans who want to watch footy without a dose of ‘manosphere’ bullshit decide to attend AFLW matches in the future and actively choose to give the AFL a wide berth until the sport can properly address its significant cultural and behavioural issues among its players.
Women in the AFL community have every right to feel hurt and angry at the actions of the men alleged to have been involved in the incident. And not just the players who are alleged to have committed a sexual assault. Be angry at the players, yes, but also be angry at the system and the people and entities involved in that system that have allowed this kind of horrific behaviour to become the norm.
I genuinely hope that AFL fans, particularly female fans, turn away en masse from the men's version of the sport, because this is a sport that's outright rejecting them.
1800 RESPECT national helpline 1800 737 732
Sexual Assault Counselling Australia 1800 211 028