Sydney has walked away from its annual Pride Game against St Kilda and moved the fixture to the Western Bulldogs at the SCG in round 17. The switch was confirmed on Wednesday night and comes with the June 7 match days away.
The decision lands in the middle of fresh fallout from the Lance Collard case and renewed scrutiny of homophobia in the AFL. For the Rainbow Swans, the club’s long-running LGBTQIA+ supporter group, it was enough to end a fixture that had been meant to be a celebration.
Rainbow Swans vice chairman Paul Bisby said the group felt St Kilda’s involvement would distract from what the day was supposed to represent. “The position we came to was that this is just too distracting and [would] take away from the purpose of the Pride Game, which is obviously to promote diversity and inclusivity and be a real celebration,” he said.
That judgment followed a volatile run of events in late April. On April 24, Rainbow Swans chair Sarina Jackson released a statement condemning the appeals board verdict delivered by Will Houghton KC, and asked for a meeting with the AFL and St Kilda to discuss the planned Pride Game. A day later, the AFL removed Houghton from his role after his judgment said it was “commonplace” for players to use offensive language in “highly competitive” levels of football, an assertion AFL chief executive Andrew Dillon strongly rejected.
The Rainbow Swans have been around for 20 years, starting out as an email chat group before the Swans officially recognised them in 2015. Bisby said that history mattered, because Sydney had built something broader than a one-day gesture. “I think that’s where the Swans have excelled. They don’t just live this on one day of one game. They live it all year, and I think that’s what all clubs should be aspiring to,” he said.
He also said the club would welcome another side stepping in. “I think any club that would want to step up, we would embrace,” he said, while adding that clubs needed to show support beyond one match. “But I think clubs need to know just stepping up for that one day is not showing your commitment to the LGBTQIA+ community, you need, as a club, to do more than that.”
Bisby said Sydney and St Kilda could one day work together again. “I think Sydney re-kindling its partnership with St Kilda in the future would be amazing,” he said. For now, though, the club has judged that the safest way to preserve the purpose of the Pride Game was to move on without them. “We’re sadly not there yet, and incidents like this may indicate to us we have more work to do,” he said.
The Pride Game had been scheduled for June 7 before Sydney changed opponents. The shift follows the tribunal appeal in the Lance Collard case, which involved a homophobic slur in a game against Frankston, and it underscores how closely the AFL’s handling of homophobia is being watched. Sydney’s move means the event will go ahead, but not in the form it had planned.
