A commentary based on Cam’s online social commentary, Co-Founder of Capyble.
Four Sydney Swans players are now linked to a Victoria Police investigation into an alleged incident at a Melbourne hotel this week.
The club has called it a serious breach of its own standards and says further action will follow once police finish their process.
Legally, that’s the right call. It’s also, as Cam puts it, “the most conservative, by the book, trained, immediate response” a club could give. And that’s the gap worth talking about.
What could be the opportunity here?
Nobody can comment on an active police investigation, and nobody should try to. But the response to an incident is never just the statement issued while it’s under investigation. It’s everything the club does in the weeks around it.
“This is a moment where they could show us how it should be done, and I say that with a lot of hope, because I’m hoping they engage with the thought leaders in this space, and with the people who are making noise to change the way we engage with this as a culture,” said Cam.
Sporting clubs are workplaces. Start treating them like one
The reframe that matters here is a simple one: a football club is a workplace. “It is a cultural institution, it is a community space, but it is also a place where people are paid to turn up and make sure that it is safe,” Cam says.
Police investigate the incident. That’s their job. But the culture that keeps producing incidents like this is everyone’s to look at, right now, without waiting for a verdict.
Responsive isn’t the same as preventative
The most common failure mode isn’t a bad statement, it’s stopping at the statement.
“Bystanders are critically important to everyone around them, but we need to fix these systems and these cultures and do more proactive preventative work, not just post incident behaviour change or responsive work,” Cam says.
There’s research behind why that distinction matters. The Man Box study and the Ten to Men report both link the same traits, dominance, hypermasculinity, proving yourself through aggression, to higher rates of violence. Bystander training doesn’t touch those traits. Actively working to undo them does, long before an incident happens. “This is a core part of being a highly paid sports person, or a manager of a sports team, or anyone involved with the sport,” Cam says. Not an add-on, part of the job.
What “doing better” could actually look like
A formal review will follow, “probably and eventually another report like the Collingwood Do Better report, that guides us to actions that can make a difference.” Those reviews matter. They also take a while, and clubs don’t need to wait for one to start acting.
Cam points to moves clubs could make now. Members using their vote at AGMs to hold the organisation to a standard, not celebrating hypermasculinity off the field, and sharing evidence of their preventative work as it happens. “We have evidence based, programmatic ways of making this happen. We just need to invest in them, advocate for them, and look for evidence that they’ve actually happened.”
Where this leaves us
Respecting the legal process and naming what’s already visible aren’t in conflict. The investigation will run its course. The culture that keeps generating this exact story doesn’t have to wait for the outcome to start changing.
“We can change this,” Cam says, “but only if we look at how we talk about it, and do what’s measurable and provable, instead of throwing words at it.”
This could be where they:
- Connect players and other staff with local survivor-led organisations as part of learning from those who have learnt resilience and resistance the hard way.
- Make respectful leadership a priority. Do this with those who work with those who’ve used violence, they’re the best in the business at handling conflict and having tough conversations.
- Be like some of the other club members and actively support organisations like Polished Man. Be vocal about it.
- Run campaigns with organisations like this that show the difference between being men and hyper masculinity.
- Address the damage that incidental language like “happen to find themselves” does.
- Talk with fans and your members about what they need to be able to believe in you and the sport again and then provide evidence again and again, over time, that all clubs on this path are doing that.
What this means for workplaces
None of this is unique to football. Swap “club” (although this is a company) for “company” and the same pattern shows up in ordinary workplaces every week: a conservative, legally cautious statement when something goes wrong, some bystander training rolled out afterwards, and no real system change underneath either.
It’s the same gap Cam is naming in the Swans’ response, just wearing a lanyard instead of a guernsey.
Under the positive duty, Australian employers are required to actively prevent this kind of harm, not just respond well once it’s already happened. That’s the same shift Cam is asking of professional sport. Stop treating the statement as the finish line, and start building the proactive, measurable work that sits underneath it.
Most organisations haven’t made that shift either. The Swans just happen to be doing it in public.
Resources
Tarang Chawla & Harrison James – what they could have stated instead about the incident.
Mitch Brownie – bro code and post September.
