Crows-Pies respect call shows where AFL crowd culture sits

When Leigh Ryswyk called for respect before Adelaide’s clash with Collingwood, he dragged the week away from pre-game theatre and back to the people in the seats. The AFL’s first publicly gay player was not asking a big Crows-Pies crowd for a gesture. He was asking them not to cross a basic line.

That is the footy story here. Last year’s four-game ban for Izak Rankine, after the Adelaide midfielder used a homophobic slur at Isaac Quaynor in round 23, told everyone where the AFL’s formal standard sits. Now comes the messier test: whether ordinary match-day behaviour has caught up in a fixture loud enough for one idiot on the fence to hijack the night.

Ryswyk carries weight because he only came out publicly four months ago, becoming the first openly gay AFL player after a career that included one senior game for Brisbane. That is not just a symbolic footnote. It is a bloke reading the game’s habits from inside the rooms and outside them. The Independent’s March report on his decision to come out landed on the same plain point: footy spaces have to feel safe before the sport can pat itself on the back.

Anyone who has sat near the boundary on a hot footy night knows how quickly the mood can go lazy. A close finish, a villain, a mouthy bloke who wants the bay laughing with him, and suddenly the old rubbish gets dressed up as banter. Ryswyk’s appeal matters before the bounce because once that soundtrack starts, dragging it back is hard work.

The useful test is not whether the league can write the right statement, change the graphics or explain the suspension again. It has already done the punishment and the public line. The harder bit is whether supporters treat this as routine: barrack hard, boo the footy stuff if you must, and leave personal abuse out of it without needing a lecture.

“We want people to be calling things out because in the community we don’t want these things here … we want the world to be a better place for everyone in it.”

Leigh Ryswyk, ABC News

Ryswyk also avoided turning the week into a public flogging of Rankine. He said he believed the Crows midfielder had done the work and that his actions would show it. That matters in a football way. Footy people tend to trust behaviour before speeches, and the cleanest way for Adelaide supporters to back their club is to make this boring. Let the scrutiny sit on whether Rankine learned from it, not on whether the crowd can resist making a mess.

For the AFL, that is the bigger marker now. A league can punish language after the siren, but the culture shifts when the people around the game start policing the standard themselves. If a mate in the row behind you goes cheap and someone nearby pulls him up, that says more than another neat post-match message.

What it means on the night

No one is asking for silence. A Crows-Pies crowd should still sound like a Crows-Pies crowd, with the noise, needle and edge that make a big Adelaide Oval night feel like one. The line is simple enough: keep the heat on the contest, not on a person’s sexuality.

Adelaide coach Matthew Nicks put the same idea in club language when he asked supporters to enjoy the show and be respectful, the same way players are expected to be.

“We’ll do what we can to entertain and put on a show that’s what it’s about, we ask our supporters to just enjoy that and then be respectful like we ask of all our players.”

Matthew Nicks, ABC News

So the match-night version is blunt. In: noise, heat, boos for a sprayed set shot, and all the usual carry-on that comes with a big Crows-Pies crowd. Out: personal abuse pretending to be banter. What it means: if a packed AFL stadium treats that line as obvious rather than optional, Ryswyk’s call will have told us something useful about where the game is now.