Club Respect

When ethnic clubs, or clubs that are very culturally prominent, are used as a destination club for different ethnic communities and they welcome people, I think that’s when they’re at their best.

It's more than that, it's deeper than that. We need to actually be addressing it as it's happening. It's just getting people to just recognise that the behaviour is not appropriate and that you wouldn't conduct yourself that way in a bank or in a supermarket.

We are arguing morality a lot of the time, and so when that's the case, it becomes really positional and tribal and that can, as we're seeing very quickly, becomes me against you at all costs.

There's a risk that we can distance ourselves from that and say, "Well, that's not my sport. that wasn't my experience, I'm not an elite athlete". You know, there's a distancing that can happen and the purpose of this study was to really raise awareness on those broader contexts. We didn't want to single out a sport because it's not a one-sport issue.

In this episode we chat with Victoria Rawlings and Damian Anderson about their breakthrough report on the female footy umpire crisis and the improvement and conditions of respect for female umpires in Aussie rules football.

In this episode we chat with Julia Walsh about the challenges for parents and coaches that often leads to sideline abuse and how clubs can invest in the coach-and-parent experience.

You can’t solve it if you can’t talk about it. And that's why Club Respect exists – to rebuild the respect for each other, that we need to have, if sport is going to thrive. And you’ll be hearing all about it through Smart Plays, Club Respect’s new podcast where we bring it out of the darkness and shine a light on the hot topics that nobody wants to talk about.

These steps are about building a culture that respects everyone, including LGBTQIA+ people. A club's focus on inclusion will benefit with celebration and pride. 

NAIDOC Week events are being held across the country to celebrate and recognise the history and are a great way for clubs to show their support and commitment. To celebrate NAIDOC Week with a local club, we’ve compiled a list of clubs celebrating across the country:

"We seem to have moved towards this dichotomy where it's acceptable for players and coaches and managers to make errors during the course of the game, but it's not acceptable for officials. Why is that?"