By Calista Crawford
In April of 2026, The Australian Football League fired its Appeals Board Chair Will Houghton KC over the following comment:
“We observe that football is a hard game. It is highly competitive, particularly at its high levels. It is commonplace that players can employ language from time to time, which is racist, sexist, or homophobic whilst on the field.”
The sacking came as St Kilda VFL player Lance Collard faced the Appeals Board over a nine-week suspension handed down by the AFL Tribunal. The Appeal Board ultimately reduced the sentencing to four weeks, two of which were suspended.
Collard’s case is only the latest in a long line of instances in which AFL players have been suspended for on-field use of homophobic slurs and discriminatory language.
Last year, AFL broke its all-time record with a nine percent increase of registered participants from 580,000 in 2024 to 625,000 in 2025. This figure includes players in school programs, Auskick and Superkick programs, AFL Nines, and community club football.
While leading AFL executives and prominent figures openly denounce the use of homophobic language, and the AFL Tribunal continues to hand out considerable penalties, the behaviour of players stands unchanged.
The AFL has made it clear that as long as these issues continue to rise, the consequences will continue to follow. The concern is that they do continue to rise, regardless.
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President of Kedron Lions Football Club Glenn Noy, sat down with Glass to provide an inside look into how these dynamics play out within the realm of community AFL.
How would you describe the general attitude towards inclusivity and respect that you’ve witnessed within the culture of men’s football?
I’m incredibly impressed with the current generation of young men that we have coming through. I think probably far more advanced than I was at that age, particularly growing up playing football in the ’80s and ’90s—it was a very different environment. Not particularly supportive of different ideas or straying too far from the norm.
Having said that, we do bump into vilification. Probably in the senior men’s space, two to three times a year on average and effectively, it is language used towards an opponent in general, or every now and then it’s abuse over the sidelines towards players.
So yeah, we’re certainly not immune from it. We do see it quite regularly. But I do have to say that the attitudes of the vast majority of teams that we play are supportive. It actually makes me quite proud of the generation coming through at the moment.
That’s awesome. Do you believe the attitudes within community football differ from what we see when we’re watching the premiership league? Are there differences or is it more of a reflective scale kind of situation?
We’ve worked so hard over the last few years, hand in hand with AFL Queensland, to always take any vilification complaint seriously. Every year we get a little bit better in how we deal with vilification from a junior, youth, and senior perspective. It’s really difficult work. I know that there are people inside AFL Queensland that are so passionate about it and people in club land that are passionate about it.
The point that I try to get through to everybody is this; I gave a talk to AFL Northern Territory, and in that week, we had just been hit with graffiti. I mean, graffiti everywhere inside the club. As we were going through the cleanup, I talked to an expert and said, “How do we deal with this? Is it lights or is it cameras?” And he said to me, “Glenn, did you notice any graffiti before you started? Did you have any graffiti?” And I said, “Yeah, we noticed a couple of tags.” And he said, “That’s the problem. As soon as you see a couple of tags, then people interpret this as a safe space to attack and to cause damage.”
To me, that exact parallel plays out in community football. As soon as we start saying yes, you can use this language, you can attack somebody using that language to insult or belittle somebody – if you let those little things get through then suddenly it’s a safe space for that to happen. And then it spreads. It’s on the field, it spreads into the sidelines, it spreads into your clubhouse, and it spreads through your community. Before you know it, you’ve lost control of it.
Speaking of community, I’ve seen that you guys are heavily involved within the QLD Pride Round. Can you tell me about what that entails and how it’s different to a regular round of AFL at Kedron?
Pride Round is a round defined by AFL Queensland where we celebrate the broader community. Okay, so LGBTQIA+ plus—rainbow socks, rainbow arcs—last year we had custom jumpers. It’s probably the most fun round for me, personally. It is the sense of joy and fun that we bring into it.
It’s not one that isn’t without controversy. I understand that not everybody shares our opinions. What I like about that round is that it’s a chance for me to have quiet conversations with people. I’ll be quite open that people do come to me and say, “Glen, why do we have Pride Round?” It could be that they’re challenged because of their religion or because of their upbringing. To be exposed to what is really quite a fun and non-threatening day and feel like they can come and talk to me or really anybody inside the club on ‘look, we don’t quite understand’ – I think is a great step forward.
That’s all it is. You’ll be amazed just getting a box of rainbow socks and putting it in the change rooms and say, there you go, boys – and this was the big take away from me, which gets back to your first question. The senior men’s program embraced Pride Round. They love it. I don’t know if it’s they can’t afford rainbow socks.
Or where to source that kind of material?
Haha yeah, correct. But no, I still remember for whatever reason—and again, I think it was my upbringing – but I was concerned. I do remember the first time that I took the socks into the senior men’s change room and I felt a little intimidated, like, what are you doing? But no—they embrace it. I love this generation that we have at the moment so much.
We sort of spoke about the incident, whether it affects senior football. I haven’t actually seen it affect senior football. I think it affects the group underneath it. That’s the one that breaks my heart the most. It is youth football. I mentioned that we would have, you know, in senior land, maybe two to three vilification complaints a year. It’s just generally using language that we shouldn’t be using on the field. But the worst instances I’ve seen have been ones directed towards children, you know, 12 and 13 and 14. That’s the stuff that really breaks our heart. And that’s the stuff that we can’t walk past. That’s not just a bit of graffiti. That’s a five-alarm fire in my estimation.
Sorry, just to interrupt you there. This is aimed at children by other children?
Yeah. I think that once we get into senior football, the vast majority of people that are participating in community football can make up their own minds about whether that language is appropriate and they don’t feel that they need to, you know, pretend they’re all tough on field by chucking around that sort of language. They’ve got that filter that hasn’t necessarily been established yet in these young people developing and quite a few of them just probably don’t understand how hurtful it can be.
The worst one I saw did involve young people where it was one person repeatedly vilified until they’d had enough and just walked off. And that’s the bit that I worry about because it’s coming from somewhere inside this sphere of influence. And let’s not kid ourselves, it’s a billion-dollar industry. Part of that sphere of influence is the topflight – the AFL group.
Absolutely. How much do you believe the senior men and younger group are influenced by the premiership players and clubs – is that reaction different between the younger and older groups?
That behaviour in the topflight in AFL, I don’t see that being echoed in my community. I just don’t see it as far as vilification goes. Again, there’s two or three incidents, but we deal with it and I think that they’re like, “Hey, you got that wrong.” “No, I understand that. I’ll take my penalty and go from there.” That’s what I see – and it is followed by youth.
It is incredibly important to young people, and they will replicate what they see in the topflight. And if we say that language is acceptable, then I do believe there’s a straight line between the two.
It’s now our job to make sure that the next generation doesn’t slip – that we don’t allow ourselves to go backwards as a group. Because that’s the group that I do see can be unduly affected by this sort of behaviour and these things that we don’t see as normal or acceptable. That language doesn’t belong here—doesn’t belong anywhere.
This article was featured in the 2026 Winter edition of Glass Magazine.
