AFL’s scales of justice appear lopsided by the need to protect the game’s corporate image

ROSS Lyon’s awkward moment at a Fremantle Christmas show is now troubling the AFL.

Fremantle coach Ross Lyon’s remarks to a female staffer at the Dockers’ Christmas party five years ago are echoing as the AFL’s integrity unit and respect and responsibility code is put under the microscope. Picture: Tony McDonough.

SPOT the difference.

Richmond defender Nathan Broad in October circulates among his team-mates a photograph of a topless woman wearing his AFL premiership medal. End result: A three-game ban under the AFL’s new respect and responsibility code.

Port Adelaide midfielder Sam Powell-Pepper has a boozy night on Hindley Street in early April and is accused of ruining a 20-year-old university student’s night on the dance floor with “an inappropriate touch”. End result: A three-game penalty.

Fremantle coach Ross Lyon is accused of “harassment” to a young female staffer — by, as the story goes, making an inappropriate comment about her clothing — at the Dockers’ Christmas party five years ago.

End result: No suspension ... but a five-figure compensation payment (some say as much as $20,000) is paid to the junior staffer who has not worked since. And no public ignominy of Lyon until the dam wall finally broke amid the Powell-Pepper case. This exposed the AFL to endless questions on how its integrity unit operates.

Nathan Broad marks in front of Collingwood’s Ben Reid on Sunday. Picture: AAP Image/Hamish Blair

Sam Powell-Pepper at Port training on Tuesday. Picture: AAP Image/Kelly Barnes

The AFL will argue it would have preferred all three cases to have remained confidential, if only to protect the innocent more so than the carefully managed “brand” of Australia’s major domestic sport with image-conscious sponsors.

Broad — and his Richmond team-mates — made this impossible by sharing the photograph. The female university student in the Powell-Pepper case went to Channel Seven’s news division in Adelaide.

And Lyon was only to be exposed five years ago if the AFL integrity unit — working to a different code — had banned him. This would have made for interesting press releases from Fremantle and the AFL that boasts “transparency” ...

Broad had no defence. Powell-Pepper is a confusing, if not complicated, case of “he said, she said” that certainly was not made easier by the declarations — and editorial assertions — on Channel Seven’s news service, a point that has Port Adelaide president David Koch at odds with his own television network.

The compensation payment at Fremantle — now labelled as “hush money” — leaves too many questions and too many doubts on the AFL integrity unit.

Usually — as highlighted with the AFL’s racism cases — an “inappropriate comment” leads to an apology and counselling ... not a significant compensation payment. And how is it that the female staff member involved has not worked again?

The Powell-Pepper case, as noted in The Advertiser last week, continues to have sequels, including debate around the club chief executives’ table at AFL House on Tuesday.

Certainly, the players’ union is not satisfied with the integrity unit with AFL Players’ Association chief executive Paul Marsh saying: “I’m concerned about the process that took place.

“We believe there were holes in it and we’ve told (the AFL) that,” added Marsh taking issue with Powell-Pepper not having a legal representative at his session with the integrity unit and being denied the final report.

Lyon’s case will haunt the AFL. The compensation payment suggests the case is far from trivial and should not have spared Lyon from the public scrutiny endured by Broad and Powell-Pepper.

[e-mail]