Over the weekend, footage from the locker room of the Richmond Tigers AFL team began circulating online. It was a snippet of Tuesday's match-day broadcast, taken shortly after the team triumphed over the Brisbane Lions.
The clip shows the players gathered in a circle, celebrating their win and trumpeting their team song.
Then comes the incident that AFL commentators and former players have described "repulsive" and "horrific".
Premiership-winning player, Nick Vlastuin, reaches across and inserts his finger into the rectum of teammate Mabior Chol. Chol jumps away in shock. Vlastuin can then be seen following him around the locker room and hitting him in the genitals multiple times.
It was reporter, Hugh Riminton, who first flagged the incident via Ten News.
In his report, he also surfaced footage from the previous week in which another of Chol's teammates, Jayden Short, also struck him in the genitals during a post-match locker-room gathering.
As the headlines and commentary about the incident took hold, yet more vision surfaced. This time from inside the St Kilda locker room.
Broadcast footage captured former Richmond player Dan Butler grope the backside of 22-year-old midfielder, Jade Gresham following a match on Thursday.
Parker distinguished genital touching and groping from a "bum tap", which, she argued, is an embedded part of sporting culture.
For the record, Slattery seemed unbothered. When Parker first uploaded the picture to Instagram in 2019, she left a comment that read, "Come touch my butt again plz @georgieparker."
This kind of context is important, absolutely.
But so is questioning stubborn cultures.
In most workplaces, placing a hand anywhere near a colleague's backside — even if they are a close friend, even if they are the new recruit and, yes, even if it's 'a joke' — is misconduct.
It's only logical to wonder: why is the same not true in sport?
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