When Sydney Swans chief executive Matthew Pavlich first spoke about the serious allegations surrounding several of the club’s players, one phrase stood out. He said the club was “extremely shocked and disappointed” and that the players had “found themselves in this situation.”
It is a small phrase, and it can mean a lot. While Pavlich himself is not accused of committing the alleged sexual assault, and there are no basis for saying those words prove he wanted to excuse wrongdoing or diminish women. But the wording is still worth looking at, because it shows how easily language can soften responsibility without us necessarily meaning it to. That matters in any crisis. It matters even more when the subject is sexual violence.
First, the legal distinction matters
Victoria Police is investigating an allegation of sexual assault connected with events involving Sydney players. As of August 20, the five suspended players had not been formally interviewed or charged, and reporting has stressed that it is not suggested that any of them is being accused of sexual assault. Nothing here should be read as deciding whether any player committed a criminal offence.
The Swans have dealt with a separate issue. Riley Bice, Nick Blakey, Isaac Heeney, James Jordon and Chad Warner were suspended for the rest of the 2026 AFL season, including finals, after the club found their behaviour had breached its standards. Sydney has said those sanctions are separate from the police investigation.
That separation is important. We can respect the presumption of innocence without pretending there is nothing else to talk about.
What does it mean to “find yourself” in a situation?
We usually say we “found ourselves” somewhere when circumstances have overtaken us. You might find yourself stranded after a cancelled flight, caught in a storm or stuck in an argument you did not expect. That is what makes the phrase awkward here. Technically, it is not passive voice. The players are still the subject of the sentence. But it is low-agency language. It shifts the emphasis from decisions to predicament.
Instead of:
people made choices that led to circumstances
we get:
people are now dealing with circumstances.
That may sound like splitting hairs. It is not. The difference is where responsibility sits.
Pavlich’s later wording was better
By Wednesday, Pavlich was speaking differently.
He referred to the “poor choices of five of our players” and acknowledged the effect those choices had on the women involved, the club and its supporters. He also said the club was “deeply embarrassed and ashamed”.
“Choices” is a much better word here because it restores agency. It says people did things. It does not decide whether a crime occurred, and it does not interfere with the police investigation. That is the balance leaders need to strike. You can say, “We do not know whether a crime occurred,” and still say, “Adults are responsible for the choices they make, and our organisation has standards we expect them to meet.” There is nothing contradictory about that.
The players’ apology makes the point even more clearly
The five suspended players later issued a joint statement saying they were “deeply sorry”, acknowledging that their behaviour had fallen well short of club standards and values. They accepted the sanction and said they would work to rebuild trust. That statement does not admit to a criminal offence. It does not try to settle anything police are still investigating. It simply owns the conduct the club had already investigated. That is the difference between saying someone “found themselves in a situation” and saying their behaviour fell short. One describes circumstances. The other accepts agency.
Why this matters in conversations about sexual violence
Women have spent generations being asked to account for their own behaviour when sexual violence is discussed.
What was she wearing?
How much had she had to drink?
Why did she go there?
Why did she go back to the hotel?
Why did she trust him?
Why didn’t she leave?
Why didn’t she report it straight away?
None of those questions is new. Together, though, they show how easily attention can move away from the conduct being alleged and onto the woman’s decisions instead. Australian research has found the same pattern in media coverage. A major ANROWS study of thousands of reports about violence against women found that some sexual-violence stories referred to women’s behaviour in ways that implied responsibility or mutuality. Nearly one in five items referred to things such as a woman flirting or going home with someone.
The study also found that men responsible for violence were often less visible in the language. Almost 60 per cent of incident-based reports provided no information about the perpetrator. Researchers warned that sentence structure can reduce the sense of who actually did what. That is why victim-blaming is not always obvious. It is not only someone saying, “She caused this.” Sometimes it is an imbalance in how we talk: women’s choices are examined in detail while men’s choices are softened into “situations”, “incidents” or things that “got out of hand”.
Misogyny does not always arrive with a sexist slogan
Calling out this kind of language does not mean calling Pavlich a misogynist. That would miss the point. Misogyny can be reinforced through ordinary habits of speech, including by people who do not consciously hold misogynistic views. We inherit ways of talking from the culture around us, and sometimes those patterns carry assumptions we have never really examined.
Look at the contrast.
A woman is asked why she chose to drink, why she chose to go upstairs, why she chose to trust someone, or why she chose not to leave.
A man, meanwhile, can somehow “find himself in a situation.”
One person is given so much agency she risks being blamed for everything around her. The other can lose agency at exactly the moment his decisions should be described clearly. That is the cultural problem worth noticing.
The women cannot disappear from the story
Football scandals quickly become football stories.
Will the players miss finals? What happens to their careers? What does this do to the club? What about sponsors? What about the premiership campaign?
Those questions will be asked. But they can also crowd out the people at the centre of the original allegation.
Pavlich later acknowledged the women involved and said the club was deeply concerned about their welfare. Social Services Minister Tanya Plibersek also criticised the misogynistic and victim-blaming abuse directed at women online after the allegations, warning that reactions like these help explain why some women are reluctant to come forward.
Supporting women does not require declaring somebody else guilty.
We should be able to hold two thoughts at once: the police process must be respected, and a person reporting sexual violence deserves to be treated with care rather than suspicion or abuse.
Women should not have to clean up the cultural mess
There is another uncomfortable part of this story: Sydney’s AFLW team has had to deal with the fallout from conduct it had nothing to do with.
AFLW pioneer Chyloe Kurdas pointed out that women were now under scrutiny because of poor behaviour from men. Diversity and inclusion specialist Rana Hussain warned against expecting Sydney’s women to carry the “cultural and emotional labour” of explaining what respectful behaviour should look like or what the club needs to change.
That is an important point. When men create the problem, women should not automatically become the people asked to explain it, fix it or reassure everyone that the culture is sound. Male players, male leaders and the organisation itself need to do that work.
Daisy Pearce put the broader lesson simply
West Coast Eagles AFLW coach and Australian Football Hall of Fame member Daisy Pearce offered perhaps the simplest version of the lesson.
Speaking after the Swans sanctions were announced, she urged young men to think about the example their behaviour sets for other people. Her message was: “Be a good human.”
That sounds basic because it is basic. High-profile athletes are not responsible for every decision made by people who look up to them. But they do help shape what younger fans and teammates see as normal, admirable or acceptable. Role modelling is not only about avoiding criminal conduct. It is also about the standards people see in ordinary behaviour: how you treat women, how you treat teammates, how you behave when nobody thinks a camera is watching.
The media needs to look at itself too
On August 20, Victoria Police warned media organisations about repeatedly contacting the complainants, saying the approaches were having a significant impact and could affect both their welfare and the investigation.
That should make journalists uncomfortable, because it should.
There are real people behind these stories. A person who reports an alleged sexual assault is not simply another source to chase for a quote. Nor should their experience disappear beneath endless coverage of finals chances, sponsorship deals and player reputations.
The person at the centre of an allegation is a human being before they are a story.
Punishment is only one part of accountability
The Swans have taken serious action. Suspending five important players for the rest of a finals-bound season is not a token penalty. But punishment is not the same thing as learning. The harder questions come afterwards. Were the club’s expectations clear? Was the education good enough? Were there warning signs? Are there parts of the culture that need work? Could leadership have handled anything differently?
Pavlich has said the club will review its protocols. That does not mean the club has to declare, “This was our fault.” It means being willing to ask whether there was anything within its control that could have been better. Former Swans coach and executive director John Longmire later said the club’s culture had “taken a big hit” and that rebuilding trust would take time. Former Swans co-captain Kieren Jack went further, saying the celebrated Bloods Culture feels broken and stressing the importance of respect and not being a bystander. People can disagree with how far Jack went. But loyalty to a club should not require pretending the club has nothing to learn.
It matters when people improve their response
There is a risk in conversations like this that one bad sentence becomes a permanent label. That is not especially useful. If every awkward phrase is treated as proof that someone is irredeemably sexist, leaders will learn to say less, admit less and hand everything to a public-relations team.
Pavlich’s later language was better. He spoke about the players’ “poor choices”, acknowledged the effect on women, fronted the media and supported substantial sanctions.
The club’s later community statement went further. Pavlich and chairman Andrew Pridham placed particular emphasis on the women involved, said all women deserve to feel safe and respected, and committed the club to more work around its values, standards and culture. That improvement should be recognised. The point of criticising language like “found themselves in this situation” should not be to catch someone out forever. It should be to explain why the wording matters and encourage something better next time.
This is bigger than football
The lesson here is not really about Matthew Pavlich. It is about how all of us talk when something serious happens. Managers do it. Politicians do it. Journalists do it. Parents do it. Friends do it. Publications like TheWokely can do it too.
Who gets agency in the stories we tell?
When something goes wrong, do we describe the decisions people actually made, or do we turn those decisions into a vague “situation” that seems to have appeared around them?
And when a woman reports harm, do we suddenly become forensic about every choice she made while using softer language for the choices of men?
Words do not create misogyny on their own, but they can help keep old assumptions alive.
“Found themselves in this situation” may simply have been an unfortunate phrase used by a chief executive under intense pressure.
That is enough reason to examine it.
Not because Pavlich needs another pile-on, but because the rest of us can learn something from it.
Presumption of innocence does not require us to erase agency. Supporting women does not require us to prejudge a police investigation. And accountability does not require us to deny people the chance to improve.
The Swans’ response has already changed in important ways. That may be the most useful part of the story.
Accountability is not about catching someone saying the wrong thing. It is about understanding why the words mattered, and choosing better ones next time.
References
- AFL — “‘Extremely disappointed’: Swans leaders speak as police investigation continues” — contains Pavlich’s original August 17 statement, including the exact phrase “the players have found themselves in this situation.”
AFL — original Pavlich statement - AFL — “Full transcript: Swans bosses face media after suspending five players” — probably your most important primary source. It contains the August 19 press conference, explanations of the sanctions, discussion of club culture, the women’s welfare and Pavlich’s subsequent language about the players’ choices.
AFL — full August 19 press conference transcript - Sydney Swans — “Sydney Swans Statement” — the club’s primary-source confirmation that the five players would not be selected for the rest of the 2026 season and that the club sanctions were independent of the Victoria Police investigation.
Sydney Swans — official statement - ANROWS — “Media representations of violence against women and their children” — this is the strongest academic/evidence source for your article. It found that 59.8% of incident-based reporting provided no information about the perpetrator, and discusses how language can obscure perpetrators while implying responsibility on the part of women.
ANROWS — Media representations of violence against women - Our Watch — “Guidelines for reporting on violence against women” — extremely relevant to your central argument. Its guidance explicitly says journalists should “keep the perpetrator in view”, use active language and avoid framing that implies women should change their behaviour to prevent men’s violence.
Our Watch — reporting guidelines - Women’s Agenda — Prabha Nandagopal, “The tell in the Swans’ statement nobody’s talking about” — useful as an expert commentary source rather than a primary factual source. Nandagopal specifically analyses “found themselves in this situation” as language of circumstance rather than choice, while explicitly recognising that the police process must be respected.
Women’s Agenda — analysis of the Swans’ language
