{"id":720328,"date":"2026-06-07T04:13:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-07T04:13:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/720328\/"},"modified":"2026-06-07T04:13:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-07T04:13:13","slug":"afl-news-2026-gold-coast-ruckman-max-knobel-under-investigation-for-homophobic-slur-in-vfl-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/720328\/","title":{"rendered":"AFL News 2026: Gold Coast ruckman Max Knobel under investigation for homophobic slur in VFL game"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gold Coast<\/a> ruckman Max Knobel is under AFL<\/a> investigation for allegedly using a homophobic slur during a VFL match on Saturday. <\/p>\n

The Suns have confirmed the incident and are cooperating with the league\u2019s investigation. <\/p>\n

\"Max<\/p>\n

Max Knobel in 2025.\u00a0Getty<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Gold Coast Suns are aware of an incident involving one of its players in Saturday\u2019s VFL match against the Brisbane Lions,\u201d\u00a0a club statement provided to Nine.com.au said. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe club is currently cooperating fully with the AFL\u2019s Integrity Unit as part of an ongoing investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Age<\/a> is reporting that the 21-year-old is \u201cextremely remorseful\u201d and self-reported the incident. <\/p>\n

Knobel is the son of former Brisbane, St Kilda and Richmond player Trent Knobel, who played 75 AFL games between 2000 and 2007.<\/p>\n

Standing at 206cm, he was initially drafted by Fremantle with pick 42 in 2022, before joining Gold Coast in 2024. He is yet to make his AFL debut.<\/p>\n

If punished, it will be the eighth time an AFL player has been suspended for using a homophobic slur since the start of 2024.<\/p>\n

St Kilda\u2019s Lance Collard (twice), Port Adelaide\u2019s Jeremy Finalyson, Adelaide\u2019s Izak Rankine, Sydney\u2019s Riak Andrew, Gold Coast\u2019s Wil Powell, West Coast\u2019s Jack Graham and most recently Brisbane\u2019s Koby Evans have all been previously banned for it. <\/p>\n

Evans, who self-reported and admitted remorse, received a four-game ban in May<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Collard meanwhile denied he ever said the slur<\/a> and ultimately was suspended just two games after multiple hearings back in April. <\/p>\n

Gold Coast was beaten by crosstown rivals Brisbane on Saturday afternoon, and now prepares to take on Geelong at GMHBA Stadium.<\/p>\n

After a strong start to the season, they haven\u2019t won a game since the start of May and now face the Cats, Hawks and Dockers in successive weeks. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gold Coast ruckman Max Knobel is under AFL investigation for allegedly using a homophobic slur during a VFL…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":720329,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":["post-720328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-afl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=720328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720328\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/720329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=720328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=720328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=720328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}