Adelaide midfielder Izak Rankine says he is “deeply sorry” after becoming the sixth Australian Football League-listed player to be suspended for using a homophobic slur in the past 16 months. <\/p>\n
The 25-year-old was given a four-match ban after admitting a charge of using a slur against an unnamed Collingwood player during Adelaide’s three-point win on Saturday. <\/p>\n
The Australian Football League (AFL) said Rankine’s words were “offensive, hurtful and highly inappropriate”. <\/p>\n
“In an AFL environment, this behaviour is not acceptable. Homophobia has no place in football,” said AFL general counsel Stephen Meade.<\/p>\n
Rankine said he has apologised to the unnamed player.<\/p>\n
“I regret using the word and I am deeply sorry for doing so,” Rankine said.<\/p>\n
“That type of language has no place in football or in the community. It was a mistake. <\/p>\n
“I’m committed to educating myself and being better.”<\/p>\n
Adelaide chief executive Tim Silvers said the club was “frustrated and disappointed” in Rankine but that “player welfare is always a priority”. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Adelaide midfielder Izak Rankine says he is “deeply sorry” after becoming the sixth Australian Football League-listed player to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":85480,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":["post-85479","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\/85479","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=85479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85479\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}