Victoria Police detectives will seek to interview players this week<\/a>.<\/p>\nFoxfooty.com.au is not suggesting any of the men in the room engaged in the conduct alleged, only that it has been alleged. No formal police interviews, at this stage, have taken place, nor have any charges been laid in relation to the alleged sexual assault.<\/p>\n
But inevitably the situation has seen rival clubs consider whether they can more cheaply acquire the players, while also weighing up the cultural impacts should they do so.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a growing internal belief the Swans will need to move on one or more of those players to make profound change,\u201d Jon Ralph and Lauren Wood\u2019s report states.<\/p>\n
The five players won\u2019t attend Saturday\u2019s qualifying final at the SCG and the progress of the police investigation is likely to determine their immediate football futures.<\/p>\n
Isaac Heeney with Chad Warner during the Sydney Swans training session at the SCG on September 18, 2024. Photo by Phil HillyardSource: News Corp Australia<\/p>\n
\u201cSydney knows its rivals will come for its banned players at absolute warp speed,\u201d Ralph said on Fox Footy\u2019s Midweek Tackle.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s faced with an impossible decision. It\u2019s my understanding they\u2019re coming to the realisation they might have to move on some of those players to make profound cultural change. And to signify how much they\u2019re prepared to change, it\u2019ll almost take a step back from a performance point of view.<\/p>\n
\u201cWest Coast almost did that – they pulled back on those on-field performances, so much of the cultural stuff, and this might be a similar move.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Eagles suffered a number of off-field controversies during the mid-2000s, most notably sacking Brownlow medallist Ben Cousins.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut if Sydney does consider those change it knows it\u2019s taking cents on the dollar; it knows those rival clubs will effectively be vultures, picking over its carcass, of its very best players,\u201d Ralph continued.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a complete no-win situation. I\u2019ve spoken to a number of directors from rival clubs today; their view is they\u2019d need to see any police action or inaction worked through and then they\u2019d consider whether to make a trade.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re West Coast and you wanted Chad Warner a year early; you think about Daisy Pearce, your AFLW coach who spoke so eloquently about the culture this club is building and the culture it wants. How can a club that\u2019s done so much to progress its culture take these types of risks? It\u2019s a massive decision for the AFL.\u201d<\/p>\n
Swans coach Dean Cox told Fox Footy\u2019s AFL 360 on Tuesday night he had remained in touch with the five players.<\/p>\n
Cox: ‘Been in contact with players’ | 01:25<\/p>\n
\u201cOne thing I\u2019ll always do is support my players. I\u2019m staying in dialogue with those five players whilst they\u2019re away from the football club. I speak about their welfare, how they\u2019re going and if we can support in any way,\u201d Cox said on Kayo Sports.<\/p>\n
\u201cI haven\u2019t spoken to them at all about the police investigation. Also I think we need to understand there\u2019s an investigation in process. We need to get all the facts on that, before we make any assumptions.<\/p>\n
\u201c(My chats are) purely about support, and I\u2019ll continue to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
But there\u2019s currently no time frame on when the quintet will return to the club.<\/p>\n
\u201cThings are changing by the hour and the day. People upstairs (are involved in those talks), I\u2019m privy to some of those conversations,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it\u2019s been about how we best manage our football team at the minute and make sure we can focus as heavily as we possibly can on this weekend\u2019s game.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile also supporting those players whilst they aren\u2019t at the club. There\u2019s no time frame on when they will return, we\u2019ll just keep talking about it each day and assess the situation from there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sydney believes it may have to trade out some members of the \u2018Pullman Five\u2019 in order to reset…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":876643,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":["post-876642","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\/876642","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=876642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876642\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/876643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=876642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=876642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=876642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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