{"id":92971,"date":"2025-08-24T19:21:21","date_gmt":"2025-08-24T19:21:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/92971\/"},"modified":"2025-08-24T19:21:21","modified_gmt":"2025-08-24T19:21:21","slug":"afl-banned-izak-rankine-heads-overseas-as-adelaide-crows-eye-flag","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/92971\/","title":{"rendered":"AFL: Banned Izak Rankine heads overseas as Adelaide Crows eye flag"},"content":{"rendered":"

Adelaide’s suspended star Izak Rankine has jetted overseas to escape the spotlight as his teammates gear up for their AFL<\/a> premiership assault.<\/p>\n

While the Crows are enjoying a few days’ rest during the pre-finals bye, Rankine has headed to Europe, where he will continue to prepare for a possible grand-final appearance.<\/p>\n

Editor’s Picks<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n

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The 25-year-old has faced intense scrutiny since admitting directing a homophobic slur at a Collingwood opponent in Round 23.<\/p>\n

Rankine — the sixth AFL-listed player banned over a homophobic slur in the past two seasons — was handed a four-match suspension over the incident<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He will only play again this season if Adelaide lose a qualifying final but then advance to the grand final, when he would be available for selection.<\/p>\n

In Rankine’s absence, the Crows secured their first minor premiership since 2017 with a 13-point win over North Melbourne on Saturday.<\/p>\n

James Peatling (three goals) and inexperienced Billy Dowling (two) were among those who stepped up to fill the void in attack.<\/p>\n

Dominant key forward Riley Thilthorpe and Ben Keays added three majors each.<\/p>\n

“There’s some things you can’t replace with players and there’s some things you can,” Keays told AAP.<\/p>\n

“But our mentality as a forward line is that it’s a whole group effort no matter what the roles are.<\/p>\n

“Everybody’s got a role to play but it’s a whole system.<\/p>\n

“That’s what we’ve been training for a number of years now and that’s what our mentality is.”<\/p>\n

Keays hailed Adelaide’s ability to maintain their focus leading into the Kangaroos clash amid the Rankine furore and drawn-out process to determine his penalty.<\/p>\n

“We were pretty good at it. I think everyone did a good job of keeping their focus on the right things and the game,” Keays said.<\/p>\n

“We were head down and ready for North Melbourne all week, and we’ve been in that mindset all year.<\/p>\n

“No matter what’s been thrown our way and no matter what adversity we’ve faced, we’ve always had a good mentality of just focusing on the next week, so we’ll keep doing that.”<\/p>\n

Keays backed Adelaide to stay switched on throughout September despite the ongoing spotlight on Rankine.<\/p>\n

“It’s the same mentality as we’ve had all year: one week at a time, trust our system and go to work during the week,” Keays said.<\/p>\n

“It’s a hard-working group and we love coming in to work together.<\/p>\n

“It’s a strong culture and we’ll just lean on all those things and go out and try to execute.”<\/p>\n

Lifeline 13 11 14<\/p>\n

beyondblue 1300 22 4636<\/p>\n

Fullstop Australia 1800 385 578<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Adelaide’s suspended star Izak Rankine has jetted overseas to escape the spotlight as his teammates gear up for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":92972,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":["post-92971","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\/92971","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=92971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92971\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}