Pause due to Covid-19 gives AFL a chance to build a more agile and inclusive game

Until recently I, like many other footy-loving Australians, was revelling in the best AFLW season to date and eagerly awaiting the men’s season. I was excited about what both the VFL competitions would bring and couldn’t wait to see AFL Blind and Wheelchair take to the court. I am also one of the many employees in the industry stood down over recent days.

When the game does come back, the AFL and its clubs will be tasked with rebuilding it – its structures, its systems, its culture and its spirit. When this time comes I pray that those in charge do things differently.

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We have all conceded at some point that football operates in a bubble. Often this bubble is framed as a protection for those inside, much like a Wakandan forcefield behind which hides riches, war rooms and superhuman powers. With Covid-19 comes the realisation that (as many of us in the outer already knew) this game has long operated as an exclusive club that has left many out in order to protect those within.

The game is an elite sport and perhaps the bulk of the financing comes from the broadcast revenue, but who is tuning in? Those without whom the game lays limp and eerily lifeless? The apex of the game might be elitism but its structure, its very heart, is community. Community in all its forms.

People who feel hard done by will not be buying tickets, memberships or media subscriptions in the new economic reality that awaits. Not unless they feel the game is ultimately serving them. So while the AFL pieces together its survival plan and players assess the cost to their livelihoods, I ask: how will football help its community reconnect with a game it no longer can afford spiritually and financially?

If the community the AFL is hoping will return do so, how battle weary will they be? Post-isolation, post-sickness – after experiencing a fraying of the very social fabric the game relies on – how will football serve this forever altered community? Is it ready? If survival is only for the elite, then the game will not be any more than the disappointing spectacle that was the soulless round one of the men’s competition this month.

The world in which football re-emerges will be a very different one. The easy option would be to piece together a version of the old that would be just as susceptible to increasingly common global disasters. The opportunity that presents itself now is to build something new – something that will last. Something more agile and inclusive.

Given a chance to rebuild, let’s create an industry that is equitable and an environment where elite athletes exist in the same reality as their colleagues in other roles across the industry. Let’s rebuild this industry so that it truly reflects the society to which it owes its existence. Rebuild it with people of varying intersections, class and experiences inside headquarters and at clubs, as well as in the stands.

As for this period of suspended play, there are but a few left standing. For all the hard work clubs and the league have done to be an inclusive game, in the industry that remains there are few women left, even fewer people of colour, and virtually no one who knows what it feels like to truly be on the outer and feel the squeeze of this downturn. Given this, the AFL must hold tight to its commitment to remaining inclusive.

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Now more than ever, it’s crucial to ensure diversity of gender in decision-making groups and committees. To ignore this is to betray any commitment to diversity in the first place. Similarly, any commitment to community football and programming for the traditionally marginalised will be rendered hollow and superficial if their voices are not considered or do not feature when the industry is revived. Those who are most vulnerable, who felt visible because for a time we shone our light on them, don’t disappear because football has.

If the most privileged voices in football are the only ones that have risen above others in this calamity of a year, then this game has been irresponsible in its commitment to its community. Yes, there are fiscal challenges to this, but investing in its community will bring the people back to football. Perhaps we can live without the bells and whistles. In fact, some would argue we should. But the people and communities who have given life to the game, at all levels and in all its dimensions? This we cannot live without.

To answer these questions the AFL and clubs will need creativity, innovation and diversity among their ranks and, most importantly, inclusion at the core of its mission. The AFL will need to find new ways to reach out to people in their homes across the country. It will need to remind them the game is still theirs. Indeed, it always was.

• Rana Hussain is the diversity and inclusion coordinator at Richmond Football Club.