Swans' Pride Game, announce LGBTQI+ Reference Group

The Swan Districts Football Club continues to be a leader in inclusivity and showing the way for community taking great pride in its social impact programs, which took another great step forward on Saturday with an inaugural Pride Game.

Swan Districts took on Peel Thunder at Steel Blue Oval on Saturday in the last game of the 2023 WAFL season, but it was about much more than that with the occasion labelled the Pride Game to pay tribute to one of the club's values that 'Everyone Matters'.

It's far from just one off game where Swan Districts wants to make an impact with, though, with a bigger picture in mind with the establishment of the club's LGBTQI+ Reference Group.

Having already had established a Youth Committee, Aboriginal Advisory Committee, and Disability, Inclusion and Advocacy Committee over the past six years, the next step for the Swan Districts Football Club was to create the LGBTQI+ Reference Group.

The group includes a diverse range of community members including WAFL women's players Jess Cox and Demi Liddle, RTR FM Radio's Danae Gibson, Rainbow Futures WA Chair Misty Farquhar, Town of Bassendean Councillor Emily Wilding, WAFLW sponsor and Jones and Co Property owner Kelly Jones, and Midland Pride and Footy advocate James Thorn.

Club representatives also include chief executive Jeff Dennis, Head of Social Impact Jason Burton and Board Member Ian Westmore, and Dennis is proud that the Swan Districts Football Club has taken this next step with an eye to inclusion becoming a key part of the club's community focus.

"The purpose of the Swan Districts Football Club is to empower communities and individuals to create better futures. Our vision is to be high performing and sustainable club delivering positive social impact in communities, families, and for individuals," Dennis said.

"We have well established committees made up of community representatives advising the club on matters regarding our community engagement strategies. Their role is to advise and guide the club to ensure we're making informed decisions helping us deliver good social impact outcomes in our community.

"A recent example was the advice receive from our Swans Aboriginal Advisory Committee on our club's past racism strategy and also our support of The Voice. Sport has always played an important role in social change. And we’re acutely aware of our club’s role in helping create a world where everyone belongs.

"We want to help all our people to be the best they can be. To achieve this, it’s important we create a place where they can be comfortable with who they are. Where they can feel welcome and supported.

"It's purpose and scope of this Reference Group is to engage, influence and advise the club with its diversity, equity and inclusion policy and action plan with particular focus with the LGBTQI+ community."

To take the club's focus on social impact to the next level, embracing the LGBTQI+ community and making everyone feel welcomed at the Swan Districts Football Club no matter their sexual orientation, gender identity or anything else had to be the next step.

Making everybody feel welcomed at the Swan Districts Football Club is something that chief executive Dennis takes seriously, and that's why the Pride Game was a terrific way to begin to show how genuine the club is about taking that next step.

It remains perhaps the biggest hurdle to Australian Football as a whole in moving forward in terms of inclusivity that in the male game across the country, anyone identifying LGBTQI+ remains not a common occurrence.

While the women's game has been much more open to inclusion, it remains somewhat taboo on the male game and Dennis hopes that what Swan Districts is doing can help to turn that around.

"As the ABC reported earlier in the week, not a single AFL make player, past or present, has ever publicly come out as gay or bisexual. The AFL is the only major professional sporting code in the world where this is the case," Dennis said.

"Research tells us that up to 11 per cent of the population may have a diverse sexual orientation, sex or gender identity. But we’re not aware of any male player in our club’s 89 year history and 1140 WAFL League players who has identified as being gay.

"That’s not the problem of any of our players. It’s our club’s problem. It’s telling us that we haven’t created a safe and secure place for people to be who they are. While our women's football program is far more inclusive, clearly, our club has work to do."

While there is a lot more work the Swan Districts Football Club is doing than just hosting a Pride Game on Saturday at Steel Blue Oval, that was a great way to draw attention to the new programs and initiatives in place.

"We have a Diversity, Equity and Inclusive Policy and Strategy to guide us," Dennis said.

"We've released a statement in June committing the club to LGBTQI+ inclusion. We've created a procedure where everyone can feel safe confidentially reporting any issue or concern they may see around the club.

"We're providing professional mental health support for those who may need it. We've created an LGBTQI+ Reference Group helping guide and advise the club as we move forward with our inclusion strategy.

"We'll continually remind people at our club that language, name calling, and throw away comments do matter. Next season we'll celebrate our club's Pride inclusion with both a WAFL Game and a WAFLW Game.

"We're creating opportunities like Saturday's pre-game Legend Luncheon, and another panel discussion earlier in the week with our players, volunteers and staff, and also members of the Bassendean community, to talk about how we can become a more inclusive."

In the bigger picture, what Dennis sees as the end goal is that anyone involved in the game identifying as LGBTQI+ to soon become something that widely expected and accepted, and not seen as a big deal by making them feel welcomed and included.

"While we can't influence anyone coming out, because it has to be their choice, what we can do, is make sure if they do, that the Swans family and local community is there to wrap our arms around them," Dennis said.