AFL Townsville is concerned about the increasing number of complaints being made about the unacceptable use of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social networking sites by people involved as players and/or officials within the AFL Townsville football community.
There are examples where some of these sites have been used to bully footballers, to criticise and bully umpires and to make racist or sexist remarks about other participants. This type of behaviour is totally unacceptable in Australian Football and will not be tolerated by the League.
Many of the remarks that are being made by the networking posters believing that, because those remarks can only be seen by people they have accepted as friends on their pages, they will not be made public. Fortunately, there are enough decent people around who bring this type of behaviour to the attention of AFL clubs, AFL Leagues and AFL Townsville. This occurs even when the posts are made by friends because those people recognise the harm and distress this type of behaviour can generate.
Under AFL Townsville’s, Reports and Tribunals regulations, behaviour which is unacceptable can be brought to a Tribunal even if the behaviour did not occur on the field. As long as an incident is Australian Football related, the Tribunal can deal with it.
AFL Townsville will have no hesitation in referring to the Tribunal the misuse of social networking sites, if the misuse relates to Australian Football that is under the jurisdiction of AFL Townsville.
Last Modified on 09/01/2014 14:58