AFL Finals, Online Trolling and Australia’s New Sport Integrity Offences

It’s a common occurrence every football season. Players have to deal with online abuse from fans. This then escalates to the club handing over the messages to the police to investigate. Adelaide did exactly that in September 2026, after captain Jordan Dawson was sent abusive messages following a finals loss. Teammate Callum Ah Chee was racially abused in the same week.

If you are reading this because police have contacted you about something you sent, or because you help run a club and are not certain what it is obliged to report, the position you are in is more common than you might think, and it is one where early decisions carry a lot of weight. Sending an abusive message is a criminal offence. Publishing someone’s personal details can now be charged separately, and carries a higher maximum penalty. Separately again, a Bill before the Federal Parliament would create seven new sport integrity offences carrying up to ten years’ imprisonment, aimed at a very different group of people connected to sport.

This article covers all of it: what charges arise from online abuse, what the new doxxing offences changed, what the sport integrity Bill would do, and what obligations clubs carry.

When does an abusive message become a criminal charge?

Section 474.17 of the Criminal Code Act 1995 (Cth) makes it an offence to use a carriage service in a way that reasonable persons would regard as menacing, harassing or offensive.

“Carriage service” covers almost every form of electronic communication: direct messages, comments, text messages, emails, posts, phone calls and messaging apps. There is no Victorian equivalent. It is a Commonwealth charge prosecuted in Victorian courts.

Three features of the offence catch people out.

It is assessed objectively. The test is what reasonable people would regard as menacing, harassing or offensive, not what the sender considered to be a joke. or what was said in the heat of a loss. Intent remains relevant to fault and sentencing, but claiming “I didn’t mean it” does not, on its own, constitute a defence.

A single message is enough. A single message is sufficient. Unlike stalking, the offence requires no course of conduct – a single, unrepeated communication can be enough to establish the offence.

The recipient need not have read it or been personally distressed by it. What is assessed is the character of the communication.

Posting someone’s personal details is now a separate offence

This is the change most people have missed, and it is directly relevant to what happens to athletes during finals.

Since December 2024, the Criminal Code has contained dedicated doxxing offences, inserted by the Privacy and Other Legislation Amendment Act 2024. 

Section 474.17C makes it an offence to use a carriage service to make available the personal data of one or more individuals in a way that reasonable persons would regard as menacing or harassing. The maximum penalty is six years’ imprisonment.

Section 474.17D is an aggravated offence applying where the conduct targets people as members of a group distinguished by race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, nationality or ethnic origin. The maximum penalty is seven years’ imprisonment.

Two consequences follow. Publishing a player’s address, phone number, workplace or family details is now capable of being charged separately from the abuse itself, and at a considerably higher maximum. And where abuse is directed at a player on racial grounds, as was alleged in the Adelaide matter, the aggravated form is squarely in play.

These are recent offences with limited sentencing history. That makes early advice more important rather than less, and it is one of the areas where we would much rather hear from someone before they respond than after.

How this differs from stalking under Victorian law

Online conduct can also be charged as stalking under section 21A of the Crimes Act 1958 (Vic). The two are frequently confused:

• Stalking generally requires a course of conduct, meaning repeated acts rather than a single message
• Stalking requires an intention to cause physical or mental harm, or to arouse apprehension or fear, though this can be established where the accused ought to have understood that effect was likely
• Stalking is a Victorian offence, while sections 474.17 and 474.17C are Commonwealth

A person can face both, and online conduct frequently sits alongside an application for a personal safety intervention order, which runs as a separate civil proceeding with its own consequences.

Why more of these matters are reaching police

Several things have changed at once. Clubs and leagues now run integrity units that document and escalate abuse rather than absorbing it. Platforms retain and produce account data. Players screenshot and publish what is sent to them, which creates a public record and a complaint in the same moment.

Conduct that once disappeared into an inbox now generates a referral, and referrals generate investigations. Anonymity offers far less protection than people assume.

In the matters of this kind, the person charged is very often someone with no previous contact with the criminal justice system, who sent one message and gave it no further thought until police made contact. Whilst those circumstances  do not answer the charge, it is highly relevant to how the matter is prepared and how it is ultimately dealt with.

The bigger shift: new sport integrity offences before Parliament

On 20 August 2026 the Attorney-General introduced the Criminal Code Amendment (National Sport Integrity Offences) Bill 2026, which would insert a new Part 10.10 into the Criminal Code and create seven offences directed at competition manipulation and betting-related corruption.

The conduct targeted includes corrupting a sporting event, inducing or soliciting that conduct, improperly handling information about it, and misusing inside information, meaning information not publicly available that could be used for betting. The most serious offences carry a maximum of ten years’ imprisonment.

The reforms respond to the Wood review of Australia’s sports integrity arrangements and would allow Australia to ratify the Council of Europe Convention on the Manipulation of Sports Competitions, known as the Macolin Convention, ahead of the decade of international events leading to Brisbane 2032. The Bill was introduced and read a second time mid September 2026, and debate was adjourned. Two design features matter for who can be charged. The interest protected is the unpredictability of the contest itself, not the integrity of a wager, so conduct may fall within the offences whether or not a bet was placed or money changed hands. And the inside information offences do not require anyone to have manipulated anything. This is the sport analogue of insider trading.

Who is actually exposed under the sport integrity offences?

The public image is a player taking money to underperform. Integrity investigations reach much further, and the information offences widen the field again. People potentially in scope include:

• Players, including at state league and semi-professional level where oversight is lighter but betting markets still exist
• Coaches, physiotherapists and medical staff, who hold non-public information on injuries, fitness and selection
• Officials and umpires, whose decisions move in-play markets
• Administrators, board members and agents
• Family members, partners and associates who receive information and pass it on

Someone who is told something in confidence about a team, and mentions it to a person who bets on it, may be within reach of an information-handling offence without ever having placed a bet.

These investigations also tend to arrive with phone records, banking data and betting account records already assembled. Related conduct may engage bribery and corruption offences, proceeds of crime provisions, or broader white collar and Commonwealth criminal offences.

Victoria already has its own match-fixing offences at sections 195B to 195F of the Crimes Act 1958 (Vic), which would operate alongside the Commonwealth scheme. 

Integrity investigations are not police investigations

Sport Integrity Australia conducts its own investigations, and national sporting organisations run disciplinary processes under their integrity frameworks. These are separate from any police investigation, run on different standards of proof, and carry their own consequences including suspension and deregistration.

They can also generate material that later appears in a criminal proceeding.

We regularly see people take part in an integrity interview or answer a show-cause notice without advice, on the understanding that it is an internal sporting matter rather than a legal one. That distinction collapses once the conduct is capable of being charged, and by then the account has usually been given. Anyone familiar with proceedings before IBAC or a crime commission will recognise the standard dynamic: an investigative agency exercising broad information-gathering powers, a witness eager to cooperate, and an unaddressed exposure to concurrent criminal liability.

What clubs are required to do

If you are a committee member, administrator or the head of a sporting organisation rather than someone facing an allegation yourself, these are the obligations that sit with you.

On 8 September 2026, Sport Integrity Australia published guidance on behaviour between children and young people in sport. It is preventative and creates no offence, but it sits on top of obligations that carry legal weight.

State-funded sporting associations and designated recreational bodies fall within Victoria’s Reportable Conduct Scheme under the Child Wellbeing and Safety Act 2005 (Vic). The head of a covered organisation must notify the regulator of allegations of child abuse or child-related misconduct against a worker or volunteer within three business days of becoming aware of the allegation—regardless of whether any finding has been made.  

Where the conduct alleged may be criminal, police are the first call, and Victorian law imposes separate offences on adults who misjudge that, including failure to disclose a sexual offence against a child under 16 and failure to protect where a person holds a position of authority in an organisation.

An official who decides internally that something is “not serious enough” to report may be creating personal criminal exposure, not just a compliance problem for the club.

What to do if you are contacted

Whether contact comes from police, Sport Integrity Australia, a league integrity unit or your own organisation, the position is broadly the same. In general, a person contacted about an allegation is not obliged to give their account on the spot, and when and how that account is given is one of the things a lawyer is there to advise on. A record of interview is evidence, and so, very often, is what is said in an internal process.

Preserving material matters more than people expect. Deleting messages, accounts or records after contact is a common first reaction, and it is the one that causes the most difficulty later. It can lead to a separate allegation, and it rarely achieves anything, because platforms, betting operators, banks and clubs all hold their own copies.

Contact with others involved is best handled through a lawyer. People frequently want to approach a complainant or another participant to apologise, to ask that a complaint be withdrawn, or to work out what each of them will say. That contact can be treated as interference and become a charge in its own right, whatever the intention behind it. Anything that genuinely needs to be communicated can be communicated for you.

Advice is most useful before the first interview, not after it. Advice before a record of interview and pre-charge advice are the stages at which outcomes are most capable of being shaped. Once an account is on the record, the options narrow considerably.

Outcomes are not limited to a conviction

For a first matter with no prior history, the range of outcomes open to a court is wider than most people assume. Sentencing is a discretionary exercise, and whether a conviction is recorded is one of the matters within that discretion rather than an automatic consequence of a finding of guilt. What is realistically available in a particular case depends on the nature of the conduct, the context, what has been done since, and how the matter is put to the court. It also depends heavily on what was said in the first interview.

While no lawyer can guarantee a court’s decision, the outcome is largely shaped by the preparation completed before the first hearing.

Getting advice early

Matters arising out of sport tend to combine several exposures at once: a possible Commonwealth charge, a possible state charge, a sporting disciplinary process, employment and accreditation consequences, and often publicity. They also tend to involve people with no previous contact with the criminal justice system.

At Slades & Parsons, we have more than 35 years of experience in Victorian and Commonwealth criminal law, led by Accredited Specialists. We act in white collar, bribery and corruption and Commonwealth matters, and advise clients responding to investigative bodies with coercive information-gathering powers.

If police have contacted you about something you sent, or you have been contacted about a sport integrity matter, get in touch with our office before you respond.