The public response to the Sydney Swans scandal has been fascinating. Before we knew very much at all, people were ready to be outraged. Perhaps understandably so. One in five Australian women has experienced sexual violence since the age of 15.

Put footballers, women, alcohol, and alleged assault in the same story and it’s as if we already know how it ends. Entitled athletes. Women as collateral damage. Another sporting culture gone bad.

There is something encouraging in that response. Behaviour we once might have shrugged off now makes us deeply uncomfortable. But our heightened sensitivity to violence against women is one thing. Filling in the gaps before we know the facts is another.

So, as we wait for clarity while police investigate an alleged sexual assault – and park what we can not responsibly know or speculate about – there is another question worth asking. What are we actually angry about?

The staying out late. The drinking. The reported adult entertainers. Bringing women back to the team hotel. Doing it in the lead-up to finals. Letting down teammates. Getting caught.

All have become part of the public reaction. But if no crime occurred and we still think something went badly wrong, we need to be able to name what that something was.

Talk to people around football, as I have this week, and the answers are revealing.

For some, the bender isn’t the line that has been crossed. Neither are the adult entertainers. It’s the brazenness of bringing it all back to the team hotel, in the biggest month of the season, with your teammates’ year on the line.

For others, the qualifier is simpler: after the season. Drink. Party. Hire adult entertainers if that’s your thing. Just don’t do it now.

That raises an uncomfortable possibility. Some of the behaviour that shocked the public may not be considered particularly shocking inside parts of football. For........

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