Tyrendarra Football Netball Club Bans Sex Offender After Backlash
The Tyrendarra Football Netball Club has moved to ban convicted sex offender James Williams, conceding it failed its own community by allowing him back into the fold after his release from jail.
The south-west Victorian club has been under fierce scrutiny since an ABC investigation revealed Williams, who was jailed for sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl on a post-season football trip, was welcomed back to the club last year.
On Wednesday, the committee finally drew a line.
“We are sorry,” the club said in a statement, without naming Williams but making clear its decision to reinstate him had been a mistake. The ABC understands he has now been removed from the club as a direct result of the media reporting and ensuing fallout.
“We accept we did not give enough weight to what our community rightly expects of a Club built around children, and those we let down deserve a straightforward apology,” the statement read.
The words are blunt. So is the reality facing Tyrendarra.
Victim and Community Put at the Centre
The club acknowledged the harm done to Williams’s victim, who was 15 when he sexually assaulted her at a concert in Adelaide in 2022. That recognition had been glaringly absent when he was quietly allowed to pull the club colours back on.
The apology, posted on social media on Wednesday afternoon, extended beyond the victim to the wider community.
“To anyone in our community affected by this episode and its coverage, we are sorry for the distress it has caused,” the committee said.
The timing was deliberate. The statement landed ahead of a planned face-to-face meeting with some club members, an attempt to front up to those who felt betrayed by the original decision.
An earlier meeting scheduled for Tuesday had to be abandoned after the location was shared on social media, heightening tensions around an already volatile situation.
Sponsors Walk, Trust Erodes
The backlash has not been confined to angry conversations around the boundary line.
Tyrendarra has already lost sponsors, including south-west Victorian MP Roma Britnell, who withdrew support as pressure mounted on the club to explain how and why Williams had been allowed to return.
The committee insisted it had followed a “careful process” in reaching that call, citing expert advice and wide consultation across the club. But when the ABC sought details of what that process involved as part of its investigation, the club did not respond.
Silence only deepened the sense of mistrust. The apology is the first real attempt to address that.
“We also acknowledge those who have spoken about how this was handled, and the trust we have lost with them,” the committee said.
New Code, New Line in the Sand
Now comes the attempt to rebuild.
The club has pledged to introduce a binding code of conduct for players, coaches, officials and volunteers, with clear grounds for removal if those standards are breached — on or off the field.
It is a significant shift for a community club that admitted it failed to give “enough weight” to its duty to children and families.
“We do not expect these commitments to be taken on trust alone. We intend to be judged on what we do from here,” the statement concluded.
Tyrendarra has finally made its stance clear. The real test will be whether its actions from this point convince a shaken community that the club deserves that second chance it so readily gave away.
