It's called "GayFL" by Rugby League fans for precisely this reason (and how "soft" the players are perceived as, generally), though honestly, the NRL isn't much better at this point...

"Worse" shit is said at local footy matches on a weekly basis, I assure you, from experience. But the AFL doesn't have full control of those, of course, and they're not televised, so we don't have to pretend to give a fuck, lol.

But seriously, what a bunch of faggot soft-cocks, as us fans of "bring back the biff" might say.

Unfortunately though, the AFL tends never to actually come out and say what was said, in these situations. They just let the rumour mill run wild. Like this seemingly much worse situation a couple of years back, where initially people thought it was something about the guy's sister having an abortion, and then it was "I hope your mother dies", and then we never found out what it actually was, but sounds like maybe it was more "mutual" sledging: https://archive.is/sUaaU

Regardless though, I think either of those options, for the above, are much worse than just calling a guy a fag or whatever, lol.

Yeah, they never do, with these types of incidents, because then people like you or I can make up our own minds and go "Meh, that's not that bad at all!"

They don't want that, so they never tell us.

But from having grown up here before "homophobic slurs" were a bannable offense, and also having spent enough time around footy players and the like, it was probably just "fag", or "faggot", or, at a stretch, "poof". I can't imagine it being anything more than one of those three, lol...