An Australian football club for “self-identified women and non-binary people” has been dominating women’s competitions, just weeks after concerns were raised about the safety risks to actual female players. The Flying Bats Football Club in North Sydney has at least five males who identify as transgender on the team, and has previously been accused of causing career-changing injuries to female competitors.
As previously revealed by Reduxx, one of the five men on the women’s football team is trans activist YouTuber Riley Dennis, who was previously accused of severely injuring women while participating on another women’s team in the region. But the Flying Bats attracted even more controversy earlier this year after audio recorded during a March 20 meeting of the North Sydney Football Association was leaked.
During the meeting, Frank Parisi, president of St. Patrick’s Football Club, described another incident in which a female player was so severely injured by a trans-identified male Flying Bats player that she was no longer able to participate in the sport.
“A couple of years ago, one of the Flying Bats players broke one of our players’ legs in a game. It was a clumsy tackle from behind. Our player had her leg broken in two places and she’s no longer playing football. It was a direct result of a real bad, tall player… he didn’t get a red card. Accidents happen, but this could have been avoided,” Parisi was heard saying in audio that was released by Reduxx on X.
“One of our players rushed over to try to help her, she was screaming in so much pain. At that time, she made a derogatory remark to the Bats player, which we apologized for. [She was] suspended. The Bats player, nothing happened to [him].” Parisi clarified that following this incident, the female player who was injured was suspended from matches for a total of eight weeks.
Parisi further revealed that 24 women had recently withdrawn their registration with his football club as a “direct result” of the possibility of competing in a match against the males on the Flying Bats team. “They’ve all said to me, ‘Frank, we do not want to play against the Bats players.’ I’m going to say it straight, there’s men playing in a women’s competition. And that’s wrong.”
The March 20 meeting Parisi spoke at was spurred by concerns that had begun to circulate amongst coaches and players regarding the safety of matching females against males. But, speaking to Reduxx earlier this year, Parisi also noted that there had also been some anxiety surrounding “how implausible it had become for any team to win against the Flying Bats.”
That implausibility appears to have been accentuated over the past few weeks, as the Flying Bats has dominated the leaderboards in every single match they have had since April 7. In 10 of the 13 matches the played during this time, the all-female teams have not been able to score a single goal against the Flying Bats.
At the most recent match, which took place on July 21 between the Flying Bats and the North Epping Rangers, the Rangers lost 0-12 against the Bats.
The discrepancy was highlighted by Australian women’s rights advocate and journalist Lucy Zelić, who stated that she was pursuing a response from the North West Sydney Football Association on the fairness of the competitions.
During the March 20 meeting, which was attended by CEO of Football NSW John Tsatsimas and convened by CEO of NWSF, Matthew Geracitano, attendees were told that a decision to boycott participation by forfeiting matches against The Flying Bats would result in “disciplinary action” being issued.
“If there was a concerted effort by teams to forfeit games against a particular opposition that would be viewed as an act of discrimination,” said Chris Salmon, Chair of the Board of Directors for NWSF. While incidents of discrimination are weighed on a case-by-case basis, possible penalties include suspensions, from as little as two months to two years.
Football Australia’s Anti-Discrimination Policy defines “excluding people on the basis of their sex and / or gender identity status from participation in a competitive sporting activity” as a prohibited form of discrimination.