It is the scandal that is gripping Australia, and asking difficult questions of a sport that is a national obsession.It revolves around allegations of sexual assault made against five players at the Sydney Swans, one of the biggest clubs in Australian Rules Football (AFL), the country’s most popular sport, which attracts more than eight million people to games each year.But this is a story where the reverberations are being felt far beyond sport. It has provoked intense debate around the treatment of women in Australia’s national game, and the attitudes which underpin those worshipped for playing it, with the implications being debated by some of the country’s most senior politicians.On Sunday, the Sydney Swans — the team with the second-best record this year — won their penultimate game of the regular season at lowly Essendon, a club based in Melbourne.The squad stayed in the city that night to celebrate, with star players Isaac Heeney, Chad Warner and Nick Blakey, rising star Riley Bice and their teammate James Jordon, going out drinking until the early hours of the morning. They later invited women to join them at the Pullman Hotel in East Melbourne, where the team was staying. It is just across from the Melbourne Cricket Ground, the iconic Australian sports venue where the game was played and which will host the NFL’s first game in Australia next month, between the Los Angeles Rams and the San Francisco 49ers.On Monday, allegations of sexual assault were made to Victoria Police, with the force’s sexual crimes squad opening an investigation. No arrests have been made and no formal interviews have taken place. The fact that Swans players were linked to the allegations emerged in the Australian media the same day but it was not until Wednesday that they were named.Riley Bice was involved in the late-night incident in Melbourne (Jason McCawley/AFL Photos/Getty Images)While the AFL has no official policy in place to automatically stand down players being investigated by police for serious criminal charges without fault being established, the Swans have suspended the five players for the rest of the season — effectively an act of self-sabotage for their finals campaign. It is the equivalent of a team finishing as second seed in the NFL and banning its best players for their final regular-season match and an entire playoff run, all the way to the Super Bowl.“The players involved are extremely remorseful for their actions that have breached club standards,” Swans chairman Andrew Pridham told a media conference on Wednesday morning, following confirmation of the players’ suspensions. “As a football club, that is our business, and to effectively torpedo our season by making decisions like this tells you how serious we’re taking it.”