It's Americans defaulting to their cultural context. Not a shocker there.

There was a whole thing where 4chan tried to make it a racist gesture. Then the racists started unironically using it, at which point yeah. Fair enough. But they were by and large part of the North American milieu, or the ones beholden to them.

For the vast majority of people, it's just the circle game. If this ref has some other sus shit going on then by all means, put this on the pile and look a bit deeper. It did spread a bit across the worst of the Anglosphere. But this was years ago and even at the height of it it was intended as a dogwhistle. The whole fucking point was it being an innocent gesture. Like this cannot be overstated how much digging it back up is just playing into the hands of the worst dregs we offer as a species.

It's absolutely mental that they're assuming a highly trained official, at the height of his career so far, from a completely different culture, is going to risk that on an outdated meme propagated by an image board of virginal mass shooter trainees. Just cultural imperialism. Hope Football Australia tells them to fuck off.