We as a sport are to blame for crowd troubles, not the media for reporting it…
07 October 2013
As the A-League season is about to start, so too does the “fear mongering” from the mainstream press. Or does it? Melbourne’s Herald Sun today ran a report detailing a much tougher and targeted stance by Victorian police and the two Melbourne clubs, Victory and Heart, to stamp out flares and vandalism and the odd punch-up at Melbourne derbies. The two clubs play on Saturday night.
The measures include…
A DEDICATED police investigations team headed by a high-ranking detective formed to probe all criminal incidents at A-League matches;
RIVAL teams Melbourne Victory and Melbourne Heart ban flags and banners of splinter supporter groups in the stands, clamping down on the association of rogue fans;
DOB-a-yobbo text messaging hotlines for matches at AAMII Park as well as Etihad Stadium for the first time to encourage fans to alert police and security about troublemakers;
STRONGER ticket entry regulations with members forced to scan their pass on entry and again when they reach certain parts of the ground and;
IMPROVED CCTV and video monitoring of fans.
On the website of Victoria Police…
“We’re determined to make the 2013/14 season the most enjoyable yet – for players, for fans and for police,” he said.
“We want to see more families at games enjoying themselves.
“During the off-season, police have made significant inroads into improving the police response to games by developing strong partnerships with Football Federation Australia, venue officials and Melbourne-based A-league clubs.
“We’re determined not to see a repeat of the anti-social behaviour shown by a small number of trouble-makers at a number of A-league matches last season.
“Police have had enough, players have had enough and fans have had enough.”
These seem very reasonable measures and ideal outcomes given the recurring problems and inability of the clubs or FFA to control the matter. Of course, typical in Herald Sun style, it was accompanied by the sensationalist headline “Red card to soccer hooliganism” despite not even one mention of the word “hooligan” in the crack down by its writer or the police themselves. Other than the headline, that word only appears in the intro.
Equally typical of this report came the gasps of hysteria from traditionalists, led by SBS’s Les Murray on twitter about the alleged crusade against the sport: “Just as we are all excited about the new A-League season, bang, in comes the Herald Sun to dampen spirits and scare the fans away. Disgrace!”, and to Victoria Police “Hogwash. The A-League experience is already the best of any in the country. This is sheer fear mongering.”
It’s not just elite media brushing of he issue as antics “of a few”, so too do supporters. It’s not. Because the culture of the sport tacitly condones it by crying out at being vicitimised and misunderstood, it’s the problem of the many, as further evidenced by this from Murray: “FFA’s lack of understanding of football fan culture etc”. This is patently absurd. Australia is not Europe or the Americas. The use of flares and vandalism are ILLEGAL in our sporting stadiums.
While I’m equally sick as Murray and co of the unruly few tarnishing the game and putting it in the papers for the wrong reasons, I’m even more sick of these powerful, elitist voices sympathising and assuaging the crowd troubles by blaming media for simply reporting the facts. If that HS article was about cricket, you know damn well us precious lot would not only approve of it, we’d be salivating with gushing pride about the purity of our sport in comparison. Since it’s about football, we becoming pathetic whingers and query that their must be an agenda against us for a newspaper to simply report it.
If football is to continue to grow and become a major mainstream sport in this country, then we must appeal to mainstream Australians. They almost unanimously go to sporting events without lighting flares or destroying chairs and throwing them on the pitch. It’s people like Murray and our clubs that need to set an example. If it is really is just a few bad apples (presumably we say this because we don’t want to tolerate them), then step up against them. Not only should we be happy the HS is reporting this though stance by police and the two Melbourne clubs, we should be helping out. Stamp out the bad behaviour then the newspapers will have nothing bad to report.
For the record, the Herald Sun also has feature articles on the Melbourne Derby, gleefully speculated that there could be a record crowd, and they’ve been previewing the A-League season both in print and online via webpage and video for the past week. This shows the area of true bias – in people like Les Murray and our generally precious and insecure followers of the sport. It’s no coincidence that those claiming bias are actually the most biased people themselves. Maybe if Murray would retweet all HS articles on football, not just the his perceived unsavoury ones, not only would he portray the true and favourable coverage by the HS, he might loosen his own bias.
Sources:
https://twitter.com/lesmurraySBS/with_replies
10 October 2013: Update
Today the Herald Sun had a double page feature exploring the full squads, analysis and season predictions for both Melbourne Victory and Heart.
Yesterday the Herald Sun had a photo about the Victory/Heart Derby dominating the back page, a news article on the second last page, and a double page spread of four articles including A-League season preview and an article by Ron Reed “People’s game kicking goals”.
Have Les Murray and co tweeted these articles, all of which are available online, or would that hurt the ridiculous “evil mainstream media always keen to slam soccer” agenda? No they haven’t. As said earlier, those most strident about media bias are the most biased people themselves. They don’t see the good, only the bad. That says more about them, and their own little bubble they want to live within.
Socceroo Realm 