The world game’s handling of the fan crisis is in a world of its own

It says a lot about the A League that there is a group of “Active” fans (mainly young males) who sing and dance to create their own entertainment. In Australian football all fans are active – they go to the game and are entertained by the football on the field and cheer along in appreciation.
And what’s with the Wanderer’s fans and their fascist salutes – pushing boundaries there?

Say What???
Being a member and diehard active supporter along with my son at Adelaide United home games, I will back ten thousand people at Hindmarsh Stadium to generate more noise and atmosphere than 25-thousand at an AFL game any day.
The chants, the songs, and the spontaneous wit that active supporters (many of whom are female in our stadium) can generate en masse and in an instant is something to behold. You do not get that anywhere in Australian sport but in football… real football.
That story was spiteful and gratuitous, and the aftermath has highlighted the FFA’s lack of due process for anyone who might be mistakenly implicated, and even for those who are not.
I look forward to the Murdoch press giving equal time to the banned lists for NRL and AFL. Case in point – the miniscule coverage in the Adelaide Advertiser of the Fremantle supporter jailed for punching a woman in the throat at a game recently.

You bring up some good points but I don’t understand this pre/post-Christmas perspective when it comes to the A-League. First I’ve heard of it. Also Sponsors (similar to News Corps) is another player in this.

FFA trying to play the long game and ride this one out will not work. There’s also a lot more issues and grievances to come out as well than grassroots problems. There is direct FFA bungles like their strongarming players during the CBA negiotiatings that made them look like idiots not to mention going right back to their implementing the ridiculous NCIS on clubs.

There’s been a lot of simmering issues that caused things to boil over and the lid to come off after the RW piece. Problem was the FFA weren’t even in the kitchen to see it.

Hi everyone, thanks for your commentary.

Jackson, the point I was trying to make re Christmas and New year is that this period is a circuit breaker in an issue management sense. It is like in politics, if Mal Brough can survive these few weeks, there will be a break for Christmas and New Year, the political agenda will move on and the Mal Brough rumpus will be “last year’s issue”. Issues are amplified at the end of a long year. The Christmas and New Year period is a circuit breaker.

But football is a little different as matches are played through out. Christmas Eve, Boxing Day, New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day, etc so this period may not be the circuit breaker the FFA needs.

I thought this was a really well written critique of a current topic.
Shame to see the first comment being our game is better than your game – so blinkered and disappointingly Australian.
More of this type of commentary please Mumbrella.
Well written Andrew.
The Optus deal has pulled the rug out from a few parties in this one. I’m interested to see where we end up with FTA for A-League and how that works with a pay TV provider.

FYI: the ESPN FC link is missing the letter ‘e’ at then end of ‘violence’, leaving it broken.

Thank you for the explanation. As someone in WA, who has only heard that fans are angry at FFA and not why, this article has made it clear. It appears that a simple “we’re disappointed that the list has been leaked, but we don’t accept anti-social behaviour” message early on would have saved the FFA a lot of grief.

>>>”So, News Corporation’s bank account is down to its last few billions and the the A-League has just lost its hot looking bestie to another dance. Do you really think Mr Gallop is going to come out swinging against News Corporation? No.”<<<

I'm a bit confused. How does the fact that a few administrators want to line their pockets make it okay to leak the banned list to News Corp ?

The beautiful game will, long term, be better off without the hot-heads who’re protesting. Good riddance to “active” fans if “active” equals condoning antisocial behaviour and violence. The A League has done a brilliant job of making football a safe, friendly and exciting spectacle for families. Sod the idiots who have exploited their inclusion in the process. I want to be able to take my kid (daughter, age 12, fanatic player) to games and not to have to worry about the kind of thuggery that characterised the old NSL. Don’t give in to blackmail, FFA. Dig out a copy of the Crawford report and remind yourselves what it was like in the time of “Wogs, Poofs & Sheila’s”

Hi Neil – thanks for your feedback. I too hate the mine is bigger or better than yours stuff. Every game has something to offer!

Hi Huw, tanks, I will let Mumbrella know. Yes, this could have been very simple!

Hi John, thanks for the feedback. What I am saying is, this, in my opinion, is News Ltd showing FFA “who’s the boss” meaning we have more power than you so don’t dick us around when it comes to TV rights. If you do, we will destroy you.

Tim, totally agree 100%

Tim, of course “Active” doesn’t mean condoning anti-social behaviour. Have you been to an A-League match recently? I take my two kids (11 and 9) to Sydney FC games regularly and have never felt unsafe. That’s simply the picture that the anti-football people want to portray. The people who jump in to bash football at every opportunity. Wilson, Jones, Cornes in Adelaide, Conn from the cricket. Their anachronistic views hark back to the 70s and 80s heyday of football hooliganism. It’s their best attack on football’s growth in this country: to try to drum up fear in the average Aussie family about taking their kids to the game.

And it’s complete rubbish.

Football does not have a problem with violence, any more than cricket has a problem with drunken, abusive fans. When 180 people got ejected from a recent one-day cricket match for drunkeness (as they do at every one-dayer), the police commended the crowd on their good behaviour. Yet when 180 fans have been banned over 11 years of the A-League, out of millions, football somehow has a problem with violence and all us fans are “grubby pack animals”.

On the basis of their logic, every NRL player is a drunken, violent, mysogistic, drug-taking rapist who drinks their own urine and smears faeces over hotel rooms. And every fan is a bottle-throwing yobbo.

And what of AFL? I haven’t felt unsafe at football, but my family did very much feel intimidated in a Melbourne restaurant after an AFL match, when group of drunken Essendon fans came in being obnoxious and loud. And we know of the AFL fan who punched the woman. And the booing of Goodes. Where are the articles on how AFL has a problem with all of its fans being drunken, women-bashing racists?

If it’s good enough for millions of football fans to be labelled “suburban terrorists” on the basis of a few louts, why isn’t it the case for other sports? With them it’s “a few bad apples”. With football, it’s “football has a problem with violent fans.”

Football has always been singled out in this country. “Wogball” was what kids at schooled called it when I was growing up. It wasn’t an Aussie game like AFL and cricket. It wasn’t mainstream. It was ethnic. Since those elements were removed with the advent of the A-League, the attack on the game has changed to being about active fans. Why? Because that’s what makes football different to “Aussie” sports. So the campaign began to paint all active fans as hooligans and as bad as the bad old days in Europe. Rebecca Wilson and co. are just the latest in a long line of these attacks.

And they seem to be aided and abetted by police forces that also single out football. Why would riot police outnumber fans last weekend in Melbourne? Why are there riot police and vans when I walk with my kids and thousands of other Sydney FC fans peacefully to games? And yet when I go to a league game, surrounded by anti-social, swearing, drunken boofheads who wouldn’t be out of place in the local Hells Angels chapter or drug crime gang, I don’t see rows and rows of riot police with batons and shields at the ready. Why is that?

And flares. Yes, they’re dangerous. And rightly banned. But did you, perchance, see those images of flares let off at the rugby league match by St George fans in March this year? You didn’t? I wonder why…. Feel free to google them.

Not sure why, as a visitor to The Cove, you would agree 100% with Tim (about active fans condoning bad behaviour and the game being better off without them) Andrew, because The Cove is a perfect example of a well-lead, well-behaved active supporter group that generates amazing atmosphere. It’s what makes the game unique. I can tell you that when The Cove were missing last Friday, it felt positively funereal – or a bit like being at an NRL match.

Of course there are some supporters who do the wrong thing and deserve to be banned. That’s why there’s a list. As there is in every other code. But to say, as Rebecca Wilson did, that football has a particular problem with hooliganism, that families feel unsafe at games and that the FFA is doing nothing about it was a blatant lie, and to infringe those people’s privacy in that way was a disgrace, which the leadership of the game needed to address immediately – not leave it to fans and football journos.

When the NSW Police Commissioner came out and talked about wanting to avoid fans in cages, as they have in the UK, the leadership of the game should have come out and told him “the 80s called…” and pointed out that his views of football were 30 years out of date – not leave it to fans and football journos. When the other senior policeman told football fans they were “grubby pack animals”, the leadership of the game should have responded that this was offensive and a slur on the vast majority of fans – not leave it to fans and football journos.

As for the banning process itself, the current system means that people who are banned have no right of appeal, and not even a right to see the evidence on which they are banned (e.g.. CCTV footage). Apparently, most of the bans happen on the say-so of the plain-clothes, Hatamoto security operatives. No natural justice, no procedural fairness. Nothing.

I recognise that running the FFA is a difficult job. You have to walk tightrope. You have to appease fans, but also not scare the horses in terms of appealing to corporate sponsors and mainstream Aussie families. But it’s all well and good to talk about growing the game. That growth will never come from NRL hacks or Union lovers or AFL barrackers. So why try to appease them ahead of your own?

The most important thing the FFA can do is to make sure current, important stakeholders are looked after – and that includes grass-roots, families and non-active fans, as well as the “ethnic” fans of the old NSL that were left behind (the FFA Cup is an attempt to try to bring them back into the fold). The low-hanging fruit is the first place to look for growing the game, not die-hard AFL and NRL lackies.

I also think the FFA marketing of the game this year has been short of the mark. In the past, we’ve always had a big integrated campaign to launch and promote the league, spearheaded by a big ad. This year, we’ve had a few spots that looked more like station promos, that flew completely under the radar. For a game that needs to boost crowds and TV viewership, being almost invisible isn’t the way to go. I understand that much of the budget was blown on trying to save the Jets, but nevertheless, this year’s efforts have been disappointing, at a time when the game needed promotion, as we have no Del Piero or other proper marquee players to generate interest.

Speaking of marquees, the FFA’s changing of the marquee rules to mean Frank Lampard couldn’t come to Melbourne City was ridiculous. If you don’t have the money to properly market the game, why would you cripple a potentially huge PR and earned media property from coming down under, with a ridiculous rule change?

As you pointed out Andrew, this is the latest in a long line of failures – the David Davutovic listed 32 in this article yesterday: http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sp.....y-comments

There are times when, as the peak body for football in this country, you have to sense the mood and respond in a way that ensures your base is secure. And the efforts of the FFA in the last few weeks have been very much tone deaf in this regard. They need to act quickly, before the damage becomes irreparable.

Well said DK.

Love your passion and your common sense.

Hi DK, thanks for your awesome post. Agree 100%.

The biggest concern for me is the NSW Police leaking personal details to the media. The police don’t care about privacy and the watchdogs are toothless.