Action Plan - for Media

[midfielder]

Mods Eggsta post below highlights a huge problem with "SMELL THE FEAR -MEDIA".

However they do a huge amount of damage to those on the verge of coming to the A-League in whatever form, eg spectator, sponsor, quick look and see. Further a general degree of old soccer returning or European problems is forming is the message coming through the screen or over air ways. I often think not accidental.

Has there ever been a Supporters groups meeting or discussions to develop some kind of response to bias in the media.

Striker 9 and myself were talking it over a couple of weeks ago and said we could set up a forum complete with email addresses OZ wide with some help from other groups.

When anyone in OZ found bias in reporting they could post it on the forum and maybe supporter groups with combined numbers could cause a degree of mis comfort to those spreading the vile.

Other ideas welcome but feel we cannot let it go bye without some kind of responce.

eggsta said:

10news was a disgrace tonight main story was the riot between fans at Melbourne there riotest footage was just to sets of fans meters apart on seperate terraces singing at each other

[henry14]

great idea mate, something needs to be done

[Pete]

I posted a suggestion for the Strategic Meetings for the Marinators Club, where I thought that maybe a Supporters' Groups Council could be formed down the track and collective problems like this could be lobbied to the FFA through a peak council....As I couldn't attend these meetings I don't know how that idea was received.

Mind you, that would mean one of us having to sit down at the same table as a Melbourne supporter and a Jets supporter, a task I find a little hard to digest at the moment.

Until all supporters groups and the general fans base get united into a sophisticated lobby group, all that emails and complaints are going to do is generate 'water cooler' talk amongst the journos about 'did you get that complaint from the Mariners fan named XXX, what a loose cannon...'

Sounds defeatist, I know, but media does look for the sensationalist view and the quick grab, not some reasoned debate about the overwhelming positives in supporting a football club.

[midfielder]

Pete your idea is OK but your plan is to difficult.

Must be more simple to carry out, I will do some thinking on it and get back latter in the week.

[serious14]

Shoelady and I have been talking about this on MSN all night after I went through the Melbourne and Sydney forums, and subsequently we both looked up all the articles from the media outlets on the game..........

Channel's 9 and 10 showed the footage that Eggy talked about.

Channel 7 had the nerve to show footage from a pre-season game where Melbourne took on South Melbourne.

The police and security set upon innocent people walking out of the stadium, as well as those involved in the chanting. Pepper/capsicum spray was unnecessarily used, chaos stemmed from this, and all of a sudden you've got a situation on your hands.

Word from the Melbourne forum is that they were being taped by the police before the game, and that there were photographers from media outlets who have never been seen at games before - i.e. agenda driven bosses send them there looking for trouble, nothing more. The only trouble they got were from dickheaded Victorian police.

Quite frankly my friends, the media in this country is irreversably f*cked, and until we get 'football people' into positions of importance and such within the media at all levels, then this is the sort of shit we'll have to put up with. Such as this delightful comment piece from an AFL journo as an add on to the Herald Sun article (now removed from the site, so I'm quoting it here for truth):

"This is further proof that multiculturalism is a failed policy. Ethnic hatreds are still evident in these so-called ethnically-neutral clubs. Everybody knows that Sydney is backed by the Yugoslavian people and that Melbourne is a Greek/Italian/Maltese club. Rival fans organise brawls to settle ancient scores putting the safety of Australian families at risk. Ban this unpopular "sport" before inncocent people are seriously hurt. I wouldn't be surprised if the terraces are breeding grounds for Muslim extremists given Sydney's large Arab fan base."

Racist, agenda driven hate filled bile. Where is the police taskforce set up to cover the 60 odd people kicked out of the cricket today??

We HAVE to fight back - whether it's a fan unity day, a persistent letter/commenting campaign, lobbying SBS news to report the truth, whatever. I don't care, this bullshit cannot continue.

Channels 7, 9, 10, the Herald Scum and the Daily Terrorgraph
CAN YOU SMELL THE FEAR??

[serious14]

An older article (before The World Game lost the plot), but it still makes a damn good point.

www.theworldgame.com.au/opinions/index.php?pid=st&cid=91863&ct=30

Read the fine print. It says Australian football is on the way down and I sense some people are rubbing their hands with glee.

I arrived home following a month abroad to find headlines of ‘Civil War’ and ‘Stars Feud Splits Team’ splashed across one publication.

The same publication also produced a gossip column that claims, “Factions are now eating away at the Socceroos as the code threatens to shoot itself in the foot yet again.”

How predictable. By that I do not refer to what is allegedly occurring within the Socceroos camp at the Asian Cup.

Rather, I am a great deal more interested in those throw-away remarks, which often rear their ugly head, aimed at the broader picture of football’s status in this country.

The doomsayers, of which there are many in media circles and whom I cannot name in this article for legal reasons, have been sharpening their knives ever since the FIFA World Cup, waiting for any opportunity to carve up the game’s image.

It was evident in more than one publication this past weekend. Hidden away amongst the top stories was this piece of utter nonsense, “Australia’s 3-1 surrender to Iraq on Friday night has put football on its heels in this country.”

The cheap attack doesn’t end there, adding, “If the Socceroos don’t make the finals of the Asian Cup playing against teams such as Oman, how can they be taken seriously? Will sports-minded kids aspire to becoming one of them? Not in this lifetime.”

Please, lets not get carried away. A few poor performances at the Asian Cup, as hard as they have been on the eye, hardly amount to the end of the world. The Socceroos represent only one, albeit a large portion, of Australian football.

Yes, they are the sport’s flag bearers carrying the added weight of expectation following their achievements at Germany 2006, but they are also allowed to fail.

Furthermore, what gives anyone the right to judge ‘teams such as Oman’, as if to suggest it’s a nation of no-hopers? Perhaps it shows how ignorant some people are when it comes to understanding Asia and football in general.

Getting to the Round of 16 at the FIFA World Cup did not announce Australia as a world-class football team. It merely illustrated how we can be relatively successful with the right people in place.

Only consistently performing at the highest level will give Australia the respect it craves and we are still a long way from achieving that.

In the developed football world, failures are met with bruising, yet, constructive criticism and accepted as part of the learning process.

Is it not enough to analyse the coach, his man-management, tactics and how the players fit within that system? One reason could be that very few media analysts out there are capable of doing so.

Here we are forced to swallow ridiculous, unsubstantiated stories, born from insecurity, of how football is about to suffer some kind of irreparable damage as a result of a player rift. Get real.

Similar statements were made following John O’Neill’s departure as Chief Executive of the Football Federation Australia, and reports the governing body is nearly four million dollars in the red.

Scandals, may I remind you, are not uncommon in other sports. Aussie rules, cricket, swimming, rugby league and rugby union have all survived in their own way, helped in part by the society we live in.

These are sports, which I believe, outside the FIFA World Cup every four years, are receiving favourable treatment and the lion share of daily coverage in Australia.

It’s no surprise, the same way baseball, basketball and American football dominate the sports pages in the United States.

Football has enjoyed a small slice of this good press over the past 12 months. After all, anti-football media types had no choice but to jump aboard the bandwagon.

All it takes, though, is the occasional stumble to expose those unwilling to accept football’s growing significance in Australian society.

Thankfully, not all of us are swayed by such appalling propaganda.

[serious14]

Another historical piece, but well worth a read............ sensible words from none other than Kevin Muscat!!!! But try and ignore that part, 'cause what he says is scarily true.

www.theage.com.au/news/soccer/troubled-reports-come-with-agendas/2006/12/16/1166162372226.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

A record crowd is obscured by media off the mark on 'crowd violence', writes Victory captain Kevin Muscat.

VICTORY is 13 points clear on the top of the table, playing the most attractive soccer seen in this country and last Friday attracted a record crowd of of more than 50,000 fans. And what did some sections of the media focus on? So-called crowd trouble. What a load of nonsense.

Channel Nine ran a story after the record-breaking night against Sydney with mobile phone footage of supporters singing and chanting "Come on Melbourne! Come on Melbourne!" and tried to pass it off as crowd violence. Who is it kidding? In all my years in the game, I've never seen a bigger beat-up.

And last Tuesday, the Herald Sun ran a back-page story headlined "The Great Divide" alongside a picture showing Melbourne and Sydney fans separated by police. The funny thing was, the supporters in the photograph were smiling and laughing.

Soccer-bashing has been a popular sport for the media in this country for many years, but nowadays this sort of journalism is a bit of a joke.

Football Federation Australia has gone to great lengths to right the wrongs of the past, and now we have a full-time professional league, played in family-friendly stadiums, comprised of teams with city and state alignment, and virtually no crowd trouble.

The fact that more 50,000 fans came out to see a domestic club soccer match in Melbourne should be put into perspective. This number is double the previous record before this season for a non-finals match. It smashed the all-time record for a grand final by 7000.

Only one English Premier League match — Manchester United — drew a bigger crowd than Victory last weekend.

As Sydney skipper Mark Rudan observed after the match, it was an historic occasion, which should be celebrated and rejoiced. Instead, we wake to the hysterical ramblings of agenda-driven journalists who weren't at the game.

I've played in front of some big crowds and Friday night's game was one of the highlights of my career. Leading my team out in my home city in front of a record crowd was up there with leading Millwall out for an FA Cup final against Manchester United in 2004 (unfortunately I was injured and couldn't play) and walking out with Australia for the World Cup qualifier against Uruguay at the MCG in 2001, when 85,000 were there.

To have last week's occasion marred by ridiculous media reports leaves a real sour taste.

The singing and chanting, which follows our sport, is something which should be embraced, not discouraged. It helps create an atmosphere unrivalled in Australian sport, and this has helped us attract the fans to Victory games. Playing so well and leading the competition by such a large margin doesn't hurt, either!

The detractors will try anything to bring the game down, but families are voting with their feet. And after the enormous spectacle last Friday, you can rest assured they'll be back with friends. The game is going to grow, regardless of the obstacles some people want to put in its way. Our club remains vigilant against flare throwers and those who attend to start trouble; but this is no different from all sporting competitions and major events.

Cricket has faced enormous challenges over the past few years regarding fan behaviour. The spring racing carnival is starting to realise that the poor behaviour of patrons might be detracting from the event There were more than two dozen ejections at last season's AFL grand final.

It amazes me when an event that attracted more than 50,000 fans, among whom three were arrested with no injuries, the focus of some media outlets is attempting to drum up publicity about crowd trouble.

The real story, and the story the "enemies of football" choose to ignore, is that Victory is leading the league on and off the park to an unprecedented degree.

[curious]

"This is further proof that multiculturalism is a failed policy. Ethnic hatreds are still evident in these so-called ethnically-neutral clubs. Everybody knows that Sydney is backed by the Yugoslavian people and that Melbourne is a Greek/Italian/Maltese club. Rival fans organise brawls to settle ancient scores putting the safety of Australian families at risk. Ban this unpopular "sport" before inncocent people are seriously hurt. I wouldn't be surprised if the terraces are breeding grounds for Muslim extremists given Sydney's large Arab fan base."

Where did this article come from? You have a link?

This article below is a sensible comment & asks for a change in FFA attitude.
www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22741157-5003460,00.html
Ray Gatt | November 12, 2007
IT is time Football Federation Australia stopped pussy-footing around and started coming down heavily on the small hooligan element threatening to give the A-League a bad name.

And FFA should also get lessons in transparency and stop thinking it can manipulate the public and media by presenting a sanitised version of the game.

Saturday night's drama at the Melbourne Victory game against Sydney FC at Telstra Dome, which saw police use capsicum spray on fans to control what some reports described as wild clashes, highlights the fact FFA has not done enough to ensure decent people who attend the games are not put at risk.

It's not the first time trouble-making elements have caused problems since the competition kicked off a little over two-and-a-half seasons ago. There have been several disturbances in that time, the latest just five weeks ago which involved some ugly and worrying scenes at the Sydney Football Stadium.

Seating was destroyed, fireworks were let off inside the stadium, Melbourne supporters were kicked out of a pub before the game and the referee was pelted with rubbish by Sydney FC fans at the end of the match.

FFA called for reports from both clubs, the police, stadium security and the SCG Trust. But it has remained silent on the findings and whether any sanctions were imposed on either club.

FFA's handling of the situation raises some serious questions. Did it not act, or release its decision, in the hope the drama would go away and we would all forget about it?

Is it afraid to put its decisions into the public domain for fear of repercussions in the media? How is it that we have not heard a peep from the head body following the events of October 6, yet the same organisation has no qualms in informing the media instantly that it has pounced on players and fined them for making innocuous comments to the media?

FFA's handling of the matter leaves a lot to be desired and has only served to send the wrong message to fans intent on destroying the image of the A-League.

FFA needs to get tough and it needs to be seen as being tough. It is not going to do that by pretending there isn't a problem with crowd behaviour.

The message has to be clear and strong or this will continue to get out of hand to the point where we will become another Europe or South America, where unruly fans cause all sorts of problems.

Clearly, the hooligans need to be weeded out and banned for life and the clubs need to take more responsibility.

No doubt, FFA will tell us we have to wait while it compiles and then studies police, security, club and stadium reports before it decides what it will do following the events of Saturday night.

Let's hope FFA has learned its lesson, releases its findings and sanctions and gets on with the job of giving the A-League the safe environment it deserves.

[curious]

The police and security set upon innocent people walking out of the stadium, as well as those involved in the chanting. Pepper/capsicum spray was unnecessarily used, chaos stemmed from this, and all of a sudden you've got a situation on your hands.

Word from the Melbourne forum is that they were being taped by the police before the game, and that there were photographers from media outlets who have never been seen at games before - i.e. agenda driven bosses send them there looking for trouble, nothing more. The only trouble they got were from dickheaded Victorian police.

Mate, you try to deny there was any trouble, or the police were resonsible for any trouble, or the media makes it all up, it won't matter who you complain to about media bias, it won't have any credibility & you will hit a brick wall.

From what I have read on forums, there is an admittance of chair throwing, injuries from bottles & other projectiles, damage to public property, assaults in the streets pre & following the game, as well as flare throwing inside & outside the stadium.
No one is twisting anyones arm & forcing them to bring the game into disrepute by their actions.

With the well deserved past reputation of NSL & Sate league football in this country, it's obvious media will jump on anything very fast.
It's up to us to make sure they don't have anything to compare us with old soccer.

The individuals that want euro style support would drop football like a hot potato if it was to fail once again & simply find another outlet to get their rocks off.

Sure, have a go at legit unfounded bias, but don't bury your head in the sand like the FFA & deny or cover up the existence of negatives. We will have more credibility of we display an intolerance from within.

[brett]

Good post curious. The focus for us should remain, as it has been, on making sure we don't give them any ammunition. Particularly within Mariners fans the percentage of people who get the bigger picture seems to be much higher than those who would cause trouble who are very few. It should stay this way.

The frustration is this: Whether its teams playing out a shitty game or Ben Cousins f***ing up royally, the AFL will be on the back page either way. With football, the A-League has to bust its tits to get any coverage whatsoever for some super entertaining football and bumper crowds, but then as soon as there is a sniff, nay, a whiff, of the bad stuff, it makes it as the lead NEWS (not just sport) story for the day.

There will be no stopping those who lie in waiting for something negative to pounce on. This will take years to push out as a changing of the guard in sports media occurs. What we can do is work together to give them as little as possible to pounce on and hope for better coverage of the good stuff.

IMO you'll get better change from writing to papers asking why the Mariners/Sydney/Melbourne/whatever game wasn't given more coverage than from whinging about the negative stuff they publish. The extreme articles with racist/agenda-driven shit will only be swallowed by those who have already made up their minds about football anyway. It's better ignored.

[dibo (pron. "DIB-OH")]

i think this is pretty well on the money:

Wannabes make hard work of risky business

November 12, 2007

Pathetic would-be hooligans shouldn't be allowed to besmirch football, writes Richard Hinds.

As they marched down Bourke Street in central Melbourne on their way to Telstra Dome, the 150 or so puffed-up adolescents in their light blue shirts brandishing natty little scarfs were in the mood for mischief. They were going to take this city by force - just as they had seen real football hooligans do on the telly.

So, emboldened by their numbers and clearly flattered by their police escort, these legendary hard men stopped at the King Street pedestrian crossing on a red light and then - scourges of the terrace that they are - surged across the road. Sure, the Millwall crew might have driven nails through the skulls of opposing fans and left calling cards near their crumpled bodies. But don't let anyone say the Sydney FC boys aren't up for a bit of jay-walking.

If that act of bloody defiance was well worth a four-week grounding with loss of pocket money, the naughtiness would not stop there. Spotting some Melbourne supporters drinking outside a bar, the Sydney lads formed a semi-circle around the tables and, not afraid of having their mouths washed out with soap, belted out a chant about Victory captain Kevin Muscat that contained several rude words.

Never mind that had Muscat himself stepped forward the blood would have drained from their pimply faces faster than the beer from a schooner on a 40C day. Nor that they would have been pitifully grateful to be wearing sneakers rather than the Doc Martens that were de rigueur with real hooligans (much better for running away.) The pale blue wave had really stuck it to the Victory!

Emboldened by the passive reaction of the locals, one Sydney fan boldly thumped the side of a passing tram, disregarding the risk of a broken cuticle. Oh, the tales of bravado he will have to tell behind the shelter shed at school today.

With the city trembling in the face of their bold deeds, the Sydney fans then marched up the stairs and across the footbridge to the stadium, where they would begin their night's work - attempting, successfully as it turned out, to incite a response from the locals with waves of their bony fists and yet more infantile chanting. The words were often lost, but you could usually get the gist: Baaaa. Baaaa. Baaaa.

Of course, as pathetic and juvenile as the Sydney supporters - and those among the usually well-behaved Melbourne throng who were dumb enough to react to their inane bellowing - were, the repercussions of this behaviour are serious for the A-League.

After the rival fans threw things at each other after the game and refused to disperse, Victorian police used capsicum spray to make sure they did. And so a handful of idiots had presented, gift-wrapped, another chance for the hysterical-minded and knockers in the media to portray A-League games as being hotbeds of trouble; as being about as safe as taking a stroll down the main street of Baghdad dressed as Uncle Sam singing, "I'm A Yankee Doodle Dandy".

By the next morning the newspapers carried predictable stories about crowd violence. Yet, as those of us who had walked along Bourke Street with young children beside the Sydney fans could attest, it was hardly a night of fear. In fact, when you caught the eye of some of the kids bellowing their rude little taunts and shook your head in their direction, they returned not a menacing scowl but the self-conscious grin of the ham actor. Most were guilty mainly of the offence of impersonating a soccer hooligan.

The problem for the A-League is this serial silliness inevitably escalates into something more serious because not everyone will play by the rules of this childish pantomime.

On Saturday night it was chair-tossing and ugly insults. But if the hooligan-wannabes from any of the eight clubs chant their ditties at some real hard men they might find out how it feels to be on the end of some serious bovver.

It was not just in the grandstands that the much-hyped Melbourne-Sydney clash failed to produce the genuine article. While some goal-mouth scrambles in the second half added drama to a mostly lacklustre match, there were far too many clumsy turnovers and too little enterprise in this 0-0 draw.

The A-League has a lot riding on gradually ensuring the standard rises so the new fans it covets will not prefer to sit home and watch foreign leagues. It has a bit invested, too, in ensuring the behaviour of the fans remains, at worst, a childish imitation of what you see elsewhere.

Richard Hinds is a Melbourne based journo whose primary interest is (as with most Victorian sports journos) Aussie rules footy. But he’s been pretty fair to the A-League and he’s hardly a Josh Massoud or a Paul Kent.

Here he’s basically saying
a) this isn't really that threatening at all, and
b) get over yourselves
and I think he’s got the tone about right.

The FFA’s right to launch a full investigation too. The facts are not our enemy, sensationalism is. The FFA should commit to booting any actual offenders, but also publicise the basically very moderate levels of actual trouble that can be found at these games.

If as I expect all that’s found is that a bunch of young men get boisterous but actually do bugger all of any consequence is all there is, then issue a report repeating the message from the Hinds article. End of.

[serious14]

curious said:

Mate, you try to deny there was any trouble, or the police were resonsible for any trouble, or the media makes it all up, it won't matter who you complain to about media bias, it won't have any credibility & you will hit a brick wall.

I'm not at all denying that there might have been trouble, but from what I have read, heard (I've spoken to at least 3 people who were at the game and were involved in said 'trouble') and seen, the only conclusion I can draw is that it is sensationalist media bullshit (as per usual), and like Dibo said, the senationalist nature of journalism in this country is our real enemy.

I think the most telling part was when they branded everyone "hooligans" and that there was a "riot", yet the only footage they had was of two sets of fans chanting at each other. Melbourne has had this trouble with questionable journalism before - last season, they interviewed a "fan" called Sean Sowerby after the last Sydney/Melbourne game on Channel 9 News, and he went on about how he felt threatened by the riots and all the rest of it (again, nothing but chanting at each other and a few plastic cups - OH NOEZ!!!!), yet a few days later it was revealed that he was nothing but a Channel 9 employee. AGAIN WITH THE AGENDA DRIVEN BULLSHIT - THEY LIED ON NATIONAL TELEVISION.

I for one am sick of the racist, agenda driven nature of the media's attitude towards football in this country, and I don't care if I have to go on a one man crusade to make it change, but it has to happen. As Brett said, Cousins goes on a five day gear binge, and he's on the front and back page. We absolutely pwn Adelaide all over the field, go 6 points clear on top of the table, and we aren't even the first game mentioned in the "soccer" reports.

Again, it's a simple case of "Can You Smell The Fear". The AFL isn't quite running scared yet, but they're concerned about the potential of how big we're going to get. The NRL on the other hand, is sitting in the corner crying about their increasing irrelevancy on any sort of significant scale - witness the desperate nature of the whole "Willie Mason, where will he go" bullshit this week. That's not a story, it's a footnote at the end of the NRL section in the news, yet all week, we had a full 3 minutes dedicated to it in the Sports AND News sections every night, yet our top of the table clash (and the Sydney/Melbourne game) was relegated to a one line mention.

I'm not a hooligan, I'm not an 'ethnic', and I have plenty of mates who are, no matter what, we will love our football and always will, right 'til the end. I have no time for NRL, little time for AFL - and they're just going to have to learn to live with that.

Curious - that extremely racist bit I posted was a further comment to the article by another journo, but it's since been removed from the website (possibly for obvious reasons).

[thedoc]

Here's an interesting read. Reflects what many of us have been thinking

Ruined by a lunatic fringe
Comment by Tom Smithies
November 12, 2007 I AM getting sick to death of defending my sport from accusations of thuggery and violence every time there's an incident at an A-League game.

Not because I feel football is picked on and over-scrutinised; that's an issue for another day.

But I simply cannot get my head round what sort of brain-dead individual would think it's a positive move to throw a bottle at a tram and let off a couple of flares on the way to a game.

Thanks to the lunatic fringe, once again the aftermath of a decent game is all about what happens when Sydney plays Melbourne.

It's almost certainly the work of a handful of moronic individuals, and most of the time my attitude is that you don't give the neanderthal tendency the oxygen of publicity.

But it's hard to stand up and defend the purity of the game when a police superintendent is using phrases like "walk of shame".

What makes it all the more unforgiveable is the fact that Sydney fans generally are excellently behaved. I have sat in a pub near Sydney Football Stadium before games with Central Coast, both sets of fans mixing happily and the banter flows without any hint of trouble.

But this Sydney-Melbourne fixture is the A-League's problem child.

Melbourne fans were pretty obnoxious when Victory last played in Sydney - and they have "form". Other clubs' officials believe Victory as a club is far too complacent about the hooligan element within its crowds, happy to glory in spectacular attendance figures.

But the fact that even a handful of Sydney fans being lured into retaliating on Victory's "turf" (their word, not mine) gives life to every outdated and largely unjustified cliche about football fans and their propensity to fight.

What will it take for those involved to realise what's at stake? That like it or not we have to be squeaky clean, that the history of the game's troubles is only ever a headline away?

I have attended hundreds of games in Europe and Australia, and there's no doubt that some police and stadium authorities in Australia are not used to - and are unnerved by - the spectacle of football fans in all their tribalism and passion. But even as I say those words, part of me is also thinking: Should we really expect the authorities to take the responsibility for knowing when a crowd is just boisterous and when it is starting to turn ugly?

Sydney fans suggested on their website that the trouble was the work of "blow-ins" from outside the usual fan base, and that may well be true.

In which case, give them up - police yourselves.

It would be the perfect rejoinder to those who say the sport is inherently violent. Ninety-eight per cent of it is as violent as my grandmother, and she passed away 25 years ago.

But former Australia youth coach Ange Postecoglou is right: Nothing short of zero tolerance will allow the game to mature beyond these knee-jerk responses.

[curious]

Your post spends more time on the other codes getting more coverage than CC. Is that your problem or the reaction to football by sections of the media? You seem to be arguing both.

[midfielder]

thedoc said:

Here's an interesting read. Reflects what many of us have been thinking

Ruined by a lunatic fringe
Comment by Tom Smithies
November 12, 2007 I AM getting sick to death of defending my sport from accusations of thuggery and violence every time there's an incident at an A-League game.

Not because I feel football is picked on and over-scrutinised; that's an issue for another day.

But I simply cannot get my head round what sort of brain-dead individual would think it's a positive move to throw a bottle at a tram and let off a couple of flares on the way to a game.

Thanks to the lunatic fringe, once again the aftermath of a decent game is all about what happens when Sydney plays Melbourne.

So what do we do ?

Its appears to me, the in papers bad behaviour. comes from a handful of away fans normally.

[curious]

Come down very hard on anyone that triews to be a 'would be if i could be european hool'. If CC has no problems, that's one less club to worry about & one less club that will get press for the wrong reasons.

You have seen in the last week a couple of very serious cases of football riots in Europe & S. America, where people have been killed, enormous damage & even a police station attacked & burned?

Aussie people have been seeing that sort of football shit from oversees on tele for many decades, & to a lesser extent in the old NSL & State leagues.

It scares the shit out of most Aussies when they see that. It's historically not part of a conservative Aussie sporting cuture. It scares them even more when they see what looks like unusual football behaviour in Australia with hints of what they see on tele from oversees.

The very large groups marching to a game screaming chants & abuse at anyone in the wrong colour. Supporters being kept apart by police. It's all new to most & just looks like something they hoped they would only ever see on tele in another country.

You have to understand the mindset of those that don't live for football like the forum members or supporter groups do. If the CC behaved like Sydney, Melbourne or Newcastle, I would stay at home & most of my friends would be fearfull of taking their kids whithin a mile of the ground, so they too would stay at home.

We can complain all we like about bad press, but if we keep up the bullshit we won't have a game for the press to complain about. The general population will shun football all over again.

[midfielder]

Curious having explained the prob, what your solution.

Guy on Victory forum suggested Supporter Groups sit together for the rest of the season and be nice to each other, as a way of saying up yours media. Easy to write hard to make work I imagine, but its and idea.

I still not sure what the answer is, as Dibo posted the Richard Hinds article Wannabes make hard work of risky business .............. Pathetic would-be hooligans shouldn't be allowed to besmirch football. How do you stop over reaction by police, give me break but to spray 15 year old boy seems extereme to me by police.

Maybe police saying roit to cover there own over reaction, maybe not to I was not there but RH article and Victory forum indicate it was at least in part a overaction, .............. but also there was cause to step in. Difficult to pin down except to say like most things with football crowds over the top reporting and I guess that is the central problem.

Given OZ media I think we need to do something still not sure what but do appreciate ideas people are posting.

[Adz]

Look at the photo in this article about fan violence

www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/11/12/2088774.htm

[brett]

adz said:

Look at the photo in this article about fan violence

www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/11/12/2088774.htm

Motherf***ers.

[Chimmi Churri]

oh yea we're well 'ard!

Funny they have to use photo's like this because they can't find any of violence :.