Parent sporting violence – like father, like son
Roar Guru
By Adam_Santarossa, 27 Jul 2009 Adam Santarossa is a Roar Guru
There has been much debate throughout the media in the past week surrounding the brutal sideline bashing involving some 30-odd parents at a junior Rugby League game.
Many people have come out suggesting ways in which the administrators of Rugby League should handle the problem to ensure we never see an incident of the sort again.
Some suggestions have been quite interesting and hold some merit such as a team appointed parent warden, whilst others have been quite pie in the sky stuff.
There was one suggestion of banning ALL parents from attending junior games, which was largely laughed down and dismissed, and yet whilst I agree with the dismissal of such a move, I do support a somewhat similar approach.
My suggestion, do not only ban the parent involved why not take the child out as well.
My example would work something like this. If a parent is suspended from attending for the season, it incurs an automatic three week suspension for their child too.
Nothing would force a parent into stricter action then when they see their child hurting and asking why he isn’t allowed to play with his friends.
The child can then return after the three weeks, with the parent still banned, and hopefully those three weeks sitting on the sideline sets the example.
Of course my example is not perfect, but I believe it has merit.
Parents have been taking things away from their children for years, seemingly to teach them a lesson. There’s no reason to suggest the reverse couldn’t work here.
It’s not the ideal solution, and perhaps a little harsh, but I can guarantee it would fix the problem.
The concern of course is that as a result the child involved could be lost to the game. I assure you, the loss of children involved to the game as a result of having to serve a suspension due to unruly parents would pail in comparison to those children and parents lost to the game due to fear for their safety and growing levels of violence in the game.
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Tom said | July 27th 2009 @ 9:38am | Report comment
I doubt this would work. Sensible parents would realise that carrying on in the way they do already hurts their kids. I doubt you can deter them by promising to hurt their kids more.
This just penalises the child twice.
Crimes of rage are tough to deter. The appropriate penalty is a lifetime ban for parents who cross the line.
Pippinu said | July 27th 2009 @ 9:52am | Report comment
I’ve mentioned on another thread that this was discussed at length on the Sydney version of Grandstand yesterday, immediately after discussion on the SOO stoush (again!)
It’s a good reason for not condoning the sort of punch up we saw in SOO.
LeftArmSpinner said | July 27th 2009 @ 10:13am | Report comment
Yea, there is physical play, then flash points, then punches. I like it to get to flash points but not beyond. In the rugby derby between Rats and Manly, there were 4 yellows, 2 to each team. it got the message across and the guys settled down to play some rugby and put the niggle and handbags away. Well handled and game didnt suffer one bit: no bad behaviour, no bad headlines, etc. frankly, it added to the contest.
Matt S said | July 27th 2009 @ 11:53am | Report comment
How about the death threats to junior AFL players, that’s a new one but I doubt it will get any debate in the national media given its infatuation about rugby league:
http://www.themercury.com.au/article/2009/07/26/86821_todays-news.html
Michael C said | July 27th 2009 @ 12:05pm | Report comment
Matt S -
firstly – this is a story from Southern Tassie, so, it’ll probably take a while to filter through to the Melbourne based primary AFL media machines – - let alone, for the national coverage to work it’s way to the editors desks up in Sydney.
The story itself – well, we’ve just recently had 2 teams (Rockbank and Diggers Rest) banned from playing this weekend (in all grades, which hurt the 2 other clubs they were due to play this week) due to a dust up last weekend.
The whole issue of parents especially being too involved, too quick to get aggressive and resorting to physical violence – - across all codes – - is a major issue. So, don’t go thinking the AFL media will be ignoring such stories deliberately. It’s quite topical at the moment.
At any rate – the penalty imposed on the teams in the situation I described here seems a bit harsh – because, it’s 4 clubs worth of junior teams forced to miss out.
Perhaps, sadly – we need to separate the parents.
btw Matt S, I don’t think bad parent behaviour is at all code specific – - so, be careful about trying to make it a code vs code issue.
And you can see – it DID get covered in the Herald SUn :
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,25818861-661,00.html
just one of several articles about it.
Pippinu said | July 27th 2009 @ 12:05pm | Report comment
Matt S
what you have highlighted is a serious issue that deserves the police attention it is getting.
The ugly parent syndrome is an Australia wide problem that affects all junior sport – no one is trying to turn that specific problem into a League problem – that’s plain stupid.
It is fair enough to make a corrollary between onfield punch ups and punch ups at under age footy games (which in turn will incite parents as well, or vice versa).
Warren Ryan made that connection yesterday – stop crying “poor me”, and discuss the issues openly.
Regarding the ugly parent syndrome – I’m confident you can find hundreds of aussie rules examples!!
But that’s not really helping the discussion too much!!
The reall issues are:
1. How do we control idiotic parents at junior sporting events (all sports); and
2. How do we teach kids it’s not ok to clobber each other on the field (and there, we are predominantly talking about the contact codes).
Tom Alexander. said | July 27th 2009 @ 1:25pm | Report comment
Maybe junior sporting clubs should adopt-a-cop. They already do it through the primary and secondary schools so why not. Partnership it throught the PCYC, which is largely neglected these days. Must be plenty of police officers who have their own kids involved in junior sports who could organize it. You need someone with real authority, otherwise if it is just an ordinary official or even worse a referee, they will really run the risk of getting bashed the same as that bloke.
Mushi said | July 27th 2009 @ 1:31pm | Report comment
I think this is probably going to only accentuate the problem.
A child of a violent parent probably already bares the harm of their parent’s disgraceful actions.
“Violent Supporter” parents are likely so violent because they are so emotionally involved, in regards to their own self image, with their child’s performance. The child suffering would be a footnote against the injustice they probably feel and want revenge for.
Now I’m also going to go out on a limb and assume (without any evidence) that parents willing to attack another parent or official in front of children probably have a higher rate of domestic abuse.
So now where are their kids now spending those three weekends? In an environment where there is structure provided by a disciplinarian other than an violent parent or do they spend the three weekends at home exposed only to the parent who may take their frustrations out elsewhere.
Pippinu said | July 27th 2009 @ 2:35pm | Report comment
Mushi
I think you’re spot on about self-image and the like.
As for domestic abuse – it’s a big call – but we can’t discount it – this is a serious issue for both sporting clubs and society in general.
Mushi said | July 27th 2009 @ 5:49pm | Report comment
I’m not suggesting that every one of these walking adverts for birth control is also violent at home but I don’t it is a stretch to assume that a people who beat others in front of children are more likely to be violent with their spouse or children when behind closed doors than the rest of the population who refrain from attacking other supporters at children’s sporting events.
Michael C said | July 27th 2009 @ 3:15pm | Report comment
Realistically – it’s about ‘good people’ getting more involved (and not leaving running these clubs to others), and setting strong examples. Too many people still seem to regard or use sports as cheap child care and bugger off, and then complain if it’s not run the way they reckon it should be. Point being to get involved and make sure that there are appropriate protocols in place and enforced around behaviours on and off the field.
Pippinu said | July 27th 2009 @ 3:34pm | Report comment
MC
yeh – agree about the cheap child care charge.