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I’m faced with a big decision. After two enjoyable years in the Red and Black Bloc of the Western Sydney Wanderers, I’m contemplating a move away.
To paint a picture for you, the RBB is a mass of passionate football fans committed to singing until their throats are sore in the pursuit of supporting their newly established team.
Hesitantly buying my Wanderers membership two years ago, I chose Gate C, where the RBB calls home. I did so mainly for it’s cheaper price. After a few games however I realised I had struck an even greater bargain, now finding myself on the outer fringes of the RBB.
Sitting in Bay 56, row and seat an ever-changing situation, I was lucky enough to watch a small band of die heart football fans morph into an army of Red and Black. At first lucky to fill out a single bay, the RBB quickly grew and with it, my support of the Wanderers.
Committing to a completely new team can be a gamble, and one that can take a long while to pay out. Having watched the AFL team the Greater Western Sydney Giants struggle to win a single game in their first few seasons from essentially my backyard, I should have been a little more apprehensive to throw my support behind the Wanderers.
But thankfully any apprehension was eradicated by the RBB and it’s successes.
Making even a loss feel like a win with their unwavering spirit, the RBB almost makes the on-pitch result obsolete with the love they show for their team. Having said this, nothing compares to the raucous celebration a goal, let alone a win evokes within the RBB.
Much like the icing on an already delicious cake, a Wanderers goal makes the time in the RBB all the more salivating. When the chant “Let’s go (expletive) mental” erupts, you know things are going well and you have permission to lose yourself in the moment.
Unity is another trait the RBB manages to elicit through it’s chants and general message. The 80th minute Poznan and any chant requiring contact with another person is embraced by all in the RBB with enthusiasm. Linking arms with a stranger, you truly do feel part of something so much bigger than yourself.
While this terrific atmosphere does exist elsewhere at Pirtek Stadium, the sheer passion on display in the RBB is unrivalled. Standing tall, rain, hail or shine, those in the RBB don’t care if their legs are sore after a day of work and resist the urge to sit, realising they are contributing to something on such a vast magnitude.
Around the stadium, the same dedication simply doesn’t exist with many a fan preferring the comfort of their seat over raucous celebration.
I was one of the many in the RBB who looked down upon these supporters as lazy and as supposed ‘band wagoners’, but over time my attitude has changed and I now find myself among them.
My first taste of life from another stand came in the Wanderers first ACL clash, and boy did I savour it. Gifted the luxury of being able to sit, I was able to watch the game from not only a far greater angle but with my unwavering attention.
The RBB you see, in being so passionate and raucous, has transformed in to a cult of sorts – where everyone in Gate C is expected to be chanting loudly and proudly. While I love hearing an echoing chant as much as the next guy, I’m not one to scream my lungs off. I prefer to absorb the sounds than contribute to them.
Unfortunately over time the RBB sprouted it’s own enforcers of sorts who take it upon themselves to march up and down the rows ordering those transfixed by the game to focus on the chanting rather than on-field action.
These ‘enforcers’ are usually drunk. Nobody’s looking for their moment in the sun, but they sure did put an increasing dampener on my experience in the RBB. From day one I was there cheering on the Wanderers, only for these so called ‘football fans’ to turn up and say that I wasn’t supporting my team hard enough.
So busy looking to pick out those trying to focus on the game, many of these ‘enforcers’ rarely glimpse the game being played behind them – and they say I’m not a fan?
This culture of focusing more on the chanting then actually watching the game reached it’s height mid-way through last season with the so-called figure heads of the RBB telling us fans that if we didn’t start chanting louder they’d pack up and go home. Now what sort of fans are they?
I relish what the RBB represents for Western Sydney and the atmosphere it creates, but I find it ludicrous to think that some fans are putting chanting above actually supporting their team.
As a football fan I’m inclined to always put the game above all else. Even though I love the increasingly great atmosphere of A-League games, I’m more focused on what happens on the pitch than off it. Now is that such a sin?
Some in the RBB would have you believe it is, so I have been gradually warming to the idea of a move away as a way to escape my apparent sins. Elsewhere I can watch the game without a flag or over-zealous chanter blocking my way, albeit at the cost of having to watch enviously on at the sheer synchronisation and mass of people the RBB maintains.
At the end of the day unfortunately the RBB has made me chose between atmosphere or the game, and I’m one to favour the game.
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