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Rebecca Wilson is right in a very wrong way

24th November, 2015
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Some fans can ruin the game for everyone. (AAP Image/Dean Lewins)
Roar Guru
24th November, 2015
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6434 Reads

Any argument about the misbehaviour of football fans always descends into something akin to monkeys flinging poo at each other.

Rebecca Wilson has waded neck-deep into these murky waters in recent days, nuking a hornet’s nest with a report about banned A-League supporters and an essay decrying the behaviour of football fans and the FFA’s response to said behaviour.

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So, in a mostly justifiable response, football fans have been carpet bombing Wilson and publisher The Daily Telegraph with digital and social media vitriol.

Again and again, Wilson and her colleagues at The Telegraph have trotted cliched and – for university graduates who, having studied journalism, one would hope would have a grip on critical thinking – deliberately misleading and inaccurate attacks on football and their fans. More often than not they have been caked in classism and racism.

As blogger Andrew Elder, writing about Pauline Hanson’s latest media appearance, said:

“The people now running commercial TV/radio find it more rewarding to hang onto the audiences they have rather than take the risk on a broader, more representative audience that may never embrace those media so ardently as its ageing, Anglo-Celtic, politically inflexible existing audience.”

“When there are racist outbursts on content that commercial TV/radio really cares about, such as sport or entertainment, they are slow to act. They are quick to play up a ‘controversy’ that is never resolved, but it isn’t in their interest to shut down what they consider a genuine expression from their audience.”

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The same could be applied to tabloid newspapers like The Telegraph. These reports have the chief intent of causing controversy and, like moths to a flame, football fans react with fury.

This circus has been circling for years, and there have been articles with a similar tone to this one. For instance, Joe Gorman wrote a well-balanced piece for the Leopold Method almost exactly two years ago, as well as Cappuccino for The Roar early in 2014.

And yet, through the haze of monkey poo, there’s an underlying truth to Wilson’s essay. There’s a problem with football fan culture, a problem not shared by the other codes.

Australia isn’t a country renowned for colourful atmospheres at sport, but atmospheres in the A-League are distinctly different. There’s a loud, determined and well-organised fan support that goes beyond holding up banners, waving oversized pom-poms, singing the team song and chanting a team’s name at all domestic football games.

However, this organisation has its obvious negative consequences.

A block of supporters chanting in unison something derogatory is obviously far more intimidating, threatening and powerful than a single fan doing the same thing. Everybody understands that it’s far easier to get away with bad behaviour in a group than it is alone.

Another question to ponder is why do football games overwhelmingly feature flares?

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Additionally, there are other negative aspects of football fan culture that aren’t particular to football but still regularly happen at games. Vicious abuse of the referees – I’ve stood next to a father, child nearby, who screwed up the coke he was drinking so he could throw the half-full bottle at the referee (he hit the back of the advertising hoarding, fortunately) – and the typical brawl in the stands are but two examples of such things.

These examples listed in the paragraph above happen at all sports – and football fans have been quick to draw comparisons to events in the NRL and AFL – but that still doesn’t stop the fact that they’re bad, and when they happen at football games it’s bad for everyone involved and a disgrace to the game.

Despite her valid criticism of fan behaviour at A-League games, Wilson is clearly quite happy at putting her name on reports and arguments that are deliberately misleading and have the prime intent of stirring controversy.

It really shouldn’t be a surprise that she went on Alan Jones’s radio program to discuss her work; and furthermore, when Jones drew an analogy between the FFA and the Paris attacks, she agreed with him.

It would be a relief to see football fans repudiate Wilson for her tone, while admitting there are some behaviour issues at A-League games. In other words, it would be a relief to see football fans rise above the monkey poo-flinging, and become the human in the debate.

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