- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
It was posted, rather quietly and with little explanation on their Facebook page, that the Melbourne Victory supporters group the North Terrace would be ceasing their role as the organisational entity for the active Victory support.
According to their statement, no leadership will be present in the north end from now on, nor will any North Terrace materials, flags, banners and the like.
It appears – although only alluded to in the statement – that a disagreement between the supporters group and the club revolving mainly around the enforcement of allocated seating could be the cause for the retreat.
Satellite issues involving isolated – but inevitably magnified – incidents have also been mooted as contributing reasons for the exodus. A flare was ripped at the Melbourne Derby, and there were smatterings of shrill reports goggle-eyeing at some scuffle that broke out following the Adelaide match.
All very tiresome, not to mention nebulous in nature, to the point where any conclusions drawn from it aren’t worth considering. But, the NT statement also made very clear that any support attending future Victory games in that part of the stadium is very much not associated with their group, which casts their decision into a light of self-preservation. Perhaps they are erecting a stone wall between their group and any future nasty behaviour, the sort that the FFA has threatened to dock points over.
A message to their own rogue elements? Or perhaps it’s more a general statement of protest, that the sort of atmosphere the A-League has actively highlighted as a badge of honour isn’t compatible with the sorts of restrictions they feel they’re having to survive under, namely the allocated seating issue. These are just guesses because, honestly, it’s hard to say, based on what we have available.
That noise at the top of the North Terrace!! #MelbDerby #ALeague pic.twitter.com/vG7nn9Olcy
— Hyundai A-League (@ALeague) October 15, 2016
But it is indicative of a general disharmony in football worldwide, between the increasingly corporatised clubs and FAs, sanitised by the financial pursuit of the mainstream ticket-buying public, and the supporters, coated in the residue of old, whose bellowing and rollicking might upset this new clientele.
The Sydney Derby is compared romantically to those that light up the Turkish or Argentinian leagues, but the moral panic that ripples out from flare incidents regularly approaches hysteria. Clubs want a fiery, incandescent atmosphere at their home matches, although not literally fiery and incandescent.
It’s also happening at the moment at West Ham, in the London Stadium, a resplendent ground I have recently been able to visit. Punch-ups have occurred in the stands, vast sloping shelves within which are a huge array of spectators are scattered. Before kick-off the crowd are told in huge emblazoned letters on the big screen to sit down in seated areas, knowing full well that some supporters will stand throughout the match.
Throughout the stodgy contest with Sunderland on Saturday, individuals would turn to look behind them, up through the tiered seating, urging people to stand and sing with them, turning away disgusted when they didn’t. They must peer around at the shiny white surfaces, the gourmet burger trucks, the premium lounges and lament this new sterile, palatable hell they’re in.
The issue causes internal fighting within the supportership, as much as it does between fans and clubs or governing bodies. Fans everywhere enjoy the quality of life upgrades modernity brings, or the increased transfer funds, but they don’t want the richness of history forgotten in the process. Heading into the London Stadium, you stroll past impeccably applied stencils, painted in club colours, of Bobby Moore. It occurs to you at that moment how woefully short a Banksy pastiche falls in eulogising the memory of God.
There are Melbourne Victory ultras out there who think a derby without a flare is like a birthday cake without candles. There are others, just as dedicated, who would back a Draconian witch-hunt to ban flare-rippers for life. The dissonance in play here is the same in principle to the fans who think that those who sit down for most of the match should be at home with prawn sandwiches, it’s just taken to the extremities of the argument.
This is not, I don’t think, simply a matter of not being able to have one without the other; cracking atmospheres at football matches can thrive under modern rules. The relentless roll toward a corporate future can avoid crushing the beloved – but grubby – past into the dirt. But the balance that must be teetered out between clubs, football associations, the police and vibrant supporter groups must be finely adjusted and entered into openly and cheerfully, or it risks being toppled into disarray.
This, peering as we must through the miasma, appears to be what has happened at Melbourne Victory, and one wonder how different the home games of the league’s best supported club will be without them.