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Adelaide United's fans seen during the AFC Champions League semifinals second leg match between Bunyodkor and Adelaide United in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Wednesday, Oct. 22, 2008. AP Photo/Anvar Ilyasov
It’s been a bit of a gloomy start to the new A-League campaign. Crowds have stagnated. Certain pitches are a disgrace. And now the mainstream media has a new show reel of ‘crowd violence’ to dredge up every time football threatens the status quo.
The so-called ‘clashes’ between Adelaide United and Melbourne Victory supporters last Friday night were the usual storm-in-a-teacup stuff.
Footage of police dragging prepubescent teens away from rival supporters kept the cameras rolling outside the ground, whilst the sound of chanting fans apparently had some Adelaide citizens scared witless.
It was all reminiscent of those stupid “World’s Worst” TV shows – grainy stock footage, a shaky camera operator and the lingering sense of disappointment that what you’d just seen wasn’t half as shocking as first promised.
But while genuine A-League fans can sit and snigger at the benign nature of what the mainstream press calls ‘crowd violence,’ the fact is that such imagery strikes at the heart of the A-League – no matter how inane it is.
Yes, we can gnash our teeth at the injustice of it all. 29 fans ejected from an A-League game seems to herald the breakdown of Australian society, but large-scale fan violence at the cricket is a mere example of Aussie larrikinism.
But what we can’t ignore is the fact that morons who lob projectiles and fans who scuffle with police give the A-League a reputation it can ill-afford.
Any regular A-League fan knows that a football game in Australia is a safe and relatively fun place to be. Trouble is, many members of Australian society do not.
It is they who are left tut-tutting at the back page headlines and sensationalist media reports – concerned for the safety of loved ones and friends should they ever run into an A-League fan in a dark alley.
Without an accurate basis of comparison, they often take at face value reports of hooliganism and mistake active, vocal support for the threat of imminent violence.
More importantly, many have young sons and daughters who play the game, or run businesses that might otherwise plough money into football were it not for the spectre – real or imagined – of crowd violence.
In his fascinating account of Italian fan culture “A Season With Verona,” English novelist Tim Parks reveals that many Italian ‘Ultras’ give up their unique version of active support the minute they acquire a love interest.
Forgive the crass generalisation, but it looks like one or two of the cretins who drag the A-League’s name into the gutter could do with a hair wash and a good old-fashioned girlfriend.
And – lest I be accused of such – I’m not some prudish version of a football wowser either.
I’ve stood on the terraces at high-security games in Germany on countless occasions, and once had the unenviable pleasure of being in the Swiss capital Bern the night visiting Feyenoord fans turned the city centre into their own version of “Kristallnacht.”
I’ve just never understood the point of ripping a flare in support of my team. If you want to play with distress signals, why not join the Navy?
The fact of the matter is that the A-League does not have a major problem with fan violence or crowd safety. A few isolated incidents and some scruffy-haired Elijah Wood-wannabes does not a Taylor Report make.
But with the A-League battling gallantly to muscle its way into the consciousness of the wider Australian public, the last thing it needs is a bunch of fringe-dwelling lunatics ruining it for everyone else.
I’m not the first to say it, and I doubt I’ll be the last – but I wish some of the boneheads within our ranks would find a new hobby.
Otherwise we run the risk of the A-League being remembered for everything that it’s not – an unsafe and unfriendly environment in which to watch football.