- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
The Fox Sports effects microphone has become a fair barometer of an A-League match’s excitement level. When you can hear the players and coaches cussing, it’s a fair indicator that the crowd isn’t really into the match. Sadly, it’s a common occurrence.
Aside from the raucous at Etihad Stadium caused by Melbourne’s passionate and large supporter base, and to a lesser extent at Hindmarsh Stadium by the ‘Red Army’, too often the Fox Sports effect microphone is allowed to pick up the obscenities on the field, either due to the lack of a decent crowd or, in the case of Brisbane and Sydney, the noise the crowd makes is difficult to pick up due to the expansive nature of the stadiums they play in.
Australia’s sporting crowd culture doesn’t involve too much singing and chanting, certainly not to the extent that European and South American football fans create such a vibrant atmosphere through song.
There is little time in the AFL, for example, for breaks in the play or lull periods, so crowds sit transfixed to the action – hollering and howling to the umpire, the noise level dictated by how unjust they feel his decisions are.
Songs are left til before and after the game – for the winning team only in the latter case.
Football, the round ball one, on the other hand, needs the jeers, cheers, songs and chants from the crowd to help build an atmospheric spectacle to accompany and lift what’s happening on the pitch. The A-League, with its often-slow pace, needs a vociferous crowd to help compensate this.
The silence of the crowd, deafening in many a stadium across the A-League, and the constant pickup from the effects microphone, only perpetuates the stereotype of a disinterested crowd caused by a league that isn’t entertaining its fans. That may be the case, but undoubtedly the shifting landscape of football crowds in Australia from the NSL to the A-League has brought a wider base to football matches – fans who aren’t accustomed to breaking out into song at other sporting events.
Certainly the atmosphere in some quarters of the A-League is well short of the halcyon NSL days.
Les Murray has said previously that Melbourne Victory’s embracing of all cultural backgrounds is why they differ in terms of attendances and atmosphere from the rest of the league.
The main contributing factors are obviously the sheer numbers the Victory can pull to home games, in addition to the close quarters of Etihad Stadium – particularly when the retractable seating was put in place.
With the move to the new rectangular CBD stadium next season, that atmosphere should on multiply.
It’s one of the key contributing factors as to why Victory games tend to have that extra element of excitement, and lets hope as crowds grow with these clubs, and a football culture starts pervading, the Fox Sports effects microphone can pick up more than just cursing.