Must A-League fans be treated like criminals?

Face it, the cops don't like ethnics and will do anything to try and brutalise them.

footballGrrl - Football is an emotional game. But the measure of the supporter group is not only of how loud and passionate they are but also by the quality, wit and imagination of the chants. Chants that are racist, sexist, etc have no place on the terrace or anywhere in public for that matter. Granted, there will always be risk of hearing profanities heard at a game and mums and dads expect a bit of this when they take their kids to any game of football of any code. The least we can expect is not having to hear the "c" word sung by 100 twits.

footballGrrl Difficult balancing act & agree. As I mentioned in an earlier post singing chanting is part of football. Although an older supporter I expect to see atmosphere created by those who chant, sing bring in colourful banners/flags etc. Its part of football culture. I said previously I grew up on the aggressive male crowds of English football. Swearing was part of the game. But it offended no one because the vast majority of the crowd were working class males. However as we know its very different here & Football culture has to be adapted to Australian conditions. Little Billy is the future of football. So how do we keep him without offending his parents. Perhaps there is a need to develop witty & clever chants that little Billy may himself want to chant.,along with his parents if so inclined. Also though as you say shouldnt just pander to them. Young adults are also part of football culture & their the ones who mainly contribute to it. Plus the other range of groups. Perhaps we need to develop our own witty ,clever Australian football culture,not take offs from places that are far different socially. Maybe then security wont be pandering to anybody,unless there willing to throw out 8 year olds joining in the chants. Who knows they could even develop a sense of humour. Then again thats stretching it a bit.

I have a feeling that a counter chant aimed at a group of people who are comfortable yelling loud profanities probably won't go down too well! But really, I generally have respect for the regular supporters of their A-league teams. These are the people who are paying the money for tickets, merchandise etc over and over and really, these people are the heart of our teams. I feel for the mummies who just want to take their little Billy out to a "soccer" match to have a wholesome good time, and I appreciate their distaste with some of the chants, but it's ridiculous for security to simply pander to the needs of families at the expense of losing real fans at games. It's also worth mentioning that the mummies shouldn't sit near the away stand or the hardcore supporters if the language makes them uncomfortable.

Well said footballGrrl - supporters who use the 'c' word in chant are pretty lame and all they do is embarass the club they are trying to support and their fellow supporters. I have never heard it ever used in Melbourne. I suggest you start a counter chant to point out how lame these supporters are. Good luck.

I too was at this game and thought the behaviour of security and police was appalling. People don't pay good money to be pushed around by a bunch of fascists. Having said that, certain people could lay off yelling out the "c" word. I don't see how this is supporting your team. It makes the security more zealous about picking out "troublemakers" and it makes all the mummies complain to security so that they'll be compelled to be even MORE active.

sadly, it only takes one idiot

GOLD

One of the best posts ive read. Thanks nufcmvfc for taking the time to write it.

Good point nf_001, Australain crowds i believe are one of the best behaved in the world, yet they are really treated like potential hooligans. Instead of innocent till proven guilty Australian football supporters are guilty before anything happens. Or is it that just BNE Suncorp suffers from ,i got the power and you dont, syndrone!

You reading this FFA. Suncorp tells us to remain quite please shhhh, FFA say create atmosphere. Judging by crowd numbers we choose to stay at home were we are not harrassed. Simple solution...behind the goals noisy. Across the park, not so noisy. Now please implement it!!!!!

Nice article Mike, I haven't been to Suncorp but nevertheless the Stadiums security personnels reputation precedes it I think one issue we have here is that Football suffers from the hysterical stereotype of European based hooliganism, added to that the perceptions stemming from the old NSL, whether they were warranted or not, this all adds to impact on often disproportionate responses or misaligned ones which makes the issue worse. In Australia football fans are not really violent at all (contrast the difference on reporting and treatment of local football fans and Socceroos fans at the World Cup etc?) One issue is that the culture of football fandom is different from that of other sports in Australia, so security personnel are also trained to deal with more individual style fan culture, where someone gets kicked out at the AFL and Cricket and everyone around sings "your'e goinjg home in the back of a divvy van" which is a contrast to the more collectively minded football fans whereby they are more likely to object as a group if they feel an individual is being treated unfairly. It requires different skills to handle this, the ebbs and flows are different. In terms of the Private Stadium Operators, they aren't going to consider it worth the cost to invest in re-training in their security personnel given how much the A League and Socceroos games relate to their events/revenue Added to that there is the Police forces who you mentioned, it is indeed in the public interest for them to have adequate training, especially given there are more international fixtures with overseas fans with the same supporter culture coming into the country, any mishandling of them will have consequences equally severe if not moreso thant he whole Indian students thing, especially if they are treated the same as I have seen A Legue fans Of course what people who don't realise if they have not been in it is that the Melbourne NT cop the worst treatment. Some people can carry on about flares which is the worst of it but flares are not hooliganism and treating it as such will lead to apathetic attitudes to self policing as well as "us and them problems" What gets me is that the A League "problems" from seasons 1-3 were easy to solve by people who had only half a clue about football crowd policing. Instead, to add to what Gweeds said I think the FFA made a poor policy decision in not engaging fans in the post season 3 security review and instead treating fans and in particular Melbourne fans as the "problem" rather than understanding that fans are where the solution lay, and they have hired people with no discernible previous football experience and there was no media scrutiny at all. While I can understand the football media specifically not wanting to go on about an issue so as to add to a beat up from hostile elements, the lack of scrutiny has had adverse consequences for football, unfortunately we may have already passed something of a "tipping point" and it will be very hard to bring What are the consequences, no incidents on the same "scale" as seasons 1-3 but I do think that the changing security dynamic is a contributory factor to lower crowds that has not been spoken of in the debate It was entirely predictable the approach wouldn't work, easier to apply the sledgehammer rather than finnesse, and all we have seen is the FFA try to over regulate, and when it hasn't worked they have stiffened the regulation so it looks more and more like England every day where people are arbitrarily banned, just look at what happened to Liverpool supporters who merely yelled "Yanks out" http://www.fsf.org.uk/news/Liverpool-fans-SOS-distress-signal.php?id=added|desc|10|. In A League terms, I know of a hard core well committed Melbourne fan who is certainly not considered a "hooligan" and who attends most if not all home games as well as many away games was given a ban until 2011 from all FFA events until 2011 because someone said he lit a flare or let one in. I was not in Newcastle so cannot comment on the incident specifically but it is worrying that it has now got to the point where if you are evicted merely because someone says you let a flare in even if there is no hard supportive evidence? you can get banned by the FFA for over a year in Australian Football Of course this has an impact on the people around, who know they aren't a hooligans or real troublemakers and don't like seeing committed people condascendingly treated as such, especially when there is a no engagement policy on the basis of some kind of widely perceived "we won't be dictated to by fans" attitude from the FFA, the result is a form of apathy to legitimately stupid behaviour and an apathy to the the "soulless" plastic franchise league in general, people are going to stand to get treated like the English fans do, they don't have the history of generations strong support for the clubs For my part I now have a bit of an aversion to attending "high risk" games both home and away which are the so called blockbusters, but Melbourne fans now have to walk through gauntlets of riot police for sporting events that were/are statistically one of the most unviolent in Australian sport (chanting fans does not equal trouble or a riot) or put up with being condascendingly filmed and "catalogued" by some unqualified consultancy firm who have counter terrorism-related background and can't suggest any proper solutions?

As an SFC regular i have to agree WB. The chants are great but the whole "XYZ b-tards fk off home" thing is just childish and unnecessary, particularly so on the days when there are only about 8 people in the visitors section ( plus 25 cops and security of course)

Got the 2001 British Lions tour of Australia DVD and it shows english lion Austin Healy on the bench jumping up and clapping when Jason Robinson scores against the Wallabies and a security personnel comes upto him and tells him to be quiet and sit down and this is at the Gabba.

Swans fan?

Like you I have concerns at the manner in which away fans seem to be targetted at A-League games. I fully support the eviction of trouble makers etc, but so many times I see totally unecessary and disproportionate methods used by security in response to situations where there need not be any need of force or beligerence. My major worry is that if they are unable to understand and deal appropriately with minor situations, will they be able to cope if something more serious does occur?

Having been to only a handful of SFC games, I am not the authority on the matter but I would like to share my disappointment with some of the slogans that come out of 'the cove'. All for enthusiasm but f & c bombs are taking it too far.

Good article. Of course is not only overzealous security/police that fans have to endure. The FFA has employed 'anti-terrorist' firm Hatamoto to take footage of fans etc. during matches as I wrote in an article on the Roar here: http://www.theroar.com.au/2009/09/23/why-the-ffa-treats-fans-like-terrorists/

I've heard stories of people not being allowed to take a tambourine into an A-League fixture. So now doubt the authorities need to chill out a bit.

Whilst i support the majority of what the FFA have done since formation on some issues like this they are over cautious about image. Need to recognise what creates a football atmosphere & "chill out" a little to quote the modern vernacular. If a couple of "incidents" set the game back, then its in a fragile state anyway.