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March 13, 2008: Melbourne Victory have just played their first match ever in the AFC Champions League. The match was memorable on the park for a 2-0 win, but for those in the stands it was equally memorable.
The crowd was 23,656 for a Wednesday night fixture, proving that the capacity for good midweek fixtures does exist in Australia. The atmosphere in the stands was highly colourful and vibrant as this clip shows.
What is striking is the context of the match, having come after a near season long stand-off that had been positively resolved through the club working to help facilitate the fans.
The crux of what was the ACL agreement was that the areas behind the goals were general admission with the exception of one bay, to which the active supporters were given stub-less tickets that gave them access to the bay (but not the stadium).
This allowed for the organised groups to enter the area first, put the banners, flags and other cultural items in place. Anyone with a problem of having a large flag in their face could simply move elsewhere and a potential conflict situation was avoided. A football culture in Australia was being facilitated.
An article by Peter Hanlon in The Age at the time quoted then North Terrace member Adam Young regarding some of the frustrations that had led to the tension with the club in the first place.
“There’s definitely been a lack of understanding of football culture,” said Adam Young, who, as a member of the Independent Terrace Alliance, is one of the melting pot of fans who support Melbourne under a variety of badges.
“There’s an inherent fear within the sporting culture in Australia of a group of a hundred people yelling.
“We just need, through our actions, to create a better understanding of football culture, one that’s not about intimidating yobbos, but about people who want to express their love of the sport.”
Young praises all who have been involved in “a huge process” of bridge-building that began in the club’s second, premiership-winning season. “We were pretty exasperated. Things we consider inherent rights and aspects of football support — like drums, like flags — were being denied. Ultimately all we’re trying to do is give Melbourne Victory support.”
The “ACL system” as it has been dubbed, allowed for a good mix in putting the ingredients for good quality, vibrant, well co-ordinated support in place.
Additionally, the fact the stub-less tickets were handed out at pre-match locations, helped to facilitate and strengthen the community that surrounded the club.
There was also the capacity for fans to spontaneously bring new friends along. The results speak for themselves as the video shows. Good for the fans, good for the club and good for football.
What is perhaps most compelling is that it worked well for all concerned because, as Peter Wilt would say, “the fans are in charge.”
The Hanlon article also quoted Adam Tennenini of the Blue and White Brigade. “I think people are starting to see that we’re not animals, we like to support our team like clubs do overseas,” said Adam Tennenini, spokesman for the Blue and White Brigade. He doles out tickets at a nearby pub as he speaks, warning the young fans who eagerly grabbed them, “No flares.”
This raises another central issue, much of the discourse that surrounds Melbourne fans surrounds the fact they don’t “self police” or “dob in” troublemakers and that there wouldn’t be problems if they just stopped people with flares.
It needs to be said that given the fact the ACL system allowed the North Terrace to influence the tone for the area – not only in terms of the nature and quality of support – it also allowed the North Terrace to bear influence in terms of what was considered acceptable behaviour. It is this style of crowd psychology based self-policing that Melbourne fans generally ascribe to. While not perfect it is one that ideally prevents problems occurring in the first place.
People in their commentary often contend of Melbourne fans that “there would be no problems if there weren’t flares.”
This simply is not quite accurate, as the quotes from Adam Young above shows, much of the tension has often revolved around items such as drums and large flags and it is not good to simplistically re-write history and pretend everything is about flares.
Perhaps it has always really been about the inherent fear that empowered active support was mutually exclusive to the passive family demographic, and wasn’t in the interests of the league.
Active support, while good for marketing, was something that needed to be controlled and contained and not to be something to be allowed to flourish lest we have the same problems that plagued the old NSL.
Alas, the “ACL system” was not allowed to last. Questions need to be raised as to why? Why were the fans not allowed to continue with the system used in the 2008 AFC Champions League campaign? Why have we come full circle?
It’s got to the stage where in the lead up to Melbourne’s third AFC Champions League campaign, the bridges between the FFA and the club on the one side – and fans on the other – are once again sadly burnt.
Why do fans still feel they are thought of and treated as ‘animals’ in this country for nothing more than wanting to ‘give Melbourne Victory support’?
Instead of having Terrace fans handing out tickets to fellow fans in a positive environment at pre-game social events, police from the riot squad with lists of supposed ‘troublemakers’ are turning up instead of new fans. Who is going to want to socialise in conditions?
How is the community around the A-League and hence the A-League fanbase supposed to grow in such an atmosphere of foreboding? It shouldn’t come as a surprise the A-League crowds are stagnating badly.
The fans have a serious right to ask questions of the administrators of this country. The issues from three years ago can be literally cut and pasted and applied to the current situation. Why?
Sadly, if an article by Tom Smithies is anything to go, Ben Buckley and co don’t seem to be any closer to providing an answer.
What’s the point in spending millions more on marketing if fans are either apathetic, uncomfortable about getting off the couch to walk past the riot police on the bridge between the train station and the ground, or if the allocated seating model is problematic and they can’t buy a cheap ticket for their friend in a half empty stadium, because absent season ticket holders own access to the seats?
Buckley’s comments do nothing to reassure fans that the FFA is learning from past mistakes, illuminating their thinking that the focal point in stimulating success football is based around marketing plans drawn up in a College Street office and not in the social sphere of the fan fraternity.
In closing I would like to once again quote from the soon to be infamous Peter Wilt: “Fans are in charge.”
Are the FFA willing to listen? Do the FFA want to listen or will they allow their obsession with overbearing control to drag the Australia’s domestic football league into its grave?
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