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Melbourne Victory’s active supporters are claiming to have been victimised by their club, stadium operators, FFA, its security contractors and the police forces of all the mainland states.
Why would anyone associated with football be mistreating its highly valued active supporters? Surely the police have enough on their hands already with outlaw biker gangs and serial killers? The picture doesn’t seem to check out.
According to one Victory supporter, that’s because most of it’s missing.
James, a Victory foundation member and one of the 90-plus per cent of Victory’s members not aligned with a supporter group, says there is scant regard around the club for active supporters. “No one objects to active support per se, but that’s not to say there’s a lot of respect for our active supporters.”
It goes back to the club’s inception, he says: “It was a shambles at first, lots of queues, lots of inconvenience … too many supporters should have been a good problem for the club to have … a few of the supporter groups made sure it wasn’t.”
James says the supporter groups first flexed their muscles at Olympic Park, Victory’s original match venue, insisting upon preferential treatment on the grounds they were active supporters. “The stands were full, there was hardly any decent general-admission viewing but for the north terrace and they reckon they’d earned the right to have entry to it restricted to only those they approved of.”
When Victory couldn’t accommodate their demands, he says, “they ramped it up, made anonymous threats to the club and on internet forums about taking matters into their own hands to get rid of the blow-ins.” When more security was assigned to the north terrace to forestall trouble, he says active supporters arced up again.
“That was clear evidence they were being victimised. It’s been the pattern ever since—a refusal to discriminate in their favour is victimisation and a deliberate attempt to undermine football culture, which is their signal to hop online and savage someone’s reputation.”
The club moved to the largely all-seated Docklands and acceded to active supporters lobbying for their own area by introducing “Home End Membership”. “But that was insulting to football culture because now it wasn’t general admission and active supporters couldn’t bring their mates along any more. Get it? The blow-in they wanted out of their area previously was the guest of another active supporter. They saw that as being the club’s responsibility to sort out because it was too hard for them.”
He says Victory’s supporter groups tolerate misbehavior so they can exploit it. “They need some idiots, they’re the only bargaining chip they’ve got. It’s blackmail, basically. ‘Grant us privileges or we’ll claim victimisation and make the club look bad.’ They must fall off their chairs when the likes of Les Murray and Foster legitimise the rubbish they go one with.
“It confuses absolutely everyone, the smokescreen about football culture.” He disputes the notion that supporters groups are the essence of football. “How can that be? Soccer thrives elsewhere without gangs in the stands taunting the cops, ripping flares and chanting filth at opposition teams.”
He disputes the theory that Victory’s attendances have fallen because of the authorities’ treatment of its supporters; he says that’s more likely due to active supporters’ disregard for other supporters. “Everyone suffers when security and the cops are on a hair-trigger but idiots see that as a triumph, they think it proves their case. Against the Jets they were running around the stadium and ripping flares around families and trying to get them caught up in the police response.”
The only solution, he says, is for the terrace to police itself. “But that’s not going to happen, the idiots say it’s against their code of ethics. That’s ultimately what separates them from other supporters — not having the guts to tell a mate to pull his head in.”
James would like to see go ahead Victory’s active supporters’ threatened boycotts of the forthcoming A-League finals, “so long as they’re advertised by both the supporter groups and FFA. Ask the question: Do football supporters prefer the atmosphere of a half-full stadium with supporter groups playing cat-and-mouse with security and the cops, or a full stadium without them?
“Give real football supporters out there the opportunity to make a clear statement about that and see what happens then.”
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