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There has been plenty of good news from the A-League of late, from sell-out crowds to free-to-air TV deals and the re-signing of some key marquee players. But it seems like the surge in popularity is treading on a few toes, particularly down south.
It’s been eight years since Simon Hill wrote his seminal ‘Smell The Fear’ articles on the persistent slurs football attracts from the mainstream media.
Yet it seems the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Lately the reporting from Melbourne tabloid The Herald Sun – Australia’s highest circulating newspaper and one well known for its extensive coverage of the AFL – has been more vociferous than ever in its coverage of football’s perceived flaws.
In particular, instances of seats being damaged at Etihad Stadium and flares being ripped at AAMI Park have attracted swift reportage from the tabloid.
But it’s a couple of strongly-worded editorials which deserve further scrutiny, despite the preference of some football fans to simply ignore them.
The first is Rita Panahi’s piece from the start of the month on ‘ugly soccer’ spoiling the image of the sport.
It’s behind a paywall now, but for those who missed it the highlights include her labelling football fans as flare lighters, insisting that the sport is called “soccer in this country,” citing unnamed others to suggest that “violence is an entrenched part of the global game,” claiming that football crowds are segregated “for their own protection” and perhaps most pointedly, writing that “(w)hen someone causes trouble during an AFL game, the majority tend to turn on them.”
Panahi is an unknown name to most football fans but a quick Google search suggests that riling up the masses is her usual stock in trade.
Her follow-up piece on interacting with football fans on Twitter was entitled “Soccer trolls’ abuse proves how right I was” – though reports from many football fans claimed she simply blocked anyone who asked her a question about the A-League.
More than two weeks after the Melbourne derby, the Sunday Herald Sun published a piece from Baz Blakeney called “Virtue in a nation’s footy code,” which climaxed with the suggestion that if you’re not proud of Aussie Rules you should “rack off” and “take your round football with you.”
Blakeney is an artist whose latest exhibition is called “The Defining Image: 150 Years of Football” (he’s referring to Aussie Rules) and he freely admits his love of a game which he implies is Australia’s national code.
Both Panahi and Blakeney’s pieces share a couple of things in common.
They’re both from Melbourne, they both extol the virtues of Aussie Rules, they both misconstrue the segregation of football crowds and they both infer that the round-ball game is a foreign interloper on Australian soil.
In his masterful ‘Smell The Fear, Part 2’ follow-up eight years ago, current Fox Sports commentator Hill touched on a key element of this type of reporting – race.
In her piece, Panahi highlighted how a Collingwood member had his membership revoked for racist abuse but goes on to write that “(e)ven the World Cup has been mired in violence and racial tensions” and implies that “vile racial taunts” are commonplace in most top-flight European leagues.
Blakeney says he “can vaguely understand the old ethnic woes that are inherent in soccer” but says there should be “no bitter rivalries or blood feuds” in the A-League because “(t)his is Australia.”
The inference seems to be that if your roots are from somewhere else, you’re likely to be harbouring some sort of pathological race-based hatred and the best way to deal with it is to assimilate and watch Aussie Rules.
There’s not much logic in either Panahi or Blakeney’s pieces, both of which ignore the fact the AFL remains widely unloved and unwatched outside of Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia.
But the most odious aspect of both is that they deign to tell us which sports we should be watching at all.
What is it that these ‘soccer haters’ are so afraid of?
Maybe it’s the fact that in spite of such openly hostile media coverage, vast swathes of Melbourne’s sports-going public are switching on to the A-League.
Can you smell the fear?