- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
AFL scribe Jon Ralph caused an online kerfuffle following a Sunday Herald Sun article in which he extolled the virtues of last weekend’s A-League derby and, in particular, the atmosphere experienced at his first Melbourne Victory versus City clash.
“Frenzied fans envy of AFL”, claimed a breakout box just above the headline, Fandemonium.
Ralph enthusiastically described the spectacle as a “riot of colour and movement and activity and energy… A fan experience with more vibrancy and atmosphere than what the AFL stumped up last year”.
Port Adelaide, now that they have a winning team and new home ground, took steps last year to create a ‘Portress’, and Essendon are seeking fans to assist with their own ‘active supporter’ area. Indeed, Ralph wrote “Now we wait and see what the AFL has in store with its fan engagement measures this season”.
That Ralph is looking to the AFL to do something really misses the point. For what Melbourne’s North Terrace have created over the past decade has been fan-driven; an organised, collectivist, grassroots cause which champions independence of the club, and the FFA, and any outside forces.
The AFL, and more so its fans, must be wary of trying too hard to come up with gimmicks which are forced, just as a means to enhance the ‘matchday experience’ (awful term, that is).
What the North Terrace has created hasn’t come about easily. The group have been smeared by police, intimidated by security, and at times misunderstood by those within the game. Some individuals have suffered unjust stadium bans and others have been subject of spying by Hatamoto, a company which doubles as an anti-terrorism firm.
The fan scene in the A-League, and particularly in Melbourne, has evolved organically through all this. It feels real. It wasn’t created around a marketing table and whiteboard. Indeed, the one-in-all-in siege mentality has inspired intoxicating camaraderie.
Not just clapping seals, as a collective North Enders claim, as best they can, influence over the club, the matchday environment and the mentality of fans. The political, militant edge and the mere act of going to a game make you feel alive. It is a response to the corporatisation of sport; a living, breathing, chanting, drum-beating community.
Unsurprisingly, Ralph condemned the use of flares in his piece. I don’t want this piece and the below-the-line comments section to focus on pyrotechnic marine safety devices, so I’ll keep this paragraph brief.
Plenty of kids love them and I’m yet to see evidence that they deter families from attending matches. To the best of my knowledge, only teens acting alone smuggle and ignite them in the North Terrace. For better or worse, they are part of the game, and damage caused is usually negligible.
Now, back to the reason of the article. Comparatively, the atmosphere at some – certainly not all – AFL games can be sleep inducing. I go to watch my team play weekly, and hearing the players shouting is always a sign that the crowd aren’t sufficiently involved.
Other than administrators letting go and allowing atmosphere to be created organically by supporters, there are other factors which make it hard to see AFL atmospheres matching what we have at A-League games. One is the lack of fan segregation. Many punters enjoy going to games with barrackers of other clubs, and that in itself is fine, but it deprives the spectacle of that us-against-them tribal element, so crucial in the A-League stands and indeed in football crowds the world over. You feel so much more inhibited when surrounded by those who aren’t your own kind.
Furthermore, so called ‘ground rationalisation’ has meant footy has lost much of what it had. Teams have lost big parts of their identities as Moorabbin, the Whitten Oval, Victoria Park, Windy Hill and so on have fallen by the wayside. When I go to Etihad Stadium to watch the Bulldogs play on a Saturday, it’s hard to feel any sense of home when I know Essendon played a ‘home’ game there on the Friday night, and St Kilda or North Melbourne will on the Sunday.
The AFL has every right to make up lost ground in the atmosphere stakes, but as they go about trying to rectify that, I’d urge them to not try and control it, to let it develop spontaneously, and keep the matchday experience real.
Who’s in your ultimate team? Pick the best team and compete with other fans for daily prizes on Draftstars. For the best odds on the game try out Aussie bookmaker PlayUp. Think. Is this a bet you really want to place? Set a deposit limit.