They’re a Wired Mob

Bruce Guthrie’s recent article in The Age newspaper goes straight to an issue close to my heart. Crowd behaviour at the footy.

It’s become topical since Collingwood president Eddie McGuire confronted his club’s cheer squad over “dehumanising” abuse of a St Kilda player. McGuire publicly stated that there’s no place for that sort of behaviour, and went on to suggest that offenders should be kicked out of the ground.

But it’s not just the players that endure such taunts. Guthrie relates a recent experience where, after objecting to some foul language, the perpetrator promptly told him that he could say what he liked, as he’d paid his money.

Over the years, I’ve experienced similar ugly incidents. A few years ago I was sitting with my aunt, uncle, and cousin’s pre-pubescent son. My cousin was absent for some reason that escapes me now. We used to sit in the back row (or nearby) of ground level because my uncle has limited mobility.

Some time during the first quarter I had to ask the two guys (fellow Carlton supporters) directly behind me to watch their swearing, please. I hesitated to do so because, as any sensible patron knows, altercations are best avoided at the footy; just ask the father of Melbourne player Nathan Jones.

From what I recall, the swearing wasn’t vehement, but it was constant, uttered every time the “wrong” decision was made, or the players erred, or the other team scored. And it was clearly audible. Perhaps I might have put up with it on my own, I don’t know, but I was particularly conscious of my young cousin having to hear it, let alone it being unpleasant for my aunt.

So I asked. The response? “We’re at the foo-deee!”

I can’t recall what I said next, but it would have been along the lines of “So what?” Why on earth do some people think that anything goes at the footy? Does the antagonist of Guthrie’s tale hurl abuse in the cinema when he pays money to see a movie? How about restaurants, or pubs, or public transport?

Leading figures and commentators from the game (in addition to McGuire) regularly denounce such foul antics, and scoreboards at both Melbourne venues consistently display a warning about foul language each week. Why do these bozos remain deaf to what the larger football community acknowledges as a major issue.

There’s even a mobile number you can text if the trouble persists. Guthrie believes this is problematic, as it encourages patrons to dob rather than deal with it, and may make security staff more complacent, relying on public alerts instead of confronting anything suspect directly. But I disagree. It’s a comfort to know it’s there, that the AFL does take the issue seriously and will act if required – not that I’m yet to test the system. I have seen security from time to time (my main focus is the game, after all), and trust that they will step in when needed; they can’t keep an eye on everybody, so it’s reasonable that they rely on the public to inform them.

And I have anecdotal evidence. Once my antagonists had poo-pooed my request they, after a brief break, returned to usual form. Quarter breaks probably helped to douse some of the heat from the situation, but they clearly didn’t regard me seriously and, like mischievous kids, openly enjoyed flouting the “rules.”

Seeing red, I got up to seek support. I may have even heard some genuine worry from my antagonists (Shit!). Unable to see any uniformed police, I then spied a middle-aged man wearing a visible wire and speaking into a phone, or perhaps it was a walkie-talkie. Was he “security”? He wasn’t, but he wanted to know why I asked. So I briefly explained about the bad language, and how it didn’t stop, despite repeated requests.

And so he followed me back, where I pointed out the offenders, and then returned to my seat. Bleating their objections, they sounded more like sheepish schoolboys – “It wasn’t me, Mister” – than mature adults. But it stopped. Shortly, my Auntie alerted me that they’d left.

Make no mistake, I ain’t no wowser. I can swear with the best of them, and sometimes it just can’t be helped; we’re all fallible. And as Guthrie says, whilst it’s reasonable to make some allowances for the passion inspired by sport, it “shouldn't descend to the level of a biker buck's night.”

When that man came to my aid, I felt vindicated; still, it required some effort to uphold a standard. Perhaps if more people protested, these ugly supporters might be more inclined to heed the warning in the first place. Perhaps. Next time, I will resort to the texting option (I hadn’t been aware of it at the time), and trust that the AFL will make good on its service.

Our game is often celebrated for its ability to appeal to all types of people, to transcend any so-called cultural divide. And yet clearly, the message has gotten stuck in the crack. Now’s the time for all clubs to take it on board and spread the word. Guthrie suggests signage at the ground is a good way to go, for starters. As he notes, the onfield antics have been cleaned up, now it’s time to deal with the stands.

Why follow a team?

Martin Flanagan, an essayist, novelist and columnist for The Age, sees Australia, and perhaps more specifically, Victoria, through the lens of Australian rules football. His writings on footy focus on the local, sidelines and peripheral stories that happen around footy. He writes in search of an essence of footy; looking for what it means to people who are either on the margins of the mainstream or central figures on the periphery. His novel The Call told the life story of Tom Wills - one of the pioneers of footy - while, The Game in a Time of War, written around 2001, places footy in a broader social political context. One essay is based around a visit to the footy with Waheed Aly - a now prominent writer, lawyer and columnist. At the time, however, Aly was just another (dispirited) Richmond fan. Flanagan, perhaps, sees footy as one of the archetypal Australian experiences. But his imagining of footy differs from that of popular shows which emphasise singular stories of great achievements and macho-ness. Flanagan is interested in the life stories of footy-individuals and what they reveal about both the game and contemporary Australian society. Flanagan doesn't seem to reveal the team that he supports - if indeed he does support one particular team. This seems to be a wise choice: he can jump from team to team, documenting the stories of its players, supporters, and club workers. Other writers and commentators on the other hand are easily identifiable as supportors of particular teams: Caroline Wilson with Richmond, Rohon Connolly with Essendon, Gerard Whately with Geelong, and Tim Lane with Carlton.

Flanagan's ability to jump from team to team, fan to fan, contrasts with the image of the diehard fan - endlessly supporting a team that loses perpetually. In a recent story on an elderly fan (on a club's official website), she said she had been to every game (except for interstate matches) for the past 50 years. This period covers about 20 years of success and 30 years of drudgery. Would be better if 30 years of drudgery was followed by 20 years of success? Perhaps. One's team is like a character in a bildungsroman: the team is a hero who dreams of becoming great. Efforts are made, support is enlisted, endless and repetitive training is carried out before going headlong into the world (i.e. the great competition of the Ay Ef El). If my team were a novel it would be somewhere between a mix of Cervantes's [The Ingenious Gentleman] Don Quixote [of La Mancha] and Goethe's The Sorrow's of Young Werther. It is a team that is endlessly hopeful, idealistic and convinced of the accuracy of its own planning, before it spirals downwards into a suicidal depression. The temptations of Flanagan's method abound.

The competition, however, is a novel without end and without a narrator who is in possesion of any single moral compass to direct his (her!) sense of justice. (And perhaps that is why at the end of yet another loss, some teams' supportors can be heard, whining 'it's not fair'). Yep, it sure ain't. A team, like Don Quixote, can find countless ways to fail, to screw up the plans. The commentators, wisely looking on in the manner of Sancho Panza, explain exactly to the letter why it was already written in fate prior to the game. It ain't fair and it sure as hell doesn't (and won't) have a happy ending.

VFL Merchandising Exercise #1

I barrack for the Blues. I barrack for them because my mum does. That's what you do. It's hereditary, you know.

When we were kids, I said to my younger brother, “You follow Melbourne, because that's dad's team, and I'll go with Carlton, with mum.” The split seemed right – the girls together, and the boys. Besides, Carlton were flying.

But before all that, we went shopping with the cousins.

In an ample discount barn, the mothers spot a bargain: big, plastic shopping bags, all shiny and white, with VFL team insignia on the front. “Which one would you like?” All us little girls want the swan. What else are you going to pick when you're eight years old?

Dilemma ensues amongst the mums. "He’ll have a fit." "Jack* won't mind, he's South Melbourne anyway." Judiciously, my mother tries to direct me towards the Carlton bag. It's a caricature of a man with bad hair trying to look ferocious with the ball. I am not persuaded.

"It doesn't make sense," my young mind must have enquired. "What's a Blue anyway? " Nearby, Janice* is in tears because "your father will be furious if you come home with anything not Fitzroy."

I stick to my guns because I can. Because my mum knows that a shiny plastic bag is nothing in the grand scheme of things. Because next week, I'll have moved onto some other toy, book, gadget. Because this sport has barely registered in my not so wide little world.

The purchases are made. I am delighted, but feel for the miserable Janice stuck with her wretched Lions bag.

She needn’t have worried. Soon enough the bags would tear and end up in the bin. The Swans would move north to the harbour town in the interests of a national competition. And Fitzroy, too, after battling on for another decade or so would eventually morph into the Brisbane Lions, and finally taste success.

In the meantime, I’d seen the error of my ways and become True Blue.

*Their real names? No way.

The Third Team

Footy commentators often use metaphors borrowed from boxing to describe footy matches. Teams are described as either looking to land the knock out blow, or to get up off the canvas. Usually my team has just been struck with a knock out blow, or it is the one that cannot get up off the canvas. In boxing, the referee is nicknamed as the 'the third man in the ring'. The three umpires of a footy match, are the 'third team' on the field. They are usually hated by both sets of supporters. But, at other times the Arabic and Chinese saying: 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend' applies. 'The third team' of the footy-field is a little more complex than 'the third man' of a boxing ring: for, he (there is yet to be a woman field umpire at AFL level) is three. And thus, this third team is fragmented, divided and multiple. The three members of the team, apply different interpretations to all the possibilities and variables that occur throughout a game. Moreover, if a 'bad' decision by an umpire is made in one team's goal square, with 2 seconds on the clock left, and the team that has been awarded the free-kick is down by 3 points, then, the consequences of the 'bad' decision are somewhat extreme. Such an event could be compared to a bad free-kick being awarded to X team in the middle of the ground when Y is winning by 80 points - only a pedant would notice or care.

Supporters often shout that an umpire was 'wrong'. Or, in more polite terms, say that their interpretation was wrong or incorrect. Some say that a decision was 'right' in terms of 'the letter of the law', but that it goes against 'the spirit of the law'. The one problem is, is that whether or not the umpire was right or wrong doesn't matter: his decision is final. It applies immediately. Even when a shocking decision has been made, you see the good players react immediately to change their position, rather than remonstrate with the umpire (which could give away a 50'meter penalty). The umpire performs and implements an absolute truth upon the game of footy. The umpires (all three of them!) are Macchiavellian dictators: against us at one moment, for them at the next. The umpires do not change decisions; they are irreversible, complete, final. Complaints are not acceptable. The umpires cannot be wrong because there is no alternative to their decision. To play a game of footy is to play against the oppositon and the umpires. The rules that are applied are those that are in the rule book and whatever the umpire decides at any given moment during game. Complaints regarding umpiring and poor decisions is the discourse of losers.

Coaching, Playing

Jake King is one of the players who has come to symbolise the re-emergence of Richmond as a competetive team in the AFL. He was initially popular with Richmond fans, yet over the period of a year or two, he became the source of some derision for his poor disposal. For this he was hardly unique in a team famous for its inability to kick it to their teammates. In a poor team playing poorly, supporters love to have a player who symbolises what is going wrong with their team. Jake King was not only derided by Richmond fans, but he was seen by supporters of other teams as someone who was playing beyond his grade. A player who all that had going for him was his puffed out chest and self-befief. He was further evidence for some who argued that Richmond didn't have the quality of players to make it as an AFL team.

At one point during the first half of the 2010 season, Terry Wallace commented that due to Richmond's poor recruiting, the team had been set back several years. This was quite rich coming from someone who had coached the team for five years. I don't think he mentioned in the same breath that he had made a few mistakes. (Recently Wallace has belatedly accepted responsibility for some poor decisions.) A columnist for The Age wrote that Richmond should apply for some kind of special assistance from the AFL. After win loss ratio of 0-11, Richmond beat Port Adelaide. They would also beat Sydney and Fremantle. After one pre-season and 11 weeks of playing together, Damien Hardwick had managed to create a team that looked like it was interested in playing together. Hardwick chose players he believed in. Some like Ben Nason, didn't look like much, but he played with energy and wanted the ball. Jake King played more often in the forward line.

I don't believe that players such as Luke McGuane, Jake King, Tyrone Vickery, Kelvin Moore, Alex Rance, Robin Nahas, all suddenly learnt to be good footballers the moment Terry Wallace stepped out the door and Damien Hardwick walked in. I find it hard to believe that all of these players (and others) could get to AFL level and not be able to play the game relatively well. Hardwick's contribution has been to establish a clear game plan, give clear roles to each player and to instill a great sense of purpose and ownership in the direction of the club. He also made the observation that 'we can't change a player's skills too much, but we can change the decisions they make'. Players matter, but, how particular players are used and how they are encouraged to work on the strengths also matters. A player with great natural ability like Brendan Fevola is useless if he doesn't have the ability to manage himself. A Jake King or a Robin Nahas who wants to play and to learn to get better is far more useful.