BIZARRO WORLD

Merely weeks after Kevin Sheedy’s “Immigration Department” line (mix of perceived racism and xenophobia?) another prominent figure of the AFL world in the form of Eddie McGuire finds himself embroiled in another racism related controversy following an ill-judged remark regarding the promotion of the King Kong musical while on radio (http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/afl/collingwood-board-gives-eddie-mcguire-full-support-after-he-breaks-down-on-air-amid-fallout-from-king-kong-reference-to-adam-goodes/story-e6frf9jf-1226654068191).

What is probably most astonishing to me was that this came merely days after the major controversy surrounding a girl of 13 who called Indigenous star Adam Goodes an “Ape”. On that controversy I can’t pick what is more astonishing aspect between the fact that it was uttered by a 13 year old girl or that it was uttered at one of the greatest Indigenous stars to play that sport during the so-called “Indigenous round” which has been set up to celebrate Indigenous players in that sport.

To think the term “shooting itself in the foot” used to be applied to our sport and not the AFL or NRL (which has its own issue regarding treatment of women and gambling).

When reading about all this I was reminded of a line in an opinion piece a few months back by a certain Rita Pinahi of the Herald Sun (http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/ugly-soccer-fans-spoil-the-games-image-with-bad-behaviour-at-heart-victory-match/story-e6frfhqf-1226570283991) where while trying to ferment a broad negative view of Football (or “Soccer” fans as she snidily was at pains to refer to the sport in the second line of her piece in order to set the provocative tone for the rest of the article) Panahi cited a so-called “contrast” between a “Soccer” crowd and an AFL crowd:

“You simply don't see other fans behaving in such a manner. When someone causes trouble during an AFL game, the majority tend to turn on them as we saw last year when a Collingwood member racially abused Gold Coast's Joel Wilkinson. Not only did the Magpies' Dale Thomas report the incident but the club received dozens of calls from appalled fans who heard the slur.”

Of course the issue with this assertion if that the very fact that people are still making such comments in the first place if there wasn’t some kind of a sense that there was a level of acceptability in the first place. 

Cue the follow up to the 13 year-old girl “incident” which was of a fellow high in the stands making a mockery of the concept of the Indigenous round (http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/afl/another-collingwood-supporter-caught-shouting-racist-remarks-during-afls-indigenous-round/story-fni5f6hd-1226650754865).

When watching the ensuing footage, despite a couple glances that suggest some people think he might be going a “little over the top” I don’t exactly see anyone getting up to confront the fan to tell him his behaviour is considered unacceptable.

This perhaps give rise to the question as to why a 13 year old girl of all people wouldn’t (or couldn’t) comprehend calling an Indigenous person an “Ape” as crossing the line and would think it is a socially acceptable remark to make in context of an AFL crowd.

Indeed, it raises the curious question in this authors mind as to whether she would have been confronted and evicted at all if Adam Goodes hadn’t so publicly pointed his finger at her.

At the end of the day though that is a hypothetical question and the girl was infamously evicted.

What is not hypothetical though according to North Melbourne President James Brayshaw (http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/sport/a/-/afl/17398287/afl-fan-racism-displayed-weekly-brayshaw/)

"As the president of a footy club which has wonderful indigenous people playing for us, it's not a one-off incident, it happens way too often," he told the Nine Network's AFL Footy Show on Thursday night.

"It's virtually a weekly occurrence, I think across the board...”

I haven’t been to an AFL game since 2001 so can’t really say personally but I find this astonishing if true.

Needless to say I think Panahi perhaps needs to consider a few slices of humble pie.

After all, for all the generalisations (or attempts at generalisations) of Football being a code “rife with ethnic tensions” (funny how I never heard this assertion about the tennis) or somehow “inherently violent”.

If one positive thing for football is to come of Eddie McGuire’s ill-judged comment, it’s the hope that we don’t have to put up with him pulling the old “my Dad was a Celtic fan” as an opening to try and snidely undermine a positive football event or snidely stick the boot in and pretend his sport is somehow a “holier than thou” alternative. 

And that’s without going into the fact that if it compels the AFL and greater Australian society to explore issues of racism in society. 

After all, if I was to be fair, I could say that perhaps the issue of racism in AFL is merely an coutlet of a racist undertone in sections of Australia at large, as evidenced by notorious issues of racist outbursts on public tranport (http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/2013/04/18/18/32/melbourne-woman-filmed-in-racist-train-rant).

Pity that no one seems to extend that courtesy to football, where there is a trend to pin violent incidents at Football games on the sport itself. People like our very own Acting Commissioner of Police at the time most dissapointingly are happy to use the small number of violent incidents at football game to somehow infer that football crowds are somehow more violent than other sports (http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/law-order/police-consider-afl-bans-on-soccer-hooligans/story-fnat79vb-1226617741596 ). 

I often think that if the FFA actually had a few people of a football background who 'get it', they would explain in these myriad of meetings they seem to hold that football fandom is articulated differently to that of other Australian sports which means anti-social behaviour consequently articulates itself differently and there are different indicators. Sadly that doesen't seem to be the case and we go in silly cirlces all the time that get more and more ridiculous (so not only banned fromt football but other sports? Where does it end?)

No one seems to ‘think’ (or maybe various people don't have an interest in wanting to for various reasons...) for a moment that any incidents of violence at football games like other sports (funny how they never cite statistics because of what they prove, or perhaps rather un-prove when it comes to football) is merely an outlet or extension of the whole so-called “city violence” trend.

If racial vilification laws are introduced and then enforced at AFL games, would we conversely see racist AFL fans banned at the football?

2013/2014 DRAW RELEASE CONTINUED

FTA OPPORTUNITY MISSED

Putting the partisan Melbourne Victory fan aspect to the side for the moment and looking at the ‘bigger picture’...

And the bigger picture is that the FFA seem to have screwed up a big opportunity to promote the virtues of the A-League to a wider television audience that only have access to Free-To-Air (FTA) television.

Most specifically through the derbies and the fading star that is the so-called ‘marquee matches’ that aren’t quite the crowd pullers they once were.

One can understand that Fox Sports are paying the bulk of the majority of the new $160 million four-year deal so the challenge for the FFA would be to ensure that people with a Fox Sports subscription are getting value for their outlay etc. The other side of that coin though is that FTA TV is a form of mass market exposure and advertising.

From this perspective it would have made some sense to have a 2/3 majority to Fox Sports, namely show 1/3 of the big derbies (eg SFC versus WSW, MVFC versus Heart and other interstate ‘marquee’ matches (MVFC versus SFC, WSW and AUFC) on FTA while the other 2 rounds of those matches would be on Fox Sports.

This makes sense when we consider the respective business models of both, Fox Sports as a cable network relies on subscribers, SBS as an FTA network relies on selling audiences to advertisers.

From this perspective if we put the big derbies which are set to be sell-outs in terms of the AAMI Park (Melbourne) and Parramatta Stadium (Sydney) matches, then the visual and energetic theatre of opposing fan interaction and the full stadiums will be a great image for the game. 

This would further entice half committed or casual viewers that if they want to see more the A-League it is an added reason to subscribe to Foxtel or Fox Sports.

Conversely, having Brisbane Roar having erstwhile decent enough crowds dispersed across the cavernous Lang Park/Suncorp Stadium, Melbourne Victory just about get away with it having 20,000ish playing in a 50k stadium but the Roar with 15,000 just don’t manage it

.

And that’s without going into having Heart play their fixtures in front of a 1/3 full stadium on a good day, with the so called ‘green seat elite’ out in full force, this projects a bad image for the game and doesen’t make it look quite exciting at all. And let’s not mention the fact that for all their loose talk of being some kind of ‘cultured’ football team, they were the most boring team to watch away from home all season under ‘long diagonal ball’ Aloisi where they didn’t even win a match away from Melbourne.

Indeed when you look past the first few weeks, fans could be forgiven that the FFA have been fooled into making the Friday night FTA games the ‘dud’ slot for the most part given most of the match-ups are not the ones that capture the imagination.

But let’s imagine for a moment we are SBS, like pretty much all the football media in this country, we live in Ivory Towers up in Sydney where we are in touch with the local football fraternity up in those parts but can’t see far beyond the Pale to where the rest of the football fraternity live (the lack fo football journalist spread is a blog for another time). 

The Sydney football journalists then are looking at having 10 Sydney themed games overall, with six (2 home and 4 away) of them being in relation to Sydney FC where they get the opportunity to carry on and on and on and on about Del Piero (Fox Sports were bad enough to my Melburnian ears last season) and especially how he lifts the away crowds etc.

Then on four occasions we have Western Sydney (2 home and 2 away games). This is a tad surprising given how large the Western Sydney market is in TV terms but I guess they’ve decided not to differentiate too much between the predominantly Eastern Sydney Sydney FC oriented segment of the market and the Western Sydney segment.

So if you are SBS and you have 10 of the 27 rounds involving a Sydney based team in some respect then you aren't too unhappy despite missing a very large chunk of the big match-ups. I wouldn’t be surprised then to hear heaps of talk about how ‘exciting’ this poor excuse of an FTA draw is from their perspective and some actually believing it.

Even if Del Piero has a cracker in round six away to Melbourne Heart (funny how the FFA are employing another trick to artificially boost Hearts crowds by giving them two home games against Del Piero), to see all the fancy footwork and whatever in front of a mass of green seats and an ‘only half-full’ stadium at best (I'm assuming they think there will be another monstrous 13,000 strong crowd by Heart standards) does not project an exciting image that does his skill any justice.

This is especially the case if the Sydney FC team as a whole are as incoherent as a unit as they were last year.

Not to mention the mistake of having Western Sydney play in Melbourne against the ‘wrong’ Melbourne in the Friday night slot. Perhaps they are expecting WSW fans to go to Melbourne once again in the same numbers they did against Melbourne last year. Maybe they want that so the Sydney media can carry on about how a Sydney based team “outdid” the home supporters of a “Melbourne” based team. I am sure I can't be blamed for that sentiment after Mike Cockerills commentary of the MVFC vs WSW match last season...

But this shows what an opportunity has been missed, as it would have made so much more sense to show one of the AAMI Park home games of Melbourne Victory versus Western Sydney (the December one in particular) as the atmosphere of that rivalry played in that [particular stadium is potentially the best in Australian sport if both sets of fans turn up for it with their game-hat on (though if the trend of hysterical bannings of core members of both terraces means this may end up not being possible for too long).

I am from Melbourne and I can already state with some confidence that Western Sydney fans will never regard the so-called “Big Red” which the media conjured up (once again no one in fan circles uses this term let alone the ‘big blue’) as anything resembling a serious rivalry. 

The big one is against Melbourne Victory for both Sydney based teams, regardless of whatever agendas the media, the FFA or anyone else tries to conjure up regarding the A-Leagues rivalries. At the end of the day it is the fans who determine this.

This works the other way round too, one of Melbourne Victory’s away games on FTA should have been the WSW away in Parramatta, because this will make for a great spectacle if MVFC fans should turn out in force. Indeed even now there will some quarters of the Melbourne fan-base that concern Western Sydney as the bigger Sydney based rival even at this early stage. I am one of them.

2013-14 DRAW RELEASED!

NUTS! 

MELBOURNE VICTORY PERSPECTIVE

So, the much anticipated draw for the A-League 2013/2014 season has been released.

While there are always going to be positives and negatives to the draw given there are so many factors, overall as a Melburnian in particular I personally am left with a sense of disappointment.

There was some added excitement to next seasons draw because in season 9 for the first time there will be some Free-To-Air (FTA) exposure on Friday nights on SBS.

The SBS schedule is here

Full schedule is here on FFA’s website

First of all considering the fixture list as a Melbourne (Victory) fan, somewhat paradoxically the fact we have two ‘away’ ‘derbies’ to the Heart franchise (to be played on December 21^st 2013 and March 1^st 2014) is actually a big plus. 

While we will have to put up with Melbourne Victory fans lifting Hearts average attendance up by a few thousand and hence consequently see the end of season statistics misrepresent this as progress. That's without mentioning having to listen to Heart CEO Scott Munn clutching at straws while everyone tries to pretend the Heart franchise isn’t the fourth Buckley era failed franchise that's dead on its feet. This is all made up for though by being able to have the fantastic experience of a full “away” stand of active fans at AAMI Park given the NT and ST are combined for these fixtures.

Another plus is the large stretch of games at AAMI Park during December and then late February-early March, it should be a highly enjoyable stretch as we play Western Sydney at home (‘atmosphere rivalry’), followed by Adelaide at home, then the Heart ‘away’ derby at the same venue and then possibly a home game to Central Coast could be an important top-end of the table clash depending on how everyone’s going form wise.

The big downside is the general fact that the big three away games for the season as far as Melbourne are concerned are all played by round 6. These are the Adelaide away (Round 2), Sydney FC away (round 5) and the Western Sydney away (round 6) matches. 

Firstly, the mistake of putting the Sydney away and Western Sydney away trips within the same month has occurred again. This is problematic as it significantly diminishes the away support able to make both ties. 

This is actually bad for the game from the perspective that the football fraternity has a desire to stimulate large away support followings in such a big country to increase the atmosphere at games.

This is particularly disappointing as a Melbourne fan because, despite travelling in large numbers to Adelaide and Sydney consistently over the years, our away support potential has never had the opportunity to shine. 

Added to that when finally one of the four NSW based teams actually develops a team with fans who finally have a similar ethic and actually make the effort to go travel in numbers to see their team play against an opponent only a couple of hours away, we have to endure the spectacle of the Sydney based football media carrying on and on in some kind of jerk-fest about the great phenomenon when really it was a case of showing how poor the travelling ethic of the existing NSW teams was prior to the introduction of the Wanderers.

I will be a happy man the day we get a geographically distinct Victorian team, if there was a team based in Geelong for example Melbourne fans would have turned up in numbers easily on a par with Western Sydney fans efforts against Central Coast and the Jets.

Personally I had been looking very forward to having just one home game away to Western Sydney at Parramatta Stadium this time, and having Western Sydney fans have the obligation of having two trips but face the option of only choosing one of them. If only to put the excessive jerk fest that occurred in the wake of their away support into some proper perspective, after all, it’s not like they have more than one major interstate rival now is it?

 Melbourne fans away to WSW November 2012

This has happened two seasons in a row now, if I didn’t know any better I would say there is a pattern emerging and that this is even a deliberate move. Why would the FFA want to do this? The mind wonders aloud if it has something to do with a deliberate attempt to lower the numbers of the "big, bad Melbourne fans" travelling to big away games. 

Regardless, it won’t be before it’s time the day the FFA finally develop the courage to stop letting fear of the media hysteria stop them from nurturing some great atmosphere and fan-dynamic at big A-League fixtures. 

That all said though, putting my irritation at the FFA and the discourse of Sydney football media aside for a moment, the Melbourne Victory versus Western Sydney rivalry has the potential to become something quite special. Indeed there is the possibility that it may not only become bigger than the Melbourne versus Sydney FC rivalry (the media-coined “Big Blue”, needless to say that it is hasn’t really been adopted amongst fan circles).

Emphasis on the word ‘potential’ as much depends on whether the FFA like in the past ill-advisedly tries to suffocate it as it did all previous ‘marquee’ rivalries our of fear the media may try to write something negative. There’s a reason the so-called marquee fixtures declined in attendances and it wasn’t because of the bad headlines.

So, I am happy to see Melbourne have two home games against Western Sydney, both at AAMI Park.

In a sign of how the FFA and by extension the club are out of touch with the fans, unlike the Sydney FC game at AAMI Park last year, the club didn’t have the wit to grasp the fact that the fans consider this a big matchup and adjust the ticketing for the Western Sydney game, with the consequences being that there were 4000 empty seats and fans being turned away from the resultant “sellout”. Let's hope this never occurs again.

It is slightly disappointing that the January 26 Australia Day clash has been moved from AAMI Park to Docklands/Etihad Stadium. At least there is an AAMI Park game against Sydney on March 29.

 Melbourne fans away to SFC...also in November 2012...

On a personal note, I’ll actually be in England/Europe during October and most of November, so sadly won’t be able to attend any of the big away fixtures (will be hoping to catch a Toon game or two during that time though). I guess if I have to look at it philosophically it opens the door to make a first trip to a smaller or more obscure opponent, eg Wellington away on January 18^th.

More to follow...