No sport feeds off the energy of the crowd quite like football. “Active fans”, as they’re called in this country, sit behind the goals and explode into a contagious 90-minute cloud of exuberance and euphoria, providing the backdrop that makes peak A-League so captivating.
Players stand tall, opponents cower, the hair on the back of your neck stands up, the standard lifts, the television product gains a sense of magnetism, and everything is just … better.
Melbourne Victory fans invade the AAMI Park pitch during the A-League game against Melbourne City on December 17.Credit:AAP
But like any force of nature, it comes with a dark side. To generate such an infectious, incendiary atmosphere requires those driving it to go right to the edge of acceptable behaviour, to the legal boundaries of physical and verbal intimidation … and then stop. A toe or even a foot will eventually cross the uncrossable line, despite the best efforts of clubs and administrators who try valiantly to beat back their worst instincts.
It was two feet over the line with studs showing at the Melbourne derby on December 17 – and now the full scope of the wreckage can finally be assessed after Football Australia handed down its sanctions against Melbourne Victory for bringing the game into disrepute through that violent pitch invasion at AAMI Park, which put Melbourne City goalkeeper Tom Glover in hospital.
It was, and still is, a truly unthinkable incident – the sort of thing A-League fans once told themselves happens overseas, but not here, because we’re different.
Did Victory get off lightly? Yes and no. Given their already troubling balance sheet, the $550,000 in fines will bite hard, and the banning of active fans for the rest of this season will cut deeper into their dwindling match-day revenues – but the decision to hit them with a suspended points deduction instead of an immediate one has many scratching their heads, as has the ordering of the match to be resumed instead of City being given the three points.
The attack on City goalkeeper Tom Glover.Credit:Ten News
No team in Australia has ever been stripped of points for fan misbehaviour, and it’s hard to imagine now what it would take, with the high bar FA has set for the 10-point suspended deduction to be triggered: another wild pitch invasion or assault of a player.
Surely that won’t happen again, particularly in light of the increased scrutiny of active fans that is set to intensify further with FA’s plans to form ominous-sounding “taskforce” involving police, security and stadium staff to review the way active fans are managed and how to stop them from sneaking flares in. It evokes memories of the days when private security officers were used to identify potential troublemakers – the sort of thing that led to the last fan uprising in 2015. Nobody likes to see the majority punished because of a minority, but can you blame them?
Much like domestic soccer in Australia, active fandom itself is prone to a boom-bust cycle: they’ll do their thing, people will love it, then someone goes too far, something bad happens or someone gets hurt, the authorities clamp down, and the spectacle loses something. They’ll eventually complain of heavy-handed treatment, that it’s actually worse in the other codes (which is mostly true), enough people will agree, and the authorities step back. Rinse, repeat.
You could almost feel the cycle moving as the nation fell in love with the blood-red, flare-dotted Federation Square during the Socceroos’ World Cup campaign, images that Graham Arnold harnessed to motivate his team in Qatar. Players love seeing flares. A lot of soccer fans think they’re cool. The rest of Australia had almost implicitly accepted that maritime distress signals are, for better or worse, seen to be part of soccer’s supporter culture by those who partake in it – until some idiots started throwing them around, putting others in danger and proving their critics right.
What’s needed to break the cycle is a measure of maturity and accountability from active fans, and an acceptance that the culture must shift for the game’s sake, because it’s existential now.
You can quibble with the detail, but this is what FA’s sanctions are designed to do: force change. The vast majority seem to get it, but there is a loud rump which continues to put their own ultras fantasies before the interests of the sport, while there are some who turn a blind eye to avoid being seen as “snitches”. Omertà, as if this is the Sicilian mafia, not Australian soccer.
Most can, but all groups need to learn to truly self-regulate and create an environment in which nobody would dare throw flares or bottles onto the field, jump over the fence under any circumstances, get in street fights with rival supporters, or make homophobic or racist remarks – because they would already fear the consequences from their colleagues if they did. Until then, unfortunately, it’s life under another iron fist.
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