Victoria set South Australia a stiff but gettable last-day target in a Sheffield Shield match at the MCG many years ago, but when opener Andrew Hilditch was 2 not out at the first drinks break, it was plain that the SACAs had reneged on the chase.
This was too much for a certain young cricket writer of the time, who threw down his pen, marched around to the almost empty outer, tore off his shirt and spent four cathartic hours booing and sledging Hilditch before composing himself, re-dressing and presenting as the soul of professional politeness at the post-match media conference.
Jason Horne-Francis in full flight.Credit: Paul Kane, Getty
There’s booing and there’s booing. In its time and place, it’s part of the theatre of sport. It’s one of the ways fans engage with the games they love.
Fans might boo an opposition player because of a perceived offence against one of their own, or because he once was one of their own – no matter that it might not have been his choice to leave – or simply because he is kicking for goal. They boo because everyone is, the mindless mob manifest. Generally, it’s booing de jour, not outliving the day. At worst, it might filter into the return clash, but that’s it.
Fans boo blithely, not inconvenienced as administrators and media are by personal acquaintance with the boo-ees and so able to project onto their targets black hearts and yellow bellies as they please. They boo self-righteously. They boo heartily.
Sometimes, their booing takes on a darker aspect. Fans might boo a player because of a reported off-field transgression, scandal or twist. Jobe Watson was booed as the face of the Essendon drugs affair, Gary Ablett junior was booed because he liked (and quickly unliked) a tweet. Way beyond the pale, Heritier Lumumba once was booed upon his return from a spell to deal with his mental health.
Wayne Carey and North Melbourne coach Denis Pagan with the 1996 premiership cup.Credit: The Age
Sometimes, players are booed simply because they are good. Wayne Carey and Lance Franklin were accorded this doubtful endorsement. So was Ricky Ponting in England. It always rankles, but some are better constituted to bear it than others.
Fans boo umpires because … they’re umpires. Within bounds, this is part of the theatrics. Occasionally, authorities will try to dampen it down with appeals to people’s better angels. The trouble is that no-one at the footy has a particularly angelic mindset. I’ve seen them. I’ve been one of them.
The usual effect of a plea for a gentler polity is to provoke more and fiercer booing from people who know that when enfolded and made anonymous by a crowd, they can vent as they never would alone. In the Adam Goodes saga, this went unforgivably too far. That wasn’t theatre; it was footy fans as a lynch mob. A sour taste remains.
A distant echo can be heard this season in the booing of Jason Horne-Francis. From North Mebourne fans, it’s understandable, though the Roos themselves don’t condone it. When joined by fans from other clubs, it becomes a pile-on. Under it is … a 19-year-old, a stripling, a boy whose mortal sin was to leave North one season after he was conscripted into the club.
The footy crowd has a loud voice.Credit: The Age
Yes, he was the No.1 draft pick, but it was the system that made him so, not him. He wasn’t the first to find his status a crown of thorns. Yes, he was unhappy at North, at an unhappy time for the club. Yes, he could have handled matters better; what 19-year-old has all the answers and moves?
Horne-Francis was away from home and lonely. Some teenagers manage, others can’t, but the system makes no distinction or allowance. He left, but you can be certain that if he had settled in Melbourne, but ultimately not made the grade, the club would have moved him on.
It’s the business of footy. But it should not be blind and deaf to the human dimension. It shouldn’t mean that a teenaged footballer is made the cast villain. Good on Port Adelaide coach Ken Hinkley for so publicly backing Horne-Francis. The attacks on him have been public, so why should not the defence?
If sports fans must boo someone, make it a deserving figure. Of course, the most deserving are out of sight and mind, in back offices and the backs of minds. They’re sport’s meta people, appearing only at lunches.
Greg Norman.Credit: Getty Images
But here’s one particularly worth a decent boo: the millionaire who thinks we should be celebrating the “generational wealth” he has created for Australian golfer Cam Smith by hooking into Saudi Arabia’s vast sportswashing fund. He was the Great White Shark, hereafter the Great White Sea Slug.
As for Hilditch and that cricket writer from long ago, let’s just say that one of them is still going strong.
