I love football.
But I think I hate football crowds.
On Saturday, I did one of my favourite things: I went to an AFL game in Melbourne. I have been going to football games since I was three years old. While my allegiances have shifted since that time, going to games has always been one of my favourite activities. As a child from a single-parent family, the football was one of only a few treats we could afford and even after my mum passed away, it remained a fun part of winter routines for me.
The atmosphere on the day of a big game is like nothing else. The MCG on ANZAC Day or Grand Final Day, with 95,000 plus people watching on, is truly one of the great sporting bucket-list items worldwide. It is electric.
So it pains me to say this: but I think I hate football crowds.
While this may make me seem like a killjoy, or someone that could be called a politically correct lefty, I really believe that the crowds and their behaviour are the biggest problem in football. And I’m going to give you four key arguments to support my conjecture. Some are slightly tongue-in-cheek, some definitely aren’t and are things we need to genuinely think about and address.
They don’t actually know the rules of the game
When I was in my teens, we had a German exchange student staying with us. Naturally, we took him to the football. Our hilarious move was to teach him that whenever literally anything happened between two players to just yell “BALL!”. He was more than happy to oblige our little joke, yelling it at the top of his lungs for the entire game. While we eventually corrected him and helped him understand what on earth he was yelling all the time, he wasn’t really behaving any differently to a lot of ‘diehard’ football fans.
The AFL has many confusing, somewhat ridiculous and regularly changing rules. That is a fact that I do not dispute. However, people who care enough about the game and their teams to actually head out and get to matches really should know the rules. But they don’t… The crowd is a constant cacophony of incorrect calls, every tackle clearly being holding the ball, every touch a high tackle or a push in the back, regardless of the evidence to contrary in the real world in front of us. If you want a clear example of how personal biases can affect how we perceive reality, go to a football game.
They’re massive hypocrites
On Saturday, sections of the crowd booed Port Adelaide ruckman Paddy Ryder, a former Essendon player who parted ways with the club during the infamous supplements saga. I believe that booing anyone on a sporting field is utterly ridiculous, but in this case straight up hypocritical. Ryder was an exceptional player during his time at Essendon and by all accounts left for personal and family reasons, in particular the stress of being involved in the anti-doping investigations caused by the clubs regime at the time. When you frame this as booing someone because they switched jobs for personal reasons, you already start to look foolish. It looks even sillier when you consider this list:
Adam Saad, Dylan Shiel, Zac Clarke, Will Snelling, Mitch Brown, Jake Stringer, Michael Hartley.
These players all played for Essendon on Saturday. All of them started their careers at a different club. Some left their clubs under a serious behavioural cloud and others unquestionably shopped themselves around to the highest bidder before leaving their previous setting (something which I do not begrudge at all by they way. They have a limited time span and wreck their bodies. They’re entitled to get paid as well as they can).
The fans on Saturday were more than happy to cheer the actions of these players, while simultaneously booing a player who did exactly the same thing, just in another direction. Changing teams is a reality of modern sport. Live with it and move on.
They can set a terrible example for kids
The umpires cheat because they’re all biased against us
That is a direct quote from a man sitting behind me, to his 10 year old son, who was complaining about a call he saw as unfair. Let’s leave aside the patently false idea that fans of every club seem to have that they are cheated by umpires every week. This was an opportunity to help a young person understand that there are ways to be both good and bad at winning and losing and that sometimes mistakes are made even by the people who run the games we enjoy. Instead, it became an exercise in how bad sportsmanship develops and why so many fans have a totally unrealistic view of games and what happens within them.
Yell tool. It sounds like “boo” but you can pretend
This one dates back a little further, to Kardinia Park in Geelong, circa 2015 and the shameful Adam Goodes booing saga. Another dad, another young son. Another terrible piece of advice. The opportunity was in front of this man to help their son begin to understand the impact that their words can have on other people. This is a powerful and important lesson that many people never seem to fully comprehend. This was a perfect opportunity to be better and it was completely missed. Segments of the crowd that day had continued to hound Goodes, even if the booing was reduced. And didn’t they pat themselves on the back for that, having managed to kind of get over the lowest possible bar of respect towards another human being. But then when you watch a sporting crowd, respect for those around you never seems to be a high priority for many.
Intolerance and abuse are “blowing off steam”
So many people use this excuse as a way to get off without consequences for the things they say and do at the football. It is the going-to-sport equivalent of saying “No offence but…” to a colleague. The person who says it seems to think they should be able to say or do whatever they want, so long as they add in the throwaway line to excuse themselves. I witnessed first hand the treatment of Adam Goodes, documented so powerfully in The Final Quarter. I was disgusted at the time (and remain so), not simply by the utterly feeble “It’s not a racist thing” defence. While that was clearly a rubbish argument, for me in some ways it missed the point.
In saying that it is fine to abuse someone, via booing or any other method, you are saying that vilifying someone for who they are is something that we as a society are going to accept. This is something that I frankly refuse to rollover and take. We have to uphold a higher standard, not hide behind excuses and arguments about the supposedly incorrect behaviour of sportsmen. Either it is wrong to abuse other people and groups or it isn’t. You can’t have it both ways when it suits you or when the person is wearing the wrong coloured singlet and little shorts.
In 2018, I went to seven or eight games of football at a mix of venues, with a range of teams playing and as both a neutral spectator and as a supporter of one of the teams . There was not a single game where I did not either contact security about a nearby patron’s behaviour or confront the person directly about something awful they said loudly and proudly. Apparently it is okay to hurl homophobic, racist and misogynistic abuse at players, umpires and even other spectators because you need to “blow off steam”.
This is never about being the ‘fun police’. Rather it is about trying to promote our supposed ideals of respect, acceptance and basic kindness. Despite what many people clearly think, paying for a ticket to go to a professional sporting event doesn’t give you the right to say and do whatever you want (if anything it means you are bound by the conditions of entry of the event you’re attending…). You’re not absolved of responsibility for your words or actions simply because you’re a part of the crowd. Mob mentality is rarely an excuse that stands up to much analysis. We always have an obligation to be the best, most kind people that we can be. This is not in conflict with passionately supporting your team or “blowing off steam”. It may seem crazy, but many of us find ways to do just that, while also managing to not be sexist, racist or homophobic.
And please, for the love of god, learn what the holding the ball rule actually is!
