Good Crowd, Bad Publicity

The sensational turn out at an A-League pre-season match recently was marred by unruly actions of some. However, as Phill Chadwick reports, the local media interpreted the game very differently.

Last Wednesday (20th June), South Melbourne, former NSL heavyweight, hosted Melbourne Victory, current A-League heavyweight for a friendly match.

It is mid-season for South in the Victorian Premier League, and pre-season for Victory. There was nothing riding on the game. Remarkably, on a cold, wintry Melbourne evening, more than 7,000 spectators turned up to watch.

That astonishing fact is worth repeating: Over 7,000 fans came out to watch a practice match, mid-week, in Melbourne, in winter.

Adelaide United struggled to equal that for a vital Asian Champions League game. That so many eager football fans turned out says a lot for the sporting and football culture in Melbourne. It says a lot for the solid supporter base of South Melbourne, and it says a lot for the growing relevance and credibility of football in this country.

As an aside, Melbourne Victory, as you would expect, won the match comfortably.

On the down side, there were some idiots at the game who managed to smuggle in some flares. There was even one moronic enough to throw one on to the pitch and hit a player in the head.

Those people are not football supporters. They might follow a team, they might enjoy the game, but they do not support football. In fact they oppose it.

The lighting of flares is not allowed, for several reasons; the most relevant being the health and safety of the players and the spectators. Anyone that thinks that bringing a flare into the ground is cool, or is a valid way to support your team is wrong. Those people, consciously, and with cold, calculated planning, are doing their best to cripple the sport of football in this country.

There are no words strong enough to condemn them. None of them can seriously believe that they are contributing anything to the game other than developing a reputation that a football match is a dangerous place to be.

The FFA does not want flares. The clubs do not want flares. The players do not want flares.

The FFA has even threatened to deduct points from the club as punishment. Why, then, would a fan want to light one?

The answer is, that only those with real enmity towards this great game would now bring a flare to a football match. Please, keep them for maritime emergencies. Perhaps the flares were smuggled in by AFL supporters in disguise - no, just kidding.

But, back to the point. The turn out for this game was remarkable, and the quality of the match was, judging by media accounts, quite good.

So, how did the media report it? The following day, the contrast between the reports in the two major Melbourne daily newspapers (online editions) could not have been more different.

Fairfax's The Age had a 425-word match report from Michael Lynch, headlined "Melbourne Shows off its Class" with a photograph of Kevin Muscat attached to it.

Apart from a fairly comprehensive coverage of the actual match, there were two short paragraphs reporting, in unemotional terms, the flare lighting and throwing incidents. This, I think struck the correct balance between match coverage, and news reporting. It would, of course, have been unreasonable to have ignored the flares.

News Corporation's Herald Sun, by way of contrast, chose to spend 112 un-attributed words sensationalising the flares and the crowd trouble. "Victory won the match 5-1" was the sum total of their match coverage. The headline was "14 Ejected after Soccer Fracas". The attached picture was of the crowd enveloped in red flare smoke.

When you consider that these two media outlets serve the same market, how could their spin on the same event be so different?

Perhaps there are differing agendas. Perhaps the individual journalists have different feelings towards the game. Who knows?

But, lets finish on a positive note, lets just savour that remarkable fact once more.

More than 7,000 supporters to a meaningless, mid-week, winter evening practice match.

Just thinking about that makes me smile.

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