In Tim Parks’ seminal football book ‘A Season With Verona’, he follows around a group of Northern Italian ultras up and down a country that is monomaniac about football.
Week after week of clashes with police, security and opposition fans, he comes to a pearl of wisdom.
“Football must be never descend into violence. Although, it must always teeter on the brink”.
Thinking of football atmosphere on this imaginary spectrum is probably one of the better ways of articulating the experience of an active supporter. There must be a line. And for most people, that line is rarely crossed. In fact, it’s mostly off to the distance and never even thought about.
Even less dance on it. Sometimes and rarely, a very small minority forcefully step over.
The FFA with incredible active supporter bases in the A-League are faced with a bizarre conundrum. How do you take that electricity, that liquid magic and turn it into a lightning rod for the rest of a country seemingly disinterested in the sport, without giving it conditions to have the odd moron run amok?
Before I belt them senselessly over it, I will give them this – it’s not an easy answer. Even the most vibrant and colourful supporter league in the world, the Bundesliga, currently faces a spate of fan protests over policing methods and protocols.
But there are four parties involved in the FFA’s security policy – the FFA, Hatamoto, State Police and stadium security. Individually, they have all played a part in arguably one of the greatest sporting administration failures in this country.
They have presided and implemented shambolic policies that have resulted in a position where a vote of no-confidence in the hierarchy exists at most A-League clubs and the inner circle of Australian football media. Bit by bit, this is how it all unravelled and ended up with Melbourne Victory and Western Sydney Wanderers fans walking out on their own teams.
FFA
The reality is, the FFA are too interested in outside stakeholders to protect their own. Yes, it is critical to convert new fans and manage your own image. You’re a business, it’s what you have to do.
But it’s hard-line security policy and no appeal processes for banned fans portrays the self-defeating cycle it’s stuck in. To please Shane the Hawthorn fan calling in on talkback, it asks for an obscene public and private security presence. Then, Shane the Hawthorn fan on talkback points out that the sport is dangerous (despite never wanting or willing to attend), because there’s so many said police and security at games.
It is one of the more moronic feedback loops of logic you’ll ever see from a sporting administration.
‘198 BANS, 0 APPEALS’ North Terrace turn back on pitch from opening whistle. #MVCvADL pic.twitter.com/1680ueIXcZ
— Outside90 (@Outside90) November 28, 2015
Rebecca Wilson may bang on about stopping louts, but the reality of the situation is the FFA has come down so hard on its own, including non-active supporters, that it has alienated nearly everyone. I remember the North Terrace protesting five/six years ago and they were booed by their fellow supporters. On Saturday, they were given a round of applause and named man of the match by the club.
The following is the three parties the FFA have enlisted to take on their bizarrely draconian security policy.
Hatamoto
Hatamoto are a port-security/counter-terrorism firm of mercenaries or ‘private security’ guards.
They have a lucrative contract with the FFA to keep tabs on potential means of trouble. It sounds reasonable in theory, but it’s much darker in practice.
In a nutshell, they come to games in civilian clothing and often film/take photos at length. They likely know most active supporters by name (even if they’ve never broken the rules), they know which group they belong to and which pubs they drink at pre and post-game.
They not only monitor the social media for potential troublemakers, but anyone who has ever tweeted/Facebook posted about active support or even vaguely criticised the FFA that attends games. Their intelligence is largely what fuels the banned list, which is problematic for a range of reasons.
This private company does not adhere to the standards of proof that our police forces do.
People have been banned a range of times because they’ve gotten names and groups wrong, despite not even attending the game. Many of them have not been charged or found a victim of incidents by police and still find themselves banned, because Hatamoto facilitates who’s allowed into the ground.
This relationship needs immediate transparency, as it fuels a large majority of the animosity between active fans and the FFA.
State Police
I have it on good authority that big clubs like Melbourne Victory and the Western Sydney Wanderers are furious with the FFA on this topic. Unless you didn’t know, A-League clubs must foot the police bill. Hundreds and hundreds of officers putting in a large amount of overtime on Saturday’s and Sunday’s, I could imagine is damaging the bottom of line of football clubs.
A police presence is understandable and welcomed, it’s a public event. But to the extent of how many officers that are there during games, you honestly have to begin to wonder whether there is a culture of exploiting the view of soccer within this country to get in an extra weekend shift.
I’ve touched on policing at games before, but it falls into two bizarre extremes. They either look sullen and bored most of the time, or during a particularity fiery day, spend ninety minutes with hands on their guns because they do not understand the reactions of a crowd, positive or negative.
Police lined up inside North Terrace. #mvfc #MVCvADL #aleague pic.twitter.com/mXoLfj1iuS
— MVFCNEWS (@MVFCNEWS) November 28, 2015
Any arm of the state that causes large dissatisfaction, there is rightly a review into their methods – Centrelink, our health system etc. The police force are largely free from criticism (this doesn’t even take into account more serious matters than football like indigenous deaths in custody) and David Leyonhjelm despite my disagreements with him on other matters, is absolutely correct in reviewing police methods in this country.
I could go into some well-traversed points on what rocking up in riot gear does to crowd psychology or even the fact NSW police (and Wilson) keep using Hillsborough as a reference point, although the tragedy was the fault of law enforcement methods. But there’s no need.
The reality is that what they may do in terms of crowd control, despite their best intentions, actually causes situations to escalate and has a large negative impact on public safety and wellbeing.
Security and Stadiums
AGC, Melbourne’s major events security company that often attends A-League games should honestly be commended on improving their performance. Years ago they were quite aggressive and caused many problems, including punching a Victory fan (and father) which still remains to this day the ugliest incident I’ve seen at the football.
Aside from the odd overstep (taking down the banner from a group of 16 year olds on Friday night), they’ve improved dramatically and put into a place a policy of hands-off policing, one that has probably occurred from internal dialogue and improvement.
Stadiums weren’t an issue until this week. It’s been well suggested that the source of Rebecca Wilson’s leak was her husband, who is currently a board member on the SCG Trust. A journalist should never reveal their sources, so Wilson has every right to keep that to herself.
But, let me paint a picture. On Friday, the SCG was named as a violent venue, where a good 95% of incidents were non-football related.
It is to my knowledge that the banned list was shopped around to a range of News Corp outlets in the last few weeks – Fox Sports, Peter Rolfe at the Herald Sun (who was overruled from doing the story because of the potential backlash).
Is it a coincidence that the month the SCG Trust ended up on a ‘violent venues’ list, it’s having the finger pointed at it for leaking a list of banned football fans? I don’t know, it depends whether you believe in coincidences I suppose.
In summary, I don’t know where it all goes from here, but it gets worse before it gets better. The first step is admitting there’s a problem. The FFA can’t even do that. As for the other security stakeholders, there just needs to be a re-evaluation their roles on game day and how they can be more efficient.
I have toyed with the idea of sending Senator Leyonhjelm’s office a letter in pitching some form of committee at federal level where active supporter leadership, police, Hatamoto, security, clubs and the FFA come together to hash out an accord. Reality is, I’m in none of those parties and I honestly believe those relationships are damaged beyond repair.
All I ask is that we somehow reach a place where deciding to sit or stand somewhere at a football game, reflects nothing on the content of your character.
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