Fairfax journalist Rohan Connolly says that the media’s treatment of the A-League and the sport of soccer in general in Australia needs to be fairer.
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Yesterday, I spoke about the futility of “code wars” in Australian sport. That doesn’t mean I don’t understand the reasons behind some of the resentments which exist. For soccer fans, particularly, when they see some of the double standards still at play.
A few events in recent days have reaffirmed that view. In the lead-up the Saturday night’s BBL-A-League Sydney derbies, NSW police, not for the first time, made it pretty clear where they expected trouble. It wasn’t at the SCG.
Ironic then, that while the Wanderers-Sydney FC game was relatively trouble-free, the only obvious disruption came at the BBL game courtesy of two streakers.
Yesterday, at the first day of the Australian Open, a group of would-be spectators on their way in let off a couple of flares. Yes, the same dangerous things that the A-League has worked very hard, and appears to have succeeded, in eliminating.
Yet the reporting of these incidents was, to say the least, pretty benign. Streakers don’t worry me overly, but there was a bit of nudge, nudge, wink, wink about how the disruption was recorded in the media. Likewise, yesterday’s flare incident was done and dusted in the public eye very quickly.
You can’t help but think how either would have been portrayed had it happened in an A-League game. Shame files and tub thumping comment pieces at the front of the paper no doubt would have been the order of the day.
Soccer in this country has regularly been treated as guilty by mere association with troubles in other parts of the world.
But any problems here have always been relatively minor in comparison, and, as the Herald Sun reported last week, are increasingly rare, with local fans becoming very effective in self-policing.
I’m not asking that they be awarded medals for having learned to pull their heads in, but I do think elements of the media in this country still prone to a sporting cultural cringe are at least obliged to recognise that there are dickheads who follow all sports.
And more importantly that soccer fans, just like those who love the cricket and the tennis, don’t all deserve to be tarred with the same brush because of them.