Association football is broadly perceived as a game riddled with spectator violence. While violence does occur, it is usually exaggerated by the media. Moreover, the problem affects many sports across Australian society and we suspect that more intense, frequent and sustained violence occurs in cricket, Australian rules and rugby league crowds.

A typical media response to crowd violence in 'Australian' codes is to reduce it to 'boys being boys' or to invidualise the problem as being the fault of drunken yobs. On the other hand football crowd violence is usually depicted as systemic – the fault of football itself or the ethnic communities that play it.

We will keep tabs on this issue by recording media reports of spectator violence across football codes and other sport in Australia.