Footbrawl
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.