Can
You Smell the Fear? A Commentary
Dave Srhoj
One
of the more influential articles in recent memory dealing with the
anti-football crusade in Australian media circles is Simon Hill’s
‘Can you smell the fear?’
It
cogently addresses the absurdity we’re all too familiar with
amongst egg-ball media yahoos. It’s an article that manages
to calm the collective anxiety and anger we football fans have felt
over the years. Snipers taking pot-shots at our game is nothing
new, though now it’s fair to say that irrespective of how
it’s put across – football and its constituents can
take some comfort in knowing that this kind of reactionary and snide
journalism is as Hill argues, based on fear.
In a Johnny Warren-esque defence of all things football in Australia,
Hill undercuts and exposes the haters and their juvenile prejudices.
He also craftily manages to extol the virtues of our game, without
resorting to the same kind of caustic attacks on competing codes.
Hill almost conveys what feels like a sense of disappointment in
his fellow journalists, like a mother who gives up on reacting angrily
to her son’s countless misdemeanours. ‘Son, I’m
not angry – I’m just bitterly disappointed.’
Can
you smell the fear?
Simon Hill (SBS – The World Game Presenter)
Can you? If
you live in Sydney, you'll hardly be able to breathe for the pungent
stench. The egg-ballers are starting to sweat – and the putrid
odour of fear is enveloping the Harbour City in the only way it
knows how...via the pages of the city's newspapers. In all my years
in football, I've never witnessed such an intense, vitriolic campaign
against the game I – and millions of others – love with
a passion.
Originating
from football’s birthplace, it’s understandable why
this Mancunian is perplexed by the way football is regularly mistreated
in his new locale. It’s almost a variety of hyper-nationalism
in places like Australia and America whereby purveyors of ‘native’
sports react almost xenophobically to football. A fear of the global
predator, which is in some ways aligned with the more general notion
of having national identities threatened by globalisation.
It all started
two weeks ago with an odious article written by a guy called Paul
Kent in the Daily Telegraph. Entitled
'Dress for distress, hooligans with flare', Kent wrote a piece so
drenched in fear and hatred – not just of football but of
the 'ethnics' – he almost drowned in his own invective. Now
I don't know Paul Kent – I've never met him – but I
have it on good authority that he is a Rugby League journalist.
As he works for the Telegraph (owned by
News Limited, which in turn owns the rights to the NRL), then it's
a fair guess he's no great fan of our game.
Fair enough.
I'm no great
fan of AFL – which is why I rarely touch upon it in opinion
pieces, because I don't understand it and it's of no interest to
me. The question then, is why are Kent and his like sticking the
boot in? Well, the answer is clear. Rugby League in particular is
feeling very uneasy about football's big year.
The A-League is just around the corner, Harry Kewell is about to
play in a Champions League final, and the national team have another
chance to qualify for the World Cup. But it's the move to Asia that
has really browned the trousers of the egg-ball scribblers. They
know full well the impact this could have on the other football
codes . . . and League in particular.
Rugby League
holds a unique position in Australian sport – it's neither
a national code, nor a minor code. Due to its stranglehold in Sydney
and Brisbane it gains much more attention than it probably deserves.
Ask people in Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne and Darwin about League,
and they'll more than likely shrug their shoulders.
Australian Rules
Football has long since outwitted it in terms of being the biggest
spectator sport – and Rugby Union with its Commonwealth .
. . sorry, World Cup, is starting to make inroads in to its traditional
territories too.
It can ill afford another rival in its heartlands – and so,
football, with local glamour club Sydney FC starting to grab some
attention, gets its ritual kicking. Dwight Yorke, Pierre Littbarski,
Anthony La Paglia – these are names known and respected worldwide,
and the League scribes don't like it...not one little bit.
Kent's article
was actually just the latest in a long line of carefully-worded
digs at the world game by the Telegraph.
For months it has been running a campaign aimed at discrediting
the sport.
Just to cite
a few examples, we've had stories on how 'Soccer over 35s getting
injured in Sunday league games are a drain on the health service'
as well as 'How soccer gives you brain injuries by repeated heading
of the ball' through to the usual guff about 'ethnic' hooligans
threatening to tear the very fabric of Australian society apart
. . . oh, and the quite frankly bizarre resurrection of the Frank
Farina–Andrew Orsatti story that allowed football lovers such
as Mike Gibson to get involved.
The
referencing of football violence and the mocking of the game by
certain journalists has entered a new stage recently, with references
made towards AFL crowd violence being 'influenced by' certain characteristics
of terrace behaviour in European football ('On
a hiding to nothing: people who fight at the footy just spoil it
for everyone else' John Harms | April
30, 2008).
Notwithstanding the fact that crowd violence in AFL arenas has always
been present (is this part of the reason administrators no longer
serve full strength alcohol at AFL games?); linking this most recent
outbreak to football (incidentally or otherwise) seems to be another
cheap jab in football’s guts.
These articles
are very 'Rugby League' – a game where the only skills required
are to be able to catch the ball, run with it and hit very hard.
And that's exactly what others have done. The Sydney Morning Herald
– led by football hater in-chief Peter Fitzsimmons, (wonderfully
irked by having to call the sport by its proper name under the Herald's
new policy) – has grabbed the ball, run with it, and waded
in with some gems of its own. Check out last weekend's offering
by someone called Stephen Gibbs, who slammed the game using the
usual stereotypes. I'll pick out a few quotes for you from Gibbs's
article, and you'll get the gist.
- 'I always
thought it was a game for sissies' (sheilas – tick!);
- 'Anyone calling
soccer football with an accent is probably certifiable'(wogs –
tick!);
- Other football
codes use athletic men and gorgeous women to promote their game'
(poofters – tick, and that's a full house!).
Johnny Warren
will be turning in his grave – after years of fighting this
prejudicial garbage, the title of his autobiography has been vindicated
in one, painfully ill-informed piece. Anthony La Paglia comes in
for a bit of stick during the piece too – which is strange,
considering he is considered a bit of an Aussie hero. But it seems
if he likes 'soccer' – then he reverts to being 'just another
wog'.
Sad, very sad
indeed.
Even The
Australian wades in with some uninformed comments.
A throwaway line it may have been in a column called 'Strewth' but
it underlines the fact that the concept of a 'fair go' in this country
still doesn't apply to our game. The paper sneers at the concept
of the A-League striving for excellence when 'the Central Coast
Mariners had to order a coach to take them by road to Adelaide for
the Club World Championship Qualifying Final'. (This was before
the switch to Gosford incidentally.)
Now, the article
contains a half-truth. The Mariners most certainly DID order a coach...for
the short trip to Sydney airport. Which I would have thought is
perfectly normal for a team from the coast? It looks slightly different
when you know the truth eh?
Whilst
it certainly is ‘very sad indeed’ that certain folks
in the media persist with football bashing, this reactionary nonsense
is becoming increasingly irrelevant as football’s ever-growing
tentacles expand further around our country. It’s been my
contention that in more recent times, misrepresenting our sport
has come under increased scrutiny from the sports growing constituency,
fed up with the inane tirades levelled at our sport and its fans.
Can you smell the fear, for me, re-iterates this fact.
In
the past it was rather easy for those in mainstream media circles
to denigrate the sport. A whole variety of scandalous media stories
successfully denigrated the NSL and its constituent clubs. It deflated
any mainstream interest there may have been for it, and consigned
it to domain of “the ethnics” . . . further solidifying
the silently spoken (and mythical) argument that the game was somehow
alien to Australia.
Increasingly
though, the Australian public has warmed to the game. It’s
far easier to fool the public when there are hundreds of people
at football matches, as opposed to thousand upon thousands. The
name “football” has been commandeered, and this, as
Hill rightly points out, has irked a number of the anti-football
un-intelligentsia.
Can
you smell the fear? Part 2
Simon Hill
Well, well!
Who would have thought it? One article on a little old ‘soccer’
site causing so much consternation!
It seems my
previous column entitled ‘Can you smell the fear’ touched
a raw nerve. The emails have barely stopped flowing since the piece
went online, and – as I expected – it provoked an outraged
response from some fans of rugby league.
Most of the
critical correspondence centred on my denigration of league as a
sport. Some of the following quotes were typical:
“How
dare you venture an opinion on a game you know nothing about?”
“Why
knock a game that many people love?”
“Aren’t
you a hypocrite for using stereotypes to define a code?”
(And that
was the polite stuff!)
And do you
know what folks? They are all absolutely right!
The reason I
chose to be so confrontational was to demonstrate what football
fans in this country have had to put up with for years. I deliberately
used unfair and narrow-minded opinions of rugby league to illustrate
how, with a sweep of the pen (or tap on the keyboard), people’s
passions can be inflamed – and how annoying uninformed articles
can be.
Should I have
merely stayed quiet in the face of the articles in the Telegraph
and Herald I tried to respond to? Should I have taken the moral
high ground? Well, possibly.
But it was my
opinion as a passionate football fan, that for far too long we have
had to put up with this garbage without somebody taking a stand.
If, by being inflammatory, and if, by giving those who write such
rubbish, a little taste of their own medicine, my article got people
thinking about these issues – then I’m pleased it provoked
such a response.
Interestingly,
none of the critical responses to my article touched upon the race
element that seems to me to go hand in hand with these negative
articles on football. It seems that is acceptable, though why that
should be, I don’t know.
Are all those
of (for example) Serbian and Croat heritage – hooligans? That’s
what a lot of stories in these papers suggest with their irresponsible
writing – if that were my background, I know how that would
make me feel. It seems attacking ‘soccer’ is a convenient
excuse to have a go at people’s ethnic background.
Strange as
it may sound, I actually quite like rugby league. I’ve written
before in these columns that I grew up watching matches at home
in the north of England (well, when there was no football on anyway),
and in the UK, the two codes have always had a close, even warm
relationship.
While there
is no doubting football is the senior partner in England, the two
games share a working class heritage – and the links continue
to this day, with ground, facility and idea-sharing. I’m pretty
certain there are plenty of cross-code links here too, which only
underlines why people like me scratch their head at the animosity
shown towards our sport by some writers that specialise in league
– the two don’t have to be mutually exclusive.
The only reason
I could come up with, was that the league writers were consumed
by fear and hatred. Fear of the potential for football in this country
(brought in to sharp focus by the imminent move to Asia), and hatred
of the ‘ethnic’ baggage the game has had for a long
time. I stand by those comments.
No-one in their
right mind likes hooligans. They are a stain on a nation and I speak
as a person who has had plenty of opportunities to feel shame, due
to the disgraceful behaviour of a minority of my countrymen overseas.
But – and here’s the real point - they don’t represent
me, my nation or (most importantly) my sport. They represent a social
problem that has to be cured. Some league writers seem to think
that social problem is football – how convenient.
Many who wrote
to SBS expressing their thoughts on my article shared that opinion.
Many more who emailed said that I’d articulated what they
had felt for many years.
Here are just
a few comments...
“The
campaign to smear and discredit the game has been incredible.”
“The
selective coverage of the Sydney United/Bonnyrigg riots infuriated
me.”
“You
summed up the league media perfectly.”
“It’s
a disgrace the amount of negativity out there in Australia that
is associated with the world game.”
“What
is wrong with these people?”
“In
truth they are nothing but small-minded idiots and racists.”
Now, of course
on a football website there are plenty who are going to read a football-supportive
article and agree with its sentiments – but even allowing
for that, it seems that it obviously isn’t JUST me that has
noticed. Are we all paranoid, downtrodden, small-minded souls? Or
do we, perhaps? just maybe? have a point?
Football is
trying to change, and the powers that be are doing their bit to
take the game forward in to a new era. The FFA has set up a new
league with no ‘ethnic’ baggage. There are new teams,
new sponsors, new venues and new opportunities.
How about a
new approach from sections of the media? Surely it’s not too
much to ask?