smell the fear

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?