Sunday, October 14, 2007

 

Who's Afraid? - brief update #10

It's open season on football at News Limited right now.

We've had the asinine hysterics of Josh Massoud, and now the focus has shifted to Adelaide, where a certain Tom Zed has provided us with a doom-laden piece on fan relations at Friday's exciting Adelaide v. Melbourne match at Hindmarsh.

The only aspect of this "report" that isn't utterly hilarious is the fact that it actually went to print.

Just feel the terror gripping the streets of the City of Churches...

...anger threatened to boil over...taking no chances...added fuel to the fire...threat of serious violence...serious physical confrontations...tribal culture of soccer continues to leave an ugly stain on the beautiful game...

Wow. What actually happened, you may ask? A quick scan of the article indicates...

Absolutely nothing.

Well, apart from two fans (!) having a brief set-to at half-time, and an airborne sausage roll (shades of the chewing gum at the SFS) nearly connecting with Mr. Zed. God knows what his article would have been like had the offending missile actually hit him.

And, guess what, Mr. Zed is an AFL writer. Capable, I might add, of reporting actual fan violence in perfectly dispassionate terms...when it's AFL fans involved.

Credit where it's due, too: Richard Hinds, whom I castigated a little while back for some smug remarks just prior to the start of the A-League season, has written a cogent response to the Murdoch hype of last week. Well said indeed, Mr. Hinds.

Comments:
i sat next to the victory supporters for the first half and i can honestly say i have felt more threatened walking to the shops.

how low will these reporters go??
they seem to set a new low each week.
 
This is from the Melbourne Victory forum for someone who was there:

The best they could do is "A flying sausage roll, verbal insults and basically lies to make their story.

I think people need to also realise this guy "went undercover" hoping for trouble and because no trouble happened this was the best they could come up with.

Now just with the headline "Police hold Soccer fans apart"

That is bullshit.... in the bay we were kept in.... we had 1 police officer either side of us and a couple behind us thats it.

And to both sides of the main away bay MVFC and Adelaide fans were pretty much sitting together.

On the way out of the ground we actully had no police with us, in the end it was Melbourne supporters themselves who decided to stop, before marching any further to await for our police escort to arrive. During this time there was some verbal volleys but that was about it.

And once our escort arrive we simply walked away... singing as we went.

So out of this fuck head journo has some how made a "riot" out if it.

You notice this guy hasn't noted any discussions he had with police, the clubs or security.

Do you know why? Well i can tell you why..... ive already spoke to someone at the club and the they recieved fantastic feedback from all parties regarding our behaviour.

So they weren't going to bad mouth us.

Anyway just some more facts for this jounro..

* MVFC fans had worked hard with all parties pre game to ensure everything run smoothly at the games. Due to this everything DID run smoothly other than Weslo letting us out to early.

* Police were fantastic (it is true) in ensuring we got everything we needed, including organising taxi's for us at the gov post game and Im sure they would even agree that we all worked well together.

* The police presenace pre and post game was organise by MVFC fans and wasn't a result of anything that happened during the game.

Anyway i think we have a "Sean Sowerby' award winner for this season.


I think is high time that the FFA gets a media officer (if they don't have one already) and start counteracting these sort of articles.

These sort of incidents occur at any sport event, cricket comes to mind. I have been hit by full can of soft drink, let alone a half eaten sausage roll.

It is time to let these so called journalists that it is just not on.
 
Thanks for the heads up Gweeds.

It's becoming increasingly clear that the Murdoch press, for whatever reason, are being given absolutely free rein to spout this shit.

There are some good banners planned for a few games next round, I believe. Watch this space.
 
`Who's Afraid' is a great title to keep track of these familiar nonsence articles by news ltd in particular.

Anti-football reporters/ publications afraid of the significant success of the A-League - Richard Hinds Sun Herald article makes the point well - good to see that rational response in print.

I agree the FFA should get on the front foot more - there is so much to promote and that includes the great sport loving atmosphere at A-League games.
 
What transparent nonsense!

The lowest point in that article was this:

"I overheard a young United supporter phoning her dad to ask him to come and find her because she was really scared."

OK, so a 13 year old girl was frightened. How is that notable?

For a journalist lamenting the damage done to the "beautiful game", he had remarkably little to say about the game...
 
Can you please do us a favour and castigate Tom Zed ? Let us know if he responds as i would love to know how threatened he felt by a sausage roll

But do remember, this is Adelaide and Adelaide is a news ltd town.

We see this quite regularly by the the Advertiser and Sunday Mail

regards

Steve
 
For what is worth I decided, as an exercise on my blog to turn the tables by applying the same level of truth and clear thinking as these guys. (all TIC of course - I quite like AFL!)
 
Further to this article The Whistleblower provides a good comment.

“Victory fans let the United fans behind them know all about Archie Thompson’s first-half injury-time goal, which resulted in a half-eaten sausage roll narrowly missing my ear and hitting a Victory supporter in the back.”

The horror! A half-eaten sausage roll...surely not! I guess Tom’s lucky. What if it was a whole sausage roll? Imagine the damage that could’ve caused. What if it had tomato sauce on it? It might have stained Tom’s shirt.

Surely it couldn’t get any worse.

“I overheard a young United supporter phoning her dad to ask him to come and find her because she was really scared.”

Oh Tom, that’ll win you a Walkley. You overheard one half of a conversation. What was she scared of? Maybe the strange man listening in on her conversations. .....

Mr Zed writes, “The tribal culture of soccer continues to leave an ugly stain on the beautiful game.”

No Tom, the tribal culture of football is what drives people around the world to attend in huge numbers. The ugly stain comes from those bloody sausage rolls.


LOL!
 
Post a Comment



<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?