Skip to main content

Wanderers Fans Might be the Solution

Western Sydney Wanderers fans
Pic: Ashley Feder/Getty/Guardian Australia
Australians are among the world's most dedicated sports fans. So, when it was announced before the season opener at the home ground of the Western Sydney Wanderers game on October 10, that aspects of support generated by one of the nation's more passionate fan bases was to be curtailed, it left many scratching their heads.

When those supporters, the so-called Red and Black Bloc (RBB) of the Western Sydney Wanderers, A League Premiers in 2013, conducted their usual march through the streets of the outer-Sydney city of Parramatta, they were, as promised, accompanied by a considerable police presence.

As is predictable, much of the media jumped on the story before the march, relishing the adversarial angle and upping the potential for violence.

A lesser number reported the fact that, when the RBB did march in support of their club, nothing actually happened.

Police may say that's because they were there. But, whether that's so or not, it seems that their presence was not welcomed by many prior to the fans' march, nor was it appreciated after it.

You would think football (soccer) in Australia had returned to the bad old days. Ethnic clashes have been known to spill out onto the terraces and even onto the field in previous times here.

There was also the matter of the tragic, fatal shooting of Curtis Cheng, a police staff member in Parramatta, outside the police station, by a young Muslim teenager just before the season opener.

Parramatta, it must be said, is an area heavily populated by Muslim Australians. Many RBB supporters are Muslims.

With the RBB about to take to the streets, you can't blame the police for being jittery.

As we noted on this site before, violent boofheads and bigoted idiots will always gravitate to football as an easy battle ground. But, that doesn't mean everyone supports that. Nor does it mean should fear cultivate it.

In fact, in the vast majority of cases, very few real fans have any time for violence or bigotry. Thousands of football games happen around the world every year without starting a war or without generating any violence at all.

As the late, great Uruguayan writer (and football tragic) Eduardo Galeano wrote, "in most cases violence does not originate in soccer, any more than tears flow from a handkerchief."

But, by weighting the attention towards the perpetrators and away from the majority of peaceful football supporters, the opportunity for really using the power of football is lost. Football, less a lightening rod for violence can be the light of peace and understanding, in the Parramatta community as elsewhere.

Football can be a strategic option for peace and should be utilised to bring people together. Divisions are easy to make when you wear different colours to someone else. But friends are easy to make when you love the same game. It just depends on the where the emphasis is placed.



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Post-UNOSDP - Is the IOC fool's gold?

This is a longer version of an article published on SportandDev.org With the United Nations Office on Sport for Development and Peace closed down by the global body, there is undoubtedly a void in this space in which many of us here work. But, for all the high profile oomph the UNOSDP added to the world of sport for good, it’s passing need not be seen as devastating. For one, the work the UNOSDP has already done in its 16 years of life has laid a platform for the development of sport for social justice. While many of us knew for years that sport had a wider purpose beyond mere business or entertainment, the UNOSDP has provided a base of credibility that may have otherwise taken much longer to establish. While much of the work is, in many ways, still to be done, the UNOSDP has left a positive legacy on which we can all build. More problematic is the shifting of the UNOSDP’s brief to the IOC. Obliging the IOC to administer to the peace and development facets
2 comments
Read more

Statement on Funding for the Rohingya Football Club

We are very pleased to announce that The Kick Project has received a $AUD16,500 donation from the Australian Government to fund a pilot soccer program with Rohingya refugees in Malaysia. The funds, coming through the Australian High Commission in Malaysia, will allow the charity to support the Rohingya Football Club which has become a vital part of the exiled Rohingya community in Kuala Lumpur. The program entails kitting out the team, providing transport to games and establishing a sports and community hub where Rohingya people can access sporting equipment and coaching. Young people, and girls in particular, are the long term focus of the initiative. The Kick Project founder James Rose says the Rohingya are in dire need of assistance. "The UN has called the Rohingya arguably the most persecuted group in the world. They've been forced to flee their homelands in Myanmar, where they have been made stateless by government decree, and many have lost their lives
4 comments
Read more

House of Cards: What Might a Post-FIFA World Look Like?

With news that FIFA bigwigs Sepp Blatter, Michel Platini and Jerome Valcke have been "red carded" by FIFA and will have to sit out the next three months, it looks like finally the dead wood is being pruned at the world game HQ. However, worse may be yet come. What can be done to get the people's game back to the people? The current danger is that as the poison is leeched from FIFA, nothing will be left. If corruption is as rife as many - including us here at The Kick Project - believe then more will be shown the door and still more, aware that the gravy train has terminated, will move on voluntarily. The result may well be a vacuum at the heart of the world's most valuable sport. The immediate consequences of this may be no Confederation Championships and no World Cup in three years time or beyond. That's bad enough, but the real concern is who or what will fill this void. There are essentially three likely outcomes. One, would be to hand FIFA over to e
Post a Comment
Read more