Entitled Football Supporters

Saturday 9 May 2009

Some of the Hawthorn supporters I sat near tonight were such a dismal pack of entitled little bastards that the evening was 20 times more hellish than it needed to have been.

My team got comprehensively beaten by our arch rival. It was never going to be a pleasant experience. But these dudes added a lovely patina of barely contained fury to my already rather dismal viewing experience.

Seriously, there's some blokes out there with real bad anger management problems. I understand why such a thing could be prevalent in today's society. I think men oftentimes feel lost, not exactly sure of how they should be behaving in a post-feminist society where women have somewhat found their voices in some ways. Sometimes it seems that men have been left feeling a bit emasculated. Maybe a bit like women have found their voices and men have lost theirs. Or at least had them stifled under waves of political correctness and lack of social cues on what is acceptable and what isn't. Sitting at the football is one of the few places where you get to yell and scream and vent your spleen and it's fine.

To an extent, though, surely. Because surely in the end, losing a game, playing like poos, being outcoached and outmuscled by the team you hate the most really doesn't entitle you to behave like petulant brats, does it? Some sort of perspective has to come into play at some point. In the end, you know that ultimately it's just a game, no matter how you doth love it, and it's only one game within a season, as thoroughly disappointing as the episode was. Your team has many injuries. And if they are playing a shocker, at some level you know that the players are not losing just to make your weekend start off all wubbly and wascally.

Several amongst the bunch of males surrounding me this evening called our team c***s. The guy next to me screamed his guts out the entire game and abused basically every single player on the team whose colour he was wearing. Some other dweeb threw away his scarf in a fit of childish rage at the end of the game.

I understand the whole anger thing. I was angry myself. But maybe some men need to consider why their self-identities are so flimsy that they can feel entitled to behave like a big tantrum bubby simply because their team has had a bad night at the office.

Their team, and identifying with and being part of that team, gives them that lovely little winning feeling. We all love that feeling. But if you need it too much, then the players, the individual people who are talented enough to be playing professional Aussie Rules, are lauded and loved and exalted but then ripped down when they don't perform to scratch. As if they are just wind-up robots that give you a nice feeling, like rats pressing down on the lever for more drugs, rather than living, breathing people.

And a living, breathing entity. A sporting club to which many people belong, or at least identify with. Part of that adherence involves loyalty, doesn't it? A willingness to stick with your team through "thick or thin"? To be willing to go with the losses as well as the wins, rather than smacking away the drug dealer when they don't give you your fix.

Some Hawthorn supporters need to lift their game even more than the playing list. The playing list has interrupted preseasons and half their backline missing. Some supporters behave like they have interrupted psychologies.

4 comments

  1. Yeah been to them kindah crowds - dickheads!!!

    I'm hoping to watch the Hawkies next week and get a few signiture.

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  2. Someone I know made a good point just before that the AFL bignotes themselves on only selling light beer ... and yet they sell spirits, so I don't get what the deal is. The dick next to me wasn't even drinking (oh, boy, if he had been - sheesh) but she has a point. There were a fair few drunken Friday nighters around last night.

    Oh, yeah, you're a Freo boy, aren't you? Next Friday night should be interesting seeing we don't have a backline :(

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  3. Yeah I go for Freo but I am waning ... a friend I teach in KA says, go for the Hawks, I'm thinking well why not? But then I see Freo beat Carlton last night ... that's three in a row.

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  4. Oh, well, of course you're ALWAYS welcome to come over to the Hawkie side :)

    So who will you be barracking for on Friday night? Freo were pretty good last night. It was quite an entertaining game.

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