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The Australian Open tennis comes and goes and again we see ethnic fuelled anti-social behaviour and violence on the terraces at Melbourne Park.
Inevitably the media picks up on this and makes it an issue which draws disgust and condemnation from all quarters of society. Interestingly though, the media doesn’t label the incidents a tennis problem. The sport of tennis hasn’t bread hundreds of years of tension between one ethnic group or another, so why should it be tarnished by these people using the Australian Open to grind their collective axes? This is sensible.
When these shenanigans are carried out wider Australian society is analysed in terms of answering the questions; why is this happening and how do we stop it? What is it in our pluralist Australian society that sees some of its citizens possess such ownership over foreign ethnic hatred and divide?
So why, it might be asked, when the very same groups - and most definitely we are talking individually and collectively about the exact same people - use football as the vehicle for their anger and violence is it a football problem?
Group A fights Group B at Venue X. Group A fights Group B at Venue Z. What is the constant here? Apologies if algebra isn’t your strong suit.
Football has had its backbone built by ethnic minorities flooding the nation post-war. The overwhelming majority of grassroots clubs owe their existence to these groups.
Herein lies the answer to why football cops a whack and tennis doesn’t.
So what’s the solution? It’s something that state federations have been asking for decades. In Victoria the federation has created a ‘Champions League’ in the summer. It is zone based so as not to clash with the existing club structure and to provide juniors with a year-round program. It was designed to be an elite system. Conspiracy theorists throughout ‘old soccer’ say it’s Big Brother’s way of cleansing the sport of its past. Insert clichés about smoke and fire and babies and bath water here.
Without learning from history we are condemned to repeat it. Thousands of recently arrived migrants in Australia levitate to our game because it is the one they know, in the same way as millions more did before them. And it’s natural that, facing cultural and linguistic barriers, they are forming their own clubs based on national and ethnic lines. Hence the self-fulfilling prophecy rolls on. When will our nation, one built on the concept of people coming from somewhere else, use football as a vehicle to open our arms to recently arrived people, rather than an opportunity to keep them isolated and marginalised?
Until we do, expect bad publicity and blame thrown at our game, warranted or otherwise.
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