Why would a footy club want to silence its fans?Brendan O'Reilly
The Age
22 September 2017On Saturday evening Richmond will play in their first preliminary final in 16 years. It's only the third time in 35 years that they've been this close to a grand final. Richmond have been so unsuccessful in finals since their last flag in 1980 that even Fitzroy, a club so luckless that they folded in 1996, have had a better finals record.
Richmond will play Greater Western Sydney, a team loaded with talent thanks to an over-generous AFL, who are desperate to hand a premiership to their Sydney experiment. And yet the Tigers, despite their poor record and, on the face of it, inferior playing list, will go in as favourites. This is partly due to form and partly due to the teeming hordes of their supporters.
Until two weeks ago Richmond hadn't won any finals at all since 2001. And yet they have 72,000 paid-up members and an average home crowd in 2017 of 56,000.There can't be, anywhere in the world, a sporting team with so little success and so many supporters.
Richmond supporters have a great song which their supporters actually sing. They belt it out at the end of the game after a win and at other times too – late in a game when victory is assured (actually, that's not so often) and outside the ground, too, when the official playing of the record, once or twice, has not been enough. There are times when you can find yourself in the standing room sections where Tiger supporters dominate when you could imagine yourself as part of an English soccer crowd.
In Richmond's second-last preliminary final, against Geelong at Waverly in 1995, Tiger supporters sang the song deep into the last quarter, as their heroes endured an 89-point flogging. It was the first time they'd made the finals in 14 years and the fans sang their gratitude.
Any normal person would think, therefore, with such passionate supporters in such outrageous numbers, that an otherwise unsuccessful club would do all it could to harness this passion, encourage their fans to turn up and allow them to sing, chant and cheer their heroes over the line. Sadly, the Richmond Football Club has fallen into the hands of marketing consultants who think the best thing to do is try and control their supporters by bombarding them with noise through the ground's PA system.
Before a game, right up until the first bounce, at every break and even shortly after the end, supporters are assaulted with very loud music, ads and promotions and a sick-making spruiker. At three-quarter time Richmond supporters unfurl a huge banner and begin their "Tiger Army" chant. The first time I heard this, at Docklands in 2000, it made the hair stand up on my neck. But it was almost instantly drowned out by commercials, blasting out over the PA. This is now standard practice.
For all the noise that Richmond supporters might make at three-quarter time – a sound that in past games has been used by coaches to lift the players for one last effort – it is impossible to hear it any more unless you are right among them. In a nearby section of the ground you won't hear a thing – just thumping loud music, a loud ad for car insurance or, worst of all, the spruiker telling you how exciting it is to be here at the footy and that we should be making more noise to support our team.
The atmosphere at the Geelong game two weeks ago was incredible and this was partly due to the fact that it was a Geelong home game. It had less of Richmond's corporate drivel, which was a great relief, and at the very end we got to sing the song three times, all the way through, without the spruiker interrupting us as he did when we beat the Saints in the last home-and-away game. But there were still cringeworthy moments. At quarter time, loud music blasted out and Geelong supporters were encouraged to dance in order to win a cash prize. Richmond do similar things at their home games. This is what the marketing geniuses have done to us – reduced the football supporter to a dancing beggar.
And the corporates can't see their own stupidity. At the last break a thumping soundtrack was accompanied by flashing signs that urged Cats supporters to get behind their team and "make some noise". Why? So that it can be drowned out?
This is the deep mystery of corporate thinking. What sort of a football club would try to silence its own supporters?
Brendan O'Reilly is a Melbourne writer and Richmond supporter for 44 years.http://www.smh.com.au/comment/why-would-a-footy-club-want-to-silence-its-fans-20170921-gylx9o.html
