There are times you need the courage to take a great leap; you can’t cross a chasm in two small jumps.
David Lloyd George, British prime minister (1916-22)
For the last fortnight, the AFL has engaged in a silent war with sections of its fans over crowd behaviour. It’s a move likely precipitated by the release of the documentary The Final Quarter, tracing the tumultuous end to Adam Goodes’ decorated AFL career which was marred by bullying and booing. But you wouldn’t know that from anything the AFL has said.
Instead we know this from footage of security staff talking to sections of the crowd. We can only presume this is being done to make the live football experience less toxic — whether that’s addressing racist taunting, foul language, aggressive behaviour, or fights. But others have been less charitable. Former player Campbell Brown is chastising the AFL for trying to act as a “moral compass”; The Herald Sun‘s Mick Warner says the AFL has wrecked the game, while the moderate commentator Gerard Healy has rightly labelled the non-response from CEO Gill McLachlan a crisis.
It’s a classic PR disaster: the implementation of a significant change in the direction of a public organisation, plain for all to see, but with absolutely no narrative, no blueprint, no leadership, no articulation of what they are attempting to achieve. In attempting to jump this chasm in two small leaps, the AFL has fallen right into it.
As tends to happen with PR disasters, when one problem isn’t addressed it has knock-on effects elsewhere. This current crisis is clearly an extension of the controversy over the booing of Adam Goodes years earlier. Earlier this month, moments before the release of The Final Quarter, the AFL issued an unreserved apology for its inaction on the abuse Goodes faced.
“The game did not do enough to stand with him, and call it out,” the statement said. “[We pledge] to fight all forms of racism and discrimination, on and off the field”.
The AFL has a proud history of tackling racism — from the 1995 racial vilification code which preceded the national government’s 1996 legislation, to Nicky Winmar — but on Goodes it left a vacuum to be filled with raucous and toxic noise. The organisation’s silence on the way the booing took hold in lockstep with Goodes pointing out racism allowed a nonsense mythology about him to arise, that he was booed for playing for free kicks and so on.
Now, even in contrition, the AFL has left room for confusion. In the apology, McLachlan needed to point out that crowd behaviour was a priority going forward; that this needs to be addressed in order for all fans, including families and children, to be able to enjoy the game.
Most organisations with a budget the size of the AFL’s partake in what PR practitioners call “crisis media planning”. That is, they anticipate what crises they might conceivably face in their industry and make contingency plans to address it, should the worst occur.
The AFL as an industry has roughly two reporters for every player but, despite the AFL’s enormous marketing and media wing, there appears to be no one advising them on public relations. This in spite of their relations with the public being their essential service.
The only way to deal with this crisis is not to retreat, but to outline the initial purpose of the policy, which is assuredly to improve the crowd experience. Not an ignoble aim, Gil.
These are some of the messages the AFL needs to hit if it wants to drive real change and build support for reforms in the game going forward:
- People go to the footy to have a good time
- It’s fine to enjoy the footy and be passionate, but just be mindful that there are kids and other people around
- Venting is acceptable, but threatening people is not
- There has been a lot of agro at the footy. We don’t want to end up like Europe with designated fan seating
- There are some people at the football that do want to stir up trouble. We want to prevent a situation from boiling over. We have a duty of care to fans
- Let’s remember that while we love footy, it’s just a game.
What we got instead? An apology from Gil to fans who feel intimidated by security. “It hurts me that our fans are feeling intimidated at our games,” he told The Herald Sun. “I’m appalled.”
The AFL is selling a positive message; there’s no need to get on your hind legs.
David Latham is a public relations and crisis media consultant.
Re: Goodes
This is still being handled badly, including by goody-two-shoes media people intent on showing their wokeness by talking about racism.
Racism was AN ELEMENT of why Goodes was booed, and the reaction of excoriating everybody who boo’d Goodes and calling them all racists added to the anti-Goodes backlash at the time and is still adding to it now. This conventional wisdom that the AFL should have gone harder in telling people not to boo…. you think that would have worked? A big part of the problem was people didn’t like getting told not to boo, and boo’d because they didn’t like irritating AFL executives and media pundits telling them not to, and then booing even more because they resented being called racists when at least in their minds it was not why they were booing. It became an out of control snowball… a full-bore Streisand Effect example, where the attempts to suppress only whip the flames higher.
This is especially the case because despite the beatification of Goodes by writers now, Goodes was always widely disliked by opposition fans before the booing issue started. Because of the racism angle, nobody will say a thing anymore about Adam Goodes that isn’t super positive and acts like he was always a beloved player who nobody except racists could ever dislike. This is completely untrue. Long before the incident with the Collingwood girl, before the Australia Day stuff. Adam Goodes was widely disliked by opposition fans because of a perception that he was, as no less than Leigh Matthews called him, a “protected species”, a favourite of the AFL and the umpires who played dirty on the field and got away with it, whose 2nd Brownlow in particular was ridiculous, and so on. And so again, people felt they were booing him for these other reasons, even if they were joining in with people who started the booing over the Australia Day things and for racist reasons, and reacted badly to being told they were racists and had to stop booing because of holier-than-thou AFL execs and media people.
THAT is the truth. The simplistic “all the boos came from racists and nobody dared to call it out, how shameful” explanation is unhelpful bullshit mythmaking.
Full disclosure: I attended at least 2 games in Goodes’ last season where he played. I did NOT boo – because I didn’t want to be lumped in with racists- and I encouraged people around me to not join in too (didn’t work). But I absolutely boo’d Goodes in past years and purely where he got a cheap free kick or had sniped one of my team’s players – the same as I do for players of any race who do those things. Honestly, I kinda felt it was a bit racist for me to NOT boo Goodes in that last season basically because he is Aboriginal… if he was a white man I would have boo’d the shit out of him with no compunction when he staged for and got a free kick within range of goal, and the people around me did just that. Could I honestly say they were doing so for racist reasons? I could not, but pundits were happy to generalize and declare them all racists, and that was part of the problem, not part of the solution.
As for the AFL security crisis, they’ve gone about this ass-backwards. Fans did not feel there was a security crisis, so the AFL’s “solution” is to a problem not perceived. Using euphemisms like Behavioural Awareness Officer for security goons just comes across as Big Brother. if they said at the start “there’s an uptick in fan violence and abuse so we are putting on some extra security patrols” to stamp that out and the goons just had “security” on their vests, nobody would care. Instead it has come across that the AFL is trying to police the way regular non-violent fans act at the footy.
Army – in light of your explanation about why Goodes was booed before the Collingwood girl incident, it will be interesting to see how the crowd reacts to Pinchin’ Ben Stratton when next he takes the field.
He will probably cop it for a week or two until people forget about it. And he will really cop it next time he plays against Essendon, because their fans will remember it more.
Like Gary Ablett Jr got boo’d for a couple of weeks earlier this season. That has now, as far as I know, stopped. It probably helped him that he got suspended.
I went looking and found this article:
https://www.theage.com.au/sport/afl/when-booing-at-the-footy-seemed-so-much-less-complicated-20150803-giqnde.html
where the writer quotes his own piece from 2011 about booing at the footy… which included a mention of people booing Chris Judd and Adam Goodes, which he included in the category of “jealous booing” (ironically, while that is definitely a thing, people booing opposition champions out of jealousy, IMO the champions who cop it are always invariably champions who are also seen as arrogant, snipers, “protected species” at the tribunal or all three. Judd didn’t really get boos until after his eye gouge incidents. People like Wayne Carey, Barry Hall, Diesel Williams, Jonathon Brown- all great players, all with records of violent conduct and arrogance on field- got boos, and players who are just as great but without that spectre, like Nat Fyfe, Jimmy Bartel, Robert Harvey etc never did. I don’t think Ablett ever got boo’d until this year (except by Geelong fans upset at him moving to Gold Coast).
Arky you are the problem. Please watch the documentary. What happened to Goodes IS AND WAS RACIST. You can deny this all you like from your position of white privilege, but it is the truth.
The ‘unhelpful bullshit myth making ‘ you talk of is white Australian history. In a nutshell. You, Bolt, Windshuttle, all of you bleating into the wind.
The truth is out. Racism is being challenged. And whether you like it or not, will continue to be called out.
It’s all so simple Penny. Any problem nowadays – Racism. With a capital R of course.
Except of course it hasn’t worked its way into actual serious problems yet. I look forward however to the anti racism solution to climate change.
It’s obvious that there’s racism about Goodes. You’ve just read a detailed account about the nuances from a diehard fan but why see things in other than black and white ?
I find all this commentary about the AFL off-field behaviour to be very frustrating. If we are talking about crowd behaviour, in the same breath we should be talking about licensed and unlicensed seating zones. We already have designated seating zones at the football: licensed and unlicensed. Within the unlicensed zones there are actually two unofficial categories: properly controlled unlicensed and poorly controlled unlicensed. In my experience, the only proper controlled licensed areas are behind the goals where the little Auskick kids sit with their parents – no tosspots allowed and the parents ensure that. In the other unlicensed areas, it is very lax which constitutes a breach of contract for ticket holders. Licensed seating is something the AFL does not want to talk about. IMO they should lose their alcohol sponsorship pronto.
I am perplexed by parents who fear their children hearing foul language at footy matches – kids are exposed to it at school (if not yet, they soon will be), it’s a societal reality.
It’s a valuable lesson for children to observe how ugly & uncouth the badmouths appear. Threats/violence are another matter.
Nice work David though I don’t know about telling die hards it’s just a game. And I’ve learned quite a bit in the comments about fan thinking. There really are many thousands of people who know bugger all about most things going on around them but can tell you in minute detail the flow of the last quarter of the 2005 grand final. And they know who’s who with players. There’s a lot of them but they are a minority of the population.
The broader thought about fans attitude to the AFL is fraught too. For decades the regular fan has been milked endlessly by the AFL. I still can’t figure out how all those membership debacles at Docklands didn’t end up in court. Regular game attendance is expensive. Meanwhile a well paid army of bureaucrats, flunkies and camp followers soak it up administering only 18 clubs and 500 odd players in the most popular sport in the country. Nice work if you can get it. Any wonder fans don’t like them.
The pearl clutchers killed off cricket when the Hill was abolished at the SCG.
The attempted sanitising of life experiences will not end well.
As with health in general, lack of exposure to germs in general means a compromised immune system, unable to cope when a real problem lobs into view.
Too right Arky. “A’v a go ya mug” never hurt anyone. Can’t say the same for the political cant we’re being exposed to.