A minor tremor has been set off by some VPL fans about the playing of music before games and during the half-time break. More specifically, the playing of ethnic music, imitation John Lennon tunes from Manchester not fitting into that category. The two main culprits at the moment seem to be Coburg and Heidelberg, playing Turkish and Greek music respectively. The specific FFV regulations on this are as follows:
12.3 No Club may distribute, disseminate, broadcast or publish by any means whatsoever whether electronically or otherwise any material in a language other than English, with the prior written consent of FFV to do so.
This also brings up another problem in regards to Coburg, as they have a fair bit of Turkish language content on their website as well, as part of an obvious attempt to appeal to its core Turkish-Australian fanbase. So the questions which must be asked are: did the FFV allow this, or as usual have they not been paying attention? If they have allowed it, why put in any restrictions at all? Where does one draw the line between what is acceptable ethnic content and what is not-acceptable? Are ethnic names and foreign languages on official merchandise ok? Foreign language advertising boards, say for non-English newspapers?
For what it's worth, I reluctantly agree with the outright bans on ethnic insignias and flags, in the sense that they're unfortunately used by a significant enough minority as part of something other than football. But this sort of half-half approach to non-English communications and content just doesn't seem logical or workable. The FFV need to either get serious and clamp down on all of it, or celebrate the diversity and let clubs try and attract whoever they want. If they do anything, I can only see it being the former, as per the John Howard 'ok, we're all different and that's good but can we please all act in an Anglo-Celtic manner because otherwise we'd have to come up with a new and relevant Australian identity' legacy.
For the record, I'd rather not have that sort of music played, as a matter of taste. A bit of Xinlisupreme on the other hand is always welcome. Ignore the clip, it's the music that's important.
Hmm, would they allow a track called Kyoro? Sounds a bit ethnic to me.
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