A selfish perspective on the elephant in the room

Far be it for me to address this over a week after it all happened like the moral coward that I am, but let me just say this - the booing of the Welcome to Country by some South fans at the Australia Cup final was a disgrace. And that's not even from the point of view of the politics of it. I get that some people just really, really dislike Welcome to Country, whether they understand the purpose and function of it, or whether they don't. And goodness knows I'm not the person that's going to convince those who are opposed to Welcome to Country of its merits. And I get that some Melbourne Victory fans also booed it, but I'm not interested in them right now. I'm interested in us, and one particular phenomenon that the club has suffered from repeatedly - the lack of a sense of self-preservation among its supporters. So often in the club's history, going all the way back to the 1960s, and so often at its biggest moments, our fans have this rotten habit of making the club look absolutely idiotic. When the club was at its peak it could, to a certain extent, get away with such antics, because of its size and centrality to the local game, and because no viable alternative to us existed to replace us. The club has not had that size or status or clout for a very long time. And the lessons of flares and pitch invasions, as two examples, have been hard ones to learn. Just as hard has been trying to ditch obviously political chants, especially when faced with an opponent which throws them out to you in the first place. (and goodness knows there's so much to write about the double standard of belittling a custom of the most disadvantaged demographic in Australia, while earlier in the year you were complaining about the racism directed towards yourselves). We're getting better at not doing the bad things, we're even getting better at self-policing those among us who want to do stupid shit, but the Australia Cup final was such uncharted territory for us in so many ways - a crowd and South supporter turnout we haven't seen in nearly 30 years, and a situation where we're putting ourselves on display about who we are, and how far we believe that we've come. So many unfamiliar faces, and so many of the usual Clarendon Corner types right at the front of the active group, or in volunteer duties on the ground behind the goal. When the booing started, so many of us implored those doing the booing to shut the fuck up, not necessarily because we like Welcome to Country (though that would certainly be true for some of us), but because we know how it's going to play out in the media and among those members of the public that are already hostile to us. We cannot afford to make mistakes like that, not when there's so much at stake. That it was the only blip an otherwise marvellous night kind of underscores how easy it would have been to not boo Welcome to Country. The Australian anthem was belted out - no 1991 NSL grand final antics here. There were no flares either before the game, or during - remarkable to me, though it was explained to me later that so many of those most likely to do that at the game would have much experience being in the active end at Victory games, where they know the seccos and the cops will swoop in. There was no pitch invasion post-game. I know it's not true of everyone and it's not true of everyone all of the time, but most of us who have been at the club for the past twenty years, we have for the most part become fiercely protective of the club and its reputation. Sometimes, especially on social media, that comes across in less than flattering ways, because all the grievance gets turned into lashing out at anyone unlucky enough to be in the vicinity. But now we're perhaps at a point in the exile stage of our history where there isn't just something to lose, but also something to gain, and people have just got to be smarter.