I was wondering how to celebrate 100 days of Shoot Farken.
Surely, this alternate Australian cybermedia mash-up with a core ingredient of football deserved something to mark the occasion.
And then I inadvertently came across this piece of hysterical nonsense on the scourge of anti-social behaviour at A-League matches .
If a tennis kit nerd can get away with writing conclusively about his grievances with the A-League based on attending only 70 minutes of football at AAMI Park – “I had arrived 20 minutes after kick-off (watching Lleyton Hewitt eliminated from the Australian Open at the pub)” – then surely I, your humble football writer, someone who has attended 810, mostly painful, minutes of Melbourne Heart matches this season can do the same.
I began to channel Seinfeld’s Frank Costanza.
“I got a lot of problems with you people. Now you’re going to hear about it.”
Shoot Farken Festivus: The Airing of A-League Match Day Grievances
The Song
Melbourne Heart takes the biscuit in terms of playing the worst pre-match football song ever. The last thing I want to here just before a game is Zack de la Rocha belting out Rage Against The Machine’s “Wake Up” at over 100 decibels.
With lyrics like
Departments of police, the judges, the feds
Networks at work, keepin people calm
You know they went after King
When he spoke out on Vietnam
He turned the power to the have-nots
And then came the shot
No wonder the Heart players are confused when they walk out onto the pitch. With their political consciousness raised, all they want to do is Occupy their penalty area and raise their fists in the air.
The crowd is also bewildered. Curious children turn to their fathers after hearing
Ya know they murdered X
And tried to blame it on Islam
…and ask dad who’s X? and why did they blame the Muslims?
It’s like being subjected to a politically correct psy-ops torture session in Guantanamo Bay. I can’t take it any longer. So now I try to time my arrival at the exact moment the referee blows his whistle to the begin the game.
The Mascot
What cruel minds could possibly conceive of Heart’s monstrous foam rubber man-child, Ticker?
Look close enough, if you dare, and you can see the resemblance to his evil cousin, Chucky.
Ticker’s wicked mind was brazenly on show during the first half silent fan protest earlier this season when he brazenly walked over to the quiet Yarraside and incited them to chant. Not only did he lose the fans but he hopelessly exposed himself as a nefarious agent of the club’s administration.
There is only one possible way for Ticker to redeem himself this season and that is to use his big ugly bonce in a constructive way to restore his battered reputation.
Here Ticker, something like this.
But it might all be too late for Ticker. He looks destined to walk the Earth in clubless limbo after Heart’s new owners unveil Melbourne’s version of Moonchester and his minx Moonbeam.
I, for one, will not miss him.
The Fan
There is one species of Heart fan that does my head in and they are the idiots who buy tickets or memberships in the active area and sit down for the entire match. Why sit there, when you have an entire stadium of empty green seats to sit in you morons. All you are doing is taking up space for active fans to grow their support and atmosphere in the stadium.
This idiocy is personified in The Fan. I had the great misfortune of coming across The Fan in a match against Sydney FC last November. Heart was being their usual Aloisi Era shambles and had just conceded a second goal late in the first half. I was returning to my seat, after nature called, at the back of the stand in the General Admission section. To get to this seat I had to walk past a few rows of active section and the tarp that divides it from GA.
Yarraside were chanting “Fuck them all, fuck them all, United , Sydney, Victory”
In the evolutionary scale of football chants “Fuck them all” sits somewhere between Stone Age and Bronze Age, but considering the score and the team’s crap performance it did hit an aptly defiant note.
I spotted a friend on the periphery of this designated standing section.
“This team’s a fucking disgrace! For how much longer do we have to put up with this fucking shit!” I complained. My friend nodded in agreement.
All of sudden The Fan, who was actually sitting, not standing in standing section, turned around and shouted at me – “STOP SWEARING! STOP SWEARING!“
I was incredulous. I was lost momentarily for words. I surveyed the scene to see what I was dealing with and noticed that THE FAN was sitting in the active area with his 10-year-old son.
I couldn’t believe it.
“What the fuck are you doing in the active section with your son?” I asked THE FAN.
“If you don’t want your son to hear foul language then go and sit in the family section. This club won’t stand a chance with fans like you.”
At which point THE FAN raised his hand, asked for security to save him from this deafening logic and I resumed my seat up in the AAMI Park gods.
Next time when an A-League match day experience leaves you flabbergasted I suggest you repeat after the old Zen master, Frank Costanza.
