Bottles At The ‘G: Hawks Faithful Lose The Plot In A Prelim Thriller

I’ve sat in outer at Princes Park through some shocking decisions in my time, mate, decisions that would curl your toenails, and never once did I see grown men lob a bottle at a bloke in the white coat. So you’ll forgive me for being none too impressed watching the vvision out of the MCG on Saturday night, where a clutch of Hawthorn supporters decided the best response to a heartbreaking preliminary final loss was to start chucking tinnies and water bottles at the umpiring crew as they left the arena.

Look, I get it. Prelims do things to a man’s blood pressure that no cardiologist would sign off on. But there’s a line, and on Saturday night a few hundred people in brown and gold thought that line was more of a suggestion.

The ‘bravest decision’ that lit the fuse

By all reports the whole saga kicked off after what’s being called the bravest decision of the finals series – a holding the ball call deep in the pocket in the dying seconds that went against the home side and effectively sealed it for Brisbane. Now I wasn’t standing in the goal square, and I’m not about to sit here and tell you the field umpire got it stone cold right, because from where I was sitting on the couch with a middy going flat it looked fifty-fifty at best. But brave? Since when did doing your job under pressure become an act of heroism? Back in my day the field umpire just umpired, he didn’t need a citation for courage under fire like he’d stormed a beach.

That’s the bit that gets me about the modern caper. Every contentious call in September gets a nickname and a highlights package before the players have even showered. We build these moments up into some kind of Roman gladiator theatre, and then we act shocked when a section of the crowd treats the umpire like he’s just robbed them at the TAB.

No excuse, none, for bottles

Let’s not muck around on this one. There is no version of a prelim final, no matter how tight, no matter how contentious the free kick, that justifies throwing objects at match officials. It’s dangerous, it’s gutless because it’s done from the safety of a crowd, and it drags every decent Hawthorn supporter who paid their money and behaved themselves into a story about a minority who couldn’t control their temper for ten seconds after the siren.

I’ve heard some people online trying to have both bars, saying the decision was that bad it was almost understandable. Rubbish. My old man would’ve clipped me round the ear for even thinking that way. You lose with dignity or you don’t deserve to call yourself a supporter of the game, let alone the club.

Head office won’t cop the blame it deserves

Here’s where I get my grumble on, because I reckon the AFL has to have a good hard look at itself too, not just the blokes who threw the bottles. Every year they tinker with interpretations, they bring in some new directive about deliberate out of bounds or dangerous tackles or high contact, and every year the poor umpire in the middle is left holding the can trying to apply rules that half the football department can’t agree on either. You can’t keep moving the goalposts, pardon the pun, and then act stunned when the public’s trust in the umpiring department is lower than a wet week.

Back in my day – and yes, I know, here he goes again – the rules were simpler and the umpires were respected because everyone roughly knew what they were umpiring to. Now you need a law degree and a phone hotline to head office to understand what constitutes prior opportunity. Little wonder the punters in the crowd are wound up tighter than a clock spring by three quarter time.

Sympathy for the umpires, not the thugs

Spare a thought for the umpiring crew, who I’d wager didn’t sleep a wink Saturday night. Whatever you think of the call itself, and plenty of good judges reckon it was tight enough to go either way, these are blokes doing an impossible job at match pace with sixty thousand people screaming blue murder in their ear. They don’t get the luxury of the review and the slow-mo replay we all get from the couch. You can disagree with a decision passionately, write him a strongly worded letter even, but you don’t put his safety at risk walking off his own workplace.

The umpires copped it from the crowd and from social media in equal measure, and frankly the social media pile-on is nearly as ugly as the bottle throwing itself.

I’d like to think most Hawthorn people are embarrassed by what a small section of their own did on Saturday, and from what I’ve read plenty of them are speaking up saying exactly that. Good on them. That’s the sort of accoutability the game needs more of, supporters calling out their own rather than closing ranks.

What should actually happen now

The league will no doubt review the vision, and rightly so, anyone identified chucking objects at officials ought to be looking at a lengthy ban from the venue at minimum. That’s not me being soft on Hawthorn, I’d say exactly the same if it was my own Carlton lot doing it, and Lord knows we’ve had our own moments of crowd silliness down the years that I’m not proud of either.

But the league also needs to stop dining out on manufacturing drama around every marginal decision. Call it what it is – a contested, difficult call in a pressure cooker final – not some manufactured piece of theatre with a catchy nickname attached before the players have even left the ground. You lower the temperature by being honest about how hard the job is, not by turning every 50-50 call into a movie trailer.

The bigger worry for the game

What worries this old fella most isn’t really the bottles themselves, it’s what they represent. Finals footy has always carried an edge, that’s part of why we love it, but there’s a growing nastiness creeping into the way fans treat umpires that I don’t recall from the old VFL days, and I mean that as no exaggeration. Respect for the men and women in the middle used to be baked into the culture of the game, win lose or draw. If we let that slide any further, we’re not far off needing security escorts for every umpire at every ground, every week, not just in September.

That’s not the game I fell in love with as a kid at Princes Park, and it’s not the game any of us should want to hand down to the next generation of footy people, Hawthorn, Brisbane or otherwise.