By Michael Lynch
February 26, 2005
Flares are back in fashion. Not the wide-legged trouser variety, but the sort that flutter and flame, smoke and shimmer and cascade a gaseous, coloured haze all around.
It's hard to go to a Victorian Premier League match these days - or at least one involving the Melbourne Knights, South Melbourne, Heidelberg, Preston or one of the well-supported sides - and not experience the flare phenomenon.
Football Federation Australia might be trying to replace "old soccer" with "new football", but life in the VPL, the elite state league competition, is still pretty much unreconstructed.
While the new game is all about Melbourne Victory playing in a bright, shiny, well-appointed comfortable new stadium - a Telstra Dome or a revamped Olympic Park - old soccer is about the game's past and its tribal-suburban roots.
The Victory is trying to appeal to big corporate backers, mainstream media and television and a swag of "non-traditional" supporters to forge a new identity for the sport.
Go to a VPL game and the experience is entirely different. It is, in many ways, like taking a walk back in time, to the 1970s and 1980s, a period when soccer was still known as "soccer", when supporting the game was akin to making a political statement and the clubs existed as offshoots of cultural and social organisations springing from migrant groupings.
The Victorian Soccer Federation is trying to change all this, of course, and wants the VPL competition to become a mainstream attraction, to produce clubs that, should the A-League be a success and expand beyond its opening eight teams, would be good enough to either bid for a place in the league or supply players for any new Victorian club.
To the extent that the league this season has been boosted by the recruitment of many more high-quality players, the VSF is on the right track.
With the demise of the National Soccer League and the creation of a new stand-alone side for Melbourne in the A-League, well-known clubs, such as multiple national champions Melbourne Knights and South Melbourne, have brought added zest to the VPL.
Crowds are on the rise. South's official gate for its opening VPL match against old rival Heidelberg (which it had not played for more than a decade) was put at 11,800. When Preston hosted the Knights in round two at its cramped Connor Reserve ground, there was an official crowd of 4600 - sufficient to create a rocking atmosphere in a venue that holds only 6000 or so.
The vibe at most of these grounds clearly represents the clubs - and Australia's - patchwork quilt of ethnic diversity. At Preston for the Knights game, there were red-and-white-check banners proclaiming the Knights supporters' Croatian heritage. At the other end, there were supporters wearing the red and yellow of Macedonia (Preston's ethnic supporter base), chanting "Ma-ke-don-i-a" and waving banners proclaiming "Welcome to hell".
And then there were the flares. About a dozen of them, all from the Knights end, were hurled on to the pitch before kick-off, sending billowing clouds of pink smoke drifting across the ground.
Is this all dangerous? Or as dangerous as the jeremiahs in Australia like to make out? The VSF is looking to crack down on flares and the flying of ethnic flags at games, and has threatened clubs with fines of $500 a flare and potentially the loss of championship points, but at no stage in this match did there look like being any trouble.
It has to be said that the atmosphere generated was one of expectation and occasion. Perhaps a designated flares-only area is the avenue to pursue.
"Old soccer", of which this game was a vivid example, will not be for everyone, and if the game continued in this vein only, it would certainly remain a "minority" sport. But, in a world where sport is increasingly dealt to the consumer as a homogenised product, "old soccer" still has its attractions, and not just in a sociological sense.
As long as no one gets hurt and the action on the pitch is exciting, surely the chanting and barracking at VPL games all adds to the palette of Melbourne experiences.
As one of the crowd at Preston pointed out: "Why does everyone keep going on about the flares? In Italy, you can't start a big match at the San Siro or Stadio Olimpico until at least 100 have been let off, and when everyone sees it on the television here, they go on about . . . the passion of Italian supporters . . . Why don't they talk about our passion that way?"
Hopefully, the Victory can attract a whole new audience for the game but it, and other A-League clubs, would do well to harness some of the passion of this traditional fan base.
Flares go off in a match in Melbourne last week
Good article imo.
