Rebecca Wilson: Why I want the Wanderers to win
12 minutes agoREBECCA WILSONThe Daily Telegraph
THE Western Sydney Wanderers’ Red and Black Army spent the best part of their season making my life a misery.
There were abusive emails, death threats, indignant but misguided souls spruiking the virtues of the club’s fan base, flare throwing and a core group of banned fans who decided they had earned the right of appeal for behaving like thugs at soccer games.
That I had dared to publish an official FFA and police file of banned soccer fans brought howls of protest from those most in the wrong who all of a sudden became the lily white, innocent victims of a nasty media plot.
Then last weekend, I turned onto a soccer game at Pirtek stadium, the home of much of this misery, to see what can only be described as a sporting miracle unfolding.
There they were — the Brisbane Roar and the Western Sydney Wanderers — playing an A-League game with such abandon and skill that it was irresistible. This was a match that cancelled out the rest of the mediocrity A-League fans had been forced to endure for six months.
I know very little about soccer. This is pointed out to me a lot. What I do know is that a team called Leicester has captured our hearts in the EPL and that the Wanderers are close to doing the same in Adelaide today.
I really, really want Tony Popovic and his team of fighters to win this soccer match.
I want them to show that scoring five goals is not an anomaly and that winning their first grand final is another milestone for a club that really has stamped itself as a force in recent years, not always for the right *reasons.
Above all, I want the thugs to stay away, as they appear to have done in last week’s game, to make way for fans who love this football team and play by the rules of fan engagement.
I challenge anyone who watched that most spectacular of games last weekend not to have been impressed by the way the crowd behaved and how they reacted to the presence of Brisbane Roar fans. Instead of flares at ten paces, they were waving scarfs and innocent banners.
There were kids, babies even, wearing the red and black.
It was enough to make the most cynical and jaded of us believe the club has turned a corner, that maybe the baddies have headed home and been replaced by normal people who are passionate about their football team.
It was enough for me to want this for WSW.
I’m not going to a game anytime soon so you can breathe a sigh of relief RBB.
But I will be glad to cheer them on today because they are the hope for the A-League when most other teams appear to be set in quicksand and debt.
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