Saturday afternoon will long live in the memory of staunch Melbourne fan, Jon Amos, who was embraced by his favourite player James Harmes after the Demons’ five-point win against Hawthorn. The uninhibited joy of Amos, who was born with Down’s Syndrome, was infectious and one of the enduring images of the round.
Dee Amos, Jon’s sister and carer said it was a great day in the life of Jon and shared a video of him playing with the ball hours after the game ended. “The happiness continues and he’s not letting that ball go.”
At roughly the same time in the concrete bowels of the MCG, a fan in a Melbourne jumper grabbed Ben Ploegmakers, an intellectually disabled man, and punched him twice in the head as someone yelled: “He’s disabled you fucking idiot!”
Although we suspect this is something the “idiot” already knew. You see, Ploegmakers claims he threw beer on his taunter in response to being mocked over his disability. Charming.
Welcome to 2019, where the easiest thing to do is lay a bet that every act of inclusion and generosity will be counterbalanced by something loathsome and contemptible. It is as odious as it is sadly inevitable.
We live in an age where simple decency is parsed by tabloids as hollow virtue signalling in comment pieces so whacko it seems like we’re existing in entirely different worlds. We live in an age we barely have time to marvel at a picture celebrating the athleticism of an AFLW star before the bandwidth is handed over to perverted trash and cyber-stalkers.
Violence at the football is hardly a new phenomenon, but it has usually been fuelled by beery yahoos drunk out of their gourds. What we saw on the weekend feels as if it’s powered by something else entirely and it has a corrosive feel – we have become a meaner country. What prompts a man who has just seen his team win, lash out at another man who he likely knows is disabled.
Where do you even begin?
A media that is incapable of self-reflection and treats news like a bad morality play is not a bad place to start. When even breakfast television can legitimise those who hold extreme views – views such as Islam is a disease Australia needs to “vaccinate” – under the “gotta hear both sides” argument, it doesn’t reflect prejudice, hate and aggression so much as it drives and provides it cover to be acted out in public.
Hate rates. And as it perpetuates and throws up on its shoes (Andrew Bolt blaming voters for turning this election campaign toxic by rewarding conmen and bullies … what, with columns in metropolitan dailies?),we need sports more than ever – not just because at its best sport is one of the few areas of Australian public life that brings us together and celebrates inclusion, but also because it also helps to take our minds off all the garbage and just forget about it for a few hours.
Footy does this brilliantly. Or at least it should. You would think that at an absolute minimum, that anyone who goes to a game on the weekend should feel safe.
On Sunday, talk should have been about a great contest (although perhaps not aesthetically great) between two clubs who desperately needed a win and the joy that Melbourne’s James Harmes brought to a fan who’d travelled down to the game with his sister.
Instead, the talking point from Saturday afternoon was just the latest spate of appalling crowd violence that has visited the AFL in recent times, notably the dramatic brawl featuring an odious Aldi Slim Shady following the season opener between Richmond and Carlton. He and two others were subsequently banned from attending all AFL matches at all venues from until March 2022 after punching another man to the ground and then throwing more punches while standing over him. All while fans, including young families, were trying to leave the ground.
Is a three-year ban enough? Should these people be allowed to darken the doors of an AFL venue again? Let us couch this in a simple, binary way they will understand. No.
