“I pay $1000 a year ... Why should the AFL take my money and then take away my right to support my team?”
I think this is the nub of the problem; fans feel entitled to carry on like pork chops because they’ve paid a ticket to get in, like it’s part of the social contract. I don’t think that’s been the case for a while, at least for certain types of pork-choppery.
To me going to the football is like going to the pub. You can probably get away with more boisterous behaviour in a busy pub than a lot of places, but when you start to ruin the enjoyment of others it won’t be long until you get a tap on the shoulder and are asked to tone it down or find another venue.
If I had to bet, I’d put money on this guy being an enormous knobber, and that security/police were probably entitled to ask him to chill out a bit. We hear the self-serving version of events of the bloke who grabs his 15 minutes of fame with the media, and probably a few mates or like-minded supporters at the game, but how confident are you of this person being self-aware enough to know whether he crossed the line from “very passionate supporter” to something less tolerable. The Melbourne supporters that reported him certainly thought he’d crossed the line, and while that’s by no means conclusive it probably warrants someone checking in on him. The police/security obviously reached a conclusion there was something to the complaint.
I don’t claim to be an expert on drawing a line on obnoxious behaviour – I probably veer into that territory myself, and have been asked to tone it down on occasion at sporting events (and pubs) - but the worst thing that happened was he couldn’t engage in his own version of pork choppery for a half of football that his team won. There were 75,000 people at the game, and if the worst behaviour by security seems to be a few too many cops wondered over to 1 bloke and told him to settle down. People are acting like he was chucked in a gulag.
