SOURCE: WAtoday.com.au
The argument against
- Michael Hopkin
"Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies," Gore Vidal once said. History doesn't record whether the great philosopher-playwright followed the AFL, but he seemed to have a pretty good grasp on the hardcore footy fan's mindset.
There are two facets to supporting a football team: hoping your team wins, and hoping with almost equal fervour that the neighbours get stuffed. That way, you get two doses of joy/despair each weekend, instead of one.
But even that is too rational an argument. The simple fact is that sport is about bragging rights. Eagles fans, don't you enjoy being the only Perth team to have won a flag? Are you really, honestly excited about the prospect of losing that oh-so-precious title?
And Dockers fans, how much sweeter would Grand Final glory be if it really, really annoyed your Eagles-supporting mates?
ABC 720's Geoff Hutchison got it exactly right when he said on his Facebook page: "There are some of you out there masquerading as Dockers supporters under the "we support WA teams" guise. Bugger off. This isn't for you. It's for those who stuck fast."
Of course I appreciate the traditional enmity between WA and Victoria when it comes to footy. And, in the scheme of things, the 19 years since the Dockers were born isn't actually that long in terms of creating a proper, grudging rivalry.
But as a Pom who grew up with the English football culture, I'm a firm believer that crosstown enmity should trump everything.
Try asking a Manchester City fan whether they barrack for Manchester United against foreign opposition. You'd get a lecture about "the real Manchester", probably peppered with a healthy amount of swearing.
I once terrified my mates by wildly cheering a Barcelona goal in the 2006 Champions League final, which we were watching in a fairly rough London pub full of Arsenal fans.
Yet I was merely doing my duty. As a Tottenham fan, you couldn't pay me to barrack for Arsenal, even if they were playing against Satan FC. (Wait, they are Satan FC.)
This, incidentally, is one thing that English football commentators routinely get wrong when reporting on Europe-wide competitions. They see their job as involving barracking for the "home" side, when the reality is that a solid 80 per cent of people watching would love to see Chelsea fall on their faces against some semi-professional Albanian journeymen no one's ever heard of before.
Anyway, I digress. The simple fact is that Eagles fans have no business supporting the Dockers. At the risk of offending many, many people, I'd suggest that cheering Freo this week makes you less of an Eagles fan.
In fact, Fremantle's possible success represents a handy litmus test for Eagles fans. (Litmus test, purple, see? Ah, never mind.) If you hope the Dockers win, then feel free to refer to yourself as a 'WA footy fan'. But you're only allowed to call yourself an Eagles fan if the prospect of a Fremantle flag fills your mouth with acrid bile.
Sure, being a touchy-feely footy fan is all well and good. But the hardcore haters have got it right. After all, isn't schadenfreude more fun?
As someone with no strong AFL allegiance, I can barrack for whomever I want. Although a Dockers fan once spent an entire evening explaining to me his thesis that Fremantle are "the Tottenham of the AFL", while the Eagles are like the ever-arrogant Arsenal.
So go the Dockers!
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The argument for
- Liam Ducey
Full disclosure – I used to be one of those give-no-quarter, one-eyed Eagles supporters. I'd go for West Coast, and whoever was playing the Dockers. Family doesn't come into it. Mum's a Docker and East Fremantle, Dad and I are Eagles and East Perth.
If you were a Dockers fan, you were open to ridicule. I'd delight in it. I told myself there was no way I'd ever barrack for those blokes down the road. Fremantle and all its associated delights could sink into the ocean, I'd say, and I wouldn't even notice. As long as Mojo's was spared, I'd be OK with that.
In recent weeks, probably the last six, my vernacular has changed when I'm talking about the Dockers.
Instead of 'they', I've started saying 'we'. I've embraced the Dockers without even realising it.
My best friend, a former WA Student Scientist of the Year was the first to pick up on it. All he asked me was why I've changed my core ideology. I couldn't explain it. Why was I suddenly, inexplicably supporting the Dockers?
Well, I've figured it out. My WAtoday.com.au colleague, Mike Hopkin, lacks a fundamental understanding of the way Australia works. This isn't town versus town. This is state versus state. The battle lines are fluid in Australia, they can go two ways.
I'd never support the Dockers against the Eagles. It's just not going to happen. But against those bloody Victorians, against those wise men from the East, against those AFL bureaucrats in Melbourne, team allegiance, at least for me, takes a back seat for the pure and utter contempt every West Australian should have for that mob.
To put it in terms Mike might understand, it's like mad England fans supporting Ireland in the 1994 World Cup. It's not their first team of choice, but we'll be damned if any other club is going to get our support.
This might be lost on a younger generation who may not remember State of Origin and serves as a pretty good argument as to why it needs to come back. But it also points to the type of team the Dockers have become. I would never have admitted this in the past, but they are playing some breathtaking football.
Real AFL fans, as much as they love their own teams, they can acknowledge, and even appreciate, when a team is on a real tear. Champagne football. Call it what you want. Feel free to say I've jumped on the bandwagon. Feel free to ridicule. But I'll say for the first time that as a paid up Eagles member, I'm behind the Dockers, and if you're a proud Western Australian and a proud football fan, you should be too.
At least until next season, all bets are off.
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