AFL turned a lame attempt at humour into a death threat

4 hours ago 3

You’ve got to love a dumb criminal. There was the bank robber who phoned ahead to let them know he was coming, so they could have the money ready. There was the car thief who tried to steal a manual vehicle but couldn’t get it into first gear. When I was at school, a guy got hot and sweaty while burgling a house and took his jumper off. He left it at the scene, not realising that his mum had sewn his name tag into the collar.

This week’s addition to ‘Wanted: Dumb or Alive’ is the football supporter who apparently made a “death threat” against Carlton coach Michael Voss, but sent it to the Melbourne Cricket Ground’s own anti-social hotline. The person was identified as quickly as the geniuses who post footage of themselves stealing cars on TikTok, and has been given a five-year ban from attending AFL games or any sport at the MCG.

Voss, a much-admired man who has been under heavy criticism for Carlton’s performance, said he was “dismissive [of the message] at first”, but felt he should draw attention to “the dark side of football, where we blame, we become victims and it’s this environment where things are quite toxic. We think by showing passion is about anger – and it’s not about that at all.” As for the miscreant, he said, “I’m sorry, you don’t belong here.”

The AFL’s head of security and integrity, Tony Keane, made a statement: “We understand there is passion in the game, however the text message in question sent to the MCG hotline on Friday crossed the line. Regardless of the intent, no coach, player, official, staff member or fan deserves to be threatened in such a way, and now that patron has lost the privilege of attending the footy.”

The Collingwood Football Club also banned the person “following their misuse of the MCG’s anti-social behaviour hotline”. The club said, “Collingwood will not tolerate any threats to officials, supporters or individuals involved in our great game – such conduct is unacceptable and not representative of the club or its values.”

Wait, what? Back up a moment. Was is just stupidity that caused the “threat” to be sent to the hotline? The initial assumption was that the “threat” came from an angry or disappointed Carlton fan. But that wasn’t what happened. Instead, a Collingwood supporter was making a “death threat” against the coach of Carlton – a team on the way to a 56-point loss. Collingwood are leading the AFL table, while Carlton are 12th.

Now, we all understand how upset some fans get, and coaches receive a disproportionate share of abuse. Sometimes supporters take their anger too far. Plenty of NSW Origin fans might want to cook a beef Wellington for Laurie Daley, but to offer it in writing would violate the rules of social decency and maybe the law, not to mention basic intelligence. But if the abuse for Daley came from a Queensland fan, wouldn’t you be wondering if something was amiss?

So it turned out. While every distinguished AFL voice rallied around Voss and unleashed their frustration at the social media abuse that they have suffered, a different picture emerged when News Ltd found the actual message. It said, “I’d like to report 23 missing persons and pre-emptively report the murder of Michael Voss.”

Now it made sense. The Collingwood supporter was not a would-be criminal but a would-be comedian. It was not a death threat, but a nasty little attempted gag about Carlton’s 23 “missing” players and Voss’s presumably imminent sacking. So the question has to be asked: is a failed joke a reason to ban someone from attending a venue for five years?

Those of us with a rap sheet of failed humour are now on edge. (Hastily trying to delete the beef Wellington/Laurie Daley line…) But until now, it’s only in places like America and North Korea where satire gets you banged up in a cell.

In these confused times, it’s not only our weirdly unpredictable football teams who are sending mixed messages. Coaches, who cop a lot of abuse that really is beyond the pale, are becoming the purveyors of the badly mangled message.

Remember when Billy Slater was ‘beleaguered’ and ‘under pressure’ several rugby league lifetimes (ie, three weeks) ago? His response to Aaron Woods hitting him with a wet grub-infested lettuce leaf was to invoke a human shield in the form of Paul Green, the former coach who took his life in 2022. Only, Green did not die as a result of being called names, but rather was suffering from severe Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. Slater apologised to Green’s family.

Then we had Manly’s Anthony Siebold making the frankly bizarre statement that being under pressure as an NRL coach was nothing like living in Ukraine or Gaza. Maybe he was consciously channelling Keith Miller, who said famously, “Pressure is a Messerschmitt up your arse, playing cricket is not”. But wait. Miller had actually had Messerschmitt’s up his arse in World War II and Siebold had only watched wars on TV. What would people in Ukraine or Gaza would make of a football coach on the northern beaches of Sydney being so pretentious as to put his troubles in the same sentence as theirs?

The point? Abuse of coaches, players, or anyone else is unacceptable, whether it’s online or the plastic cup of beer a Blues “fan” threw at Connor Watson on Wednesday night. Drawing attention to it is depressingly necessary. With so much pent-up feeling about the daily stream of sewage that comes their way, coaches, clubs and organisations take any opportunity to stage a public “learning moment”.

But to misuse these opportunities is also a dumb way of using their influence. To conflate name-calling with a truly heartbreaking medical condition, as Slater did, is shameful. To conflate name-calling with war, as Siebold did, is embarrassing. To conflate a lame attempt at humour with a death threat, as the AFL have done, is to dilute the very message they want to project.

That message is a needed one and should be projected with strong effect. Influential people who want to speak out must use their voice intelligently, or it will wear out and become counter-productive.

The AFL’s statement said that abuse is abuse “regardless of the intent”. The same applies to the message against abuse. Good intent is not sufficient. Spray it around too loosely or patronise the public with “learning moments”, and the message is wasted. There’s only one idiot who benefits from that.