Anyone remember North Queensland Fury? Unless you’re reading this in Townsville (the laziestly-named town in the world), you’ve probably already wiped them from your mind. They were the ill-fated A-League team who bought Robbie Fowler for their debut season, then duly went hideously in debt and disappeared a year later. We bring this up not as a warning to Western Sydney Wanderers about the perils of signing former England stars looking for one last pay day in the sun, but because we remember watching the news when it was announced that the A-League were revoking the club’s license. Among those interviewed for the story were several fans with “Fury till I die” banners – which considering the club was less than a year old was quite a statement.
The point we’re making is Aussie football fans are pretty good at mimicking supporters from established European clubs – even if they don’t really understand what they’re doing.?And so we turn to the “fan war” brewing between Sydney FC and Western Sydney Wanderers, which has already attracted a hooligan element despite no history and no games between the sides.
Things kicked off last month during a friendly between the Sky Blues and the Macarthur Rams when a flare was thrown into a crowd of Sydney fans by a group claiming to be Wanderers fans (no, we don’t know why they were at another team’s friendly either). In the ensuing skirmish, a kid was hit by a projectile and the Australian NRL/AFL/acronym-loving press had a field day trashing football’s image.
”These are thugs who will come and infiltrate any area to express their anti-social behaviour,” said Wanderers chief executive Lyall Gorman. ”We’ll work together to obliterate this from our game, we won’t have it in our venues.”
Fans of the clubs quickly established that those who incited the trouble belonged to a group called the Sin City Crew (stop laughing) – a clan formerly aligned with Sydney FC’s main supporter group, The Cove.?So basically about 10 thugs have seen the Celtic v Rangers rivalry and tried to copy it to prove their loyalty to a club that hasn’t even played a game yet. Sound daft? Welcome to the A-League.
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