All sports have fans that drive the club’s culture, but when they go too far, they can bring shame upon it.
Soccer fans are especially stereotyped for violence and hooliganism – so much so, supporters of opposing clubs have to be separated in the stadium.
It doesn’t stop them misbehaving outside the venue. Carpark brawls, vandalism on trains, pub fights, street shootings, stabbings, online hate speech … the ‘ultra’ fan can be a blight on the sport.
Thankfully, Aussie Rules supporters seem to prefer focusing their energy on the game, which manages to deliver enough physical clashes and exciting moments on-field to satisfy even the most testosterone-fue;led supporter.
But hardcore footy fans are no angels. They can show their feral nature in other unsavory ways. Hurling abuse at umpires, players and opposition fans is the tip of the iceberg.
Over the years, reports of spitting, ranting, swearing, rude gesturing, fire-setting, vandalizing and, yes, some physical clashes bring clubs into disrepute.
Stoics and sports lovers will concede that loutish behavior is par for course in the stalls, and on the field, especially in football codes like AFL.
The logic is that a two-hour-plus footy match is extremely physical and demanding. It’s only natural that it riles up players but also fans.
No one condones what goes on at games, outside the stadium and increasingly online, but the experts will concede that it is hard to stop because of who we are, and how sports bring out the tribal, even bestial, instincts in many fans.
Choleric Collingwood fans bemoaning the tagging of star players, freewheeling Freo fans riding motorbikes in the pub, and apoplectic Port fans raging as much about being called feral as they do against other teams’ fanatical fringes. AFL has its share of rogues and ratbags whose behavior ranges from the amusing to the offensive to the outright criminal.
All this talk about one team’s loyal supporters being more raving, ranting, raucous, racist or just plain off-color than the next makes you wonder why we don’t have an index for such things.
We could call it the Feral Fan Index, or FFI.
Like all sports, the AFL has become obsessed with stats and data, dissecting every moment with increasing complexity,.
Here is my attempt – with some friendly AI guidance – to offer a new metric to mull over during the season: who really has the most feral fans?
For the FFI to stand up, we’ll need carefully selected criteria as the basis for a robust formula, and then data to punch into that formula, revealing the ranking, from 1 to 18, with 1 being the most feral, and 18 the least.
Collingwood fans celebrate. (Photo by Dylan Burns/AFL Photos via Getty Images)
The core baselines could be number of yearly members (n) – a higher number correlating to increased feral potential but only as a factor of the number of AFL clubs per city (c) – fewer teams translating to greater feral intensity/rivalry.
We also need to look at the volume of ranting/misbehaving on platforms (r) – with higher numbers correlating directly to greater ‘feralness’.
We also need an X-factor rated from 1-5, with 5 being highest or most likely to exhibit or possess one or a combination of different things drunkenness, street fighting, spitting, hurling/posting racial abuse, heavy club tattoos, etc.
The X-factor is based on a ‘reasonable man’ test, adjusted over time and with recent evidence (and, yes, clearly more than a bit subjective).
The resulting mathematical formula:
FFI = (n*r/c * (1+X/5)
Putting the formula through its paces:
Port Adelaide: 71,307 fans (2024); 2 AFL clubs in Adelaide; ~500* rants a day (aggregate LI, X, FB, Insta + specialist footy platforms); X-factor of 5 = Total 35,653,500.
Collingwood: 110, 628 (2024); 9 AFL clubs in Melbourne; ~900* rants a day (aggregate LI, X, FB, Insta + specialist footy platforms); x-factor of 4 = Total 199,121,040.
(* Estimate… actually a made-up figure)
So, based on this reckoning, Pies fans are more than five-and-half times likely to demonstrate feralness than Port Adelaide, naturally skewed by the sheer number of members.
It’s pure nonsense, of course, but what would footy fandom be if everything is taken so seriously?
