Update- Milney comments at the Hawthorn game

[ozrulestrace]

Well I've had two phone calls today re my letters to the AFL & Hawthorn FC re the behaviour of those awful Hawthorn supporter in the M10 standing room.

The first was from Sue Clark at the AFL who wanted to follow up on the contents of my letter.

She expressed the view that the comments coming from the crowd fell within the villification guidelines against Steven Milne (her words about Milne) and that it is unacceptable behaviour at a football game.

So as the representative of the AFL she would be contacting the Hawthorn FC to help identify these people who would then be sent a letter of warning about their behaviour.

I advised her, that I had already sent a letter of Stuart Fox, Hawthorn CEO, will nil response so far and that we had contacted the St Kilda Football Club who had offered to shift us anywhere else for the next game. I wanted her to understand that we were trying to be proactive so we wouldn't find ourselves in a similar situation next year.

I have feeling she was probably trying to suss how I came across on the phone before proceeding on with the matter, so I kept the matter straight down the line sticking to the facts and not ranting and raving about the whole thing, She informed me that I will be sent a formal response from the AFL once the matter was investigated.

About half an hour later I recieved a phone call from Jeremy at Hawthorn FC, following a call to the club by Sue Clark. He couldn't even locate the original email, the one that was deleted by someone at their club. So I've arranged to resend my original email plus the deletion notices I had as message bounce-back.

He doesn't think they'll be indentify these people, whereas I reckon they can, by following the group that performs the chants.

So I have to say neither of them were dismissive in tone about the situation, and agreed it's not good that someone has to be subjected to such appalling behaviour. And both said good on you for sitting down and writing to the AFL about the issue.

If I get a written response, I'll let you all know.

[Eastern]

WELL DONE !!

[Pwoit]

Seems to be a positive response sofar. good work.

[Foz]

Great work in getting this far.

If it was to happen again - tell them to hold up their Hawthorn membership and smile for the camera.

[samuraisaint]

Nice.

[Enrico_Misso]

Good on you for doing something about it.

Last year at the Carlton game at Docklands (the one we lost) we had a group of about 6 or more Carlton supporters a few rows behind (in Lev 3). They were drinking and then unleashed a diatribe of filth against Milne.
One in particular, if I can write in an Italian accent, kept yelling "Youse a F#$%'in R@pist Milne" and other similar obscenities.
Lady Enrico got very upset. I was telling her just to ignore them.
But by half time she could stand it no more. I suggested we move to another spot, but by then she was so upset and angry that she just wanted to leave. So she caught the train home.
(Given the result I probably should have left with her but in over 700 games I have only ever left early at one StK game).

Reading your story is quite inspiring.
Next time I'll follow your example and at least text that "bad behaviour line" and at least try to do something.

[Teflon]

Take my hat off to you Ozrulestrace - super effort, well done and great move to keep it "straight down the line". Amazing how much notice they take when they know they arent dealing with just an upset footy fan....but an outraged citizen who sees issues that are bigger than a game.

[dragit]

Well done for putting in the time to try and help put a stop to this…

Maybe people could take a cheeky photo or even video of these types of people on their phones - if you have one that can obviously? Hard to argue with a video evidence.

I also think that it is good to keep the emotional element away from the complaint, the pure facts are enough and much more important than how upset we can feel about it all.

Good stuff.