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Ozblue's Blog: Sydney - The "Riot" that never was. Wednesday, 28 July 2010 07:35 Written by Ozblue

The actual score between AEK and Sydney FC was 6-3 to AEK, so they get 9pts for that game...3pts for a win and 1pt for each goal.

There seems to be a bit of confusion as to what caused the friction between" The Cove", who are the die-hard fans of Sydney FC and us Rangers fans at the SFS on Sunday, so here is how I saw it from where we were standing about 30 yards away from the Sydney boys, basically being the closest Rangers fans to them.

I would say that a vast number of Rangers fans were cheering for Sydney during their game against AEK, because we were either born in this country or have lived here for many years. The Cove were giving heaps of banter towards the Athens fans who were situated at the opposite end of the ground, calling them Wogs and big fat Greek bastards etc! so all was fine.

Now Sydney were getting a bit of a touch up from AEK and the Cove were trying to lift their team when I saw a few young Rangers fans walk in front of the Cove and were immediately yelled at by a few of the more inebriated Sydney guys at the front to, "fuck off back to Scotland", especially by one guy who definitely was worse the wear with alcohol and wearing an old Sydney shirt with red JVC sponsorship on it.....One of the Rangers fans decided to give a response to them and postulated in return at these taunts, which resulted in him wearing a few flying plastic cups containing beer for his troubles, but there still seemed to be more banter than malice at this point between the two sets of fans.

The thing that really changed the mood was when one guy ( who I had noticed earlier, wearing what looked to me like a half Celtic/half light blue scarf )  and was standing about four or five seats inside from the last Cove fan closest to me began waving the scarf at us Rangers fans.
I saw it had something about 'Robbie Keane' on it, so it was a recent addition to his wardrobe. This clown, who obviously had brought this along for the sole purpose of antagonising the Rangers fans was then joined in by another half dozen or so of his mates by singing... sorry, make that as screaming, sectarian anti-Rangers songs at us.

They all were certainly Celtic fans because they sure knew the words to the bile they were directing at the Rangers support.
The guy with the scarf then decided that he needed something better to antagonise our fans, so he whipped out a Celtic shirt, kissed the badge (Yuck) and waved it at us....now I might be wrong here, but I can't for the life of me imagine that any sane person would take a Rangers scarf and shirt to a Sydney FC versus Celtic FC game, so it stands to reason he knew exactly the response it would cause.

The Rangers fans at seeing this imbecile standing on his seat waving his shirt and singing derogatory songs at them responded in no friendly manner by giving Billy Boys and the Sash the full volume blast, with the expected roar of FTP at the end of it.

Meanwhile, a Rangers supporter appeared from behind and between the two lines of fans and waded in to confront the ring leader. Fortunately for all concerned, the security men had already sensed that somebody waving a Green & White rag and spewing hate at the massed Rangers fans wasn't conducive to a friendly day out at the football, and quickly ejected the Rangers fan, the guy wearing the JVC Sydney shirt and the shirt waving hero from the stands.

It wasn't really a smart move on their part to argue, because almost all of the security men at football matches in Sydney are 7 foot tall South Sea Islanders who aren't afraid of a good stoush.(  I can guarantee that statement because some of them are very good friends of mine. )

Now while all this shit was going on, the majority of the Sydney fans were still giving us jovial banter, much so that I had 6 or 8 guys and two women giving me absolute pelters, questioning my parenthood and giving me the old Churchill victory sign, while I laughed and waved my Rangers scarf at them.

The more goals that Sydney conceded, the louder they shouted at me and stuck the two fingers up in my direction, so I just kept giving it back.It was also very apparent that after the shirt waving antagonist got chucked out of the stadium, there was no more anti-Rangers songs coming from his other mates, even although the Sydney and Rangers fans kept giving some serious banter to each other.

At the final whistle, I pointed to the six guys and the two women and approached them.

Every single one of them shook my hand and said what a great experience we had given them and that they hoped we were beside them for the other two games. One of the women who had really been sticking it to me actually said that I was brilliant and we had a wee kiss and a cuddle, before leaving us to watch the Blackburn game in peace.

At that game, I was standing shoulder to shoulder with lots of Australian born and bred guys who are avid Sydney FC fans during the domestic A-league and go to all the games at the SFS, but on Sunday, they were all decked out in full Rangers regalia shouting on the Gers, because when it comes to the crunch, they are Rangers to the core and watch every game on Setanta sports, belong to Rangers supporters clubs and buy all the merchandise every year in their support of Rangers football club, so to compare all Aussies that support Sydney FC are moronic twats is uncalled for in my opinion.

Before posting this blog,I showed it to several Australian dual Rangers FC / Sydney FC fans who witnessed the events of Sunday and asked for their opinion of it. They said they were 100% in agreement that if the Celtic shirt waving imbecile had not pulled such a moronic stunt and the young Rangers fan had just laughed at the Cove guys instead of stopping and posturing when told to "Fuck off back to Scotland" ( he was probably born in Australia anyway.) there would have been no trouble at all.

Just remind yourself and the Scottish media, who undoubtedly will try to ramp this little episode into a full scale riot, that it was caused mainly by Scottish raised Rangers haters and Celtic minded bigots... and not decent Australians, who are brilliant people in general and couldn't even tell you what a Fenien was, never mind being remotely interested about a persons religion or segregating supporters at a football match.

We have some supporters who believe that singing Billy Boys ( like I did with gusto on Sunday ) is our god given right, and we have supporters who believe that such songs are as much sectarian bigotry as a Celtic supporter singing Fields of Athenry.

Whatever view a supporter takes on this issue is a personal one that only they can say whether it is either right or wrong, but in the end product it's not something that will be tolerated in Australia by the authorities.

I notice that TravelingwilBEARy in his reply to the post entitled.."Australians".. by keithgersbear said this.......

Quote "I lived there for 4 years and most Aussies couldn't tell you what 'The Sash' is...The whole World doesn't revolve around the playground rivalry of the Old Firm"

Whether you agree with TwB or not about that whole statement, he is just stating a fact that Australians couldn't give a toss about what happened in the distant past, or what battles that were fought for whatever reason in other countries.

There is a saying here in Australia: We don't care which country you come from...you are welcome here just as long as you leave your old grievances behind you and don't bring them here.

So guys...are the Aussies right or wrong? you decide and give me your thoughts.