Throw out the bottle-throwers

The Adelaide Advertiser reports today that Adelaide United FC is taking very seriously the problem of people throwing bottles onto the pitch. Already only plastic drink bottles are sold, and the caps are taken off by the vendors before handover to the purchaser. However people still fill them up and throw them on the pitch when angry.

I think that closed-circuit TV - to show who threw the bottle on replay - is the answer. You only need to point it at the northern end, with the Gate / Red Army usually containing the culprits. Indeed when one bottle almost hit a Queensland player on Thursday night, the cheersquad seemed to cheer. Its time for the cheersquad leaders to show leadership and not only condemn the behaviour, but isolate or even give up to the club / police the bottle-throwers. Now I know that in reality it is a drunk or isolated individual who does these things, but the more condemnation of bottle-throwing - from all quarters - the better.

It is so crucial in this era of "new football" in Australia that we eliminate opportunities for the media to say "oh, its not new football, its thuggery just like in England". And by eliminating those opportunities, we will in fact be living the truth of a clean, respectable code of football.