When will we stop !!!!

[South of the Yarra]

When will we as a football community realise that our actions can have a significant impact on the mental health and wellbeing of AFL players, coaches and administrators. Torment from crowds, horrific actions, online trolling and constant abuse has an impact on people no matter who they are. It’s time to stop. AFL Football is a wonderful game, the best on Earth but it is not life. It is happening time and again and it won’t be long before the worst scenario imaginable will happen again. For God sake, have fun, enjoy stirring up the opposition and bleed for your club but stop the abuse at games and online.

 

[Milanista28]

Never, sadly

 

[BallaratBulldog]

Online is even harder because if a person really wants they can hide behind a username with no details linking them and without a care for the consequences.

 

[ABSOLUTE MADMAN]

The world is not a perfect place. There are elements of it that you cannot influence or control. If your mental health suffers from doing a high stakes high paying public role you are probably better off doing something else. I know it seems s**t but it kind of is what it is.

Obviously this thread is in the wake of the Frawley tragedy but that may be a little misdirected when there were marriage breakdown and financial issues at play. I also noticed people (at the time) wanting to link football crowds treatment of Majak Daw to his incident even though it happened in a hot blooded manner after an argument with his partner.

 

[saints_333]

The world is not a perfect place. There are elements of it that you cannot influence or control. If your mental health suffers from doing a high stakes high paying public role you are probably better off doing something else. I know it seems s**t but it kind of is what it is.

Obviously this thread is in the wake of the Frawley tragedy but that may be a little misdirected when there were marriage breakdown and financial issues at play. I also noticed people (at the time) wanting to link football crowds treatment of Majak Daw to his incident even though it happened in a hot blooded manner after an argument with his partner.

Spot on. Although this is a wake up call to question how we treat other people, at the end of the day there is no absolute proof that Spud was suffering from depression because of what anyone said to him. It's a very complex issue and in a lot of cases can be brought on by self pressure which is why we see a lot of it happening in high profile people.

 

[StevenwellerHFC]

Online is even harder because if a person really wants they can hide behind a username with no details linking them and without a care for the consequences.

Only a *ing pussy would do that.

 

[South of the Yarra]

The world is not a perfect place. There are elements of it that you cannot influence or control. If your mental health suffers from doing a high stakes high paying public role you are probably better off doing something else. I know it seems s**t but it kind of is what it is.

Obviously this thread is in the wake of the Frawley tragedy but that may be a little misdirected when there were marriage breakdown and financial issues at play. I also noticed people (at the time) wanting to link football crowds treatment of Majak Daw to his incident even though it happened in a hot blooded manner after an argument with his partner.

Not specifically linking this to Spud and the horrible tragedy just got me thinking we don’t know what impact we have. Thinking of a more recent coaching one and a current player and wonder about the ramifications.

 

[RUNVS]

I think there is something that we as a community need to stop doing is getting personal in our attacks.

It is very easy to equate a player making an obvious error on the field with him not trying hard enough, or not being of strong enough character to make the kick. No, that is not it, it is just his skills are not necessarily good enough. To imply he isn't working hard enough, or that he has a character flaw that made him miss that kick or make some other mistake on the field is I feel misguided.

Example. Some of the best players in the history of the game were awful human beings, ie, Gary Ablett Snr, Wayne Carey, Leigh Matthews, but I can think of plenty of players who were not actually that good on the field but who were really nice people.

I would much rather be a below average to bad AFL player who is a really nice and likeable person than a champion AFL player who is an awful person.

Overall I think I am saying is that we need to stop making things personal, or implying that players are making mistakes because of some character flaw.

 

[DrEvil_]

When will we as a football community realise that our actions can have a significant impact on the mental health and wellbeing of AFL players, coaches and administrators. Torment from crowds, horrific actions, online trolling and constant abuse has an impact on people no matter who they are. It’s time to stop. AFL Football is a wonderful game, the best on Earth but it is not life. It is happening time and again and it won’t be long before the worst scenario imaginable will happen again. For God sake, have fun, enjoy stirring up the opposition and bleed for your club but stop the abuse at games and online.

Showering naive young people with millions of dollars also can have a significant impact on their mental health and wellbeing. When will we stop?

 

[South of the Yarra]

Showering naive young people with millions of dollars also can have a significant impact on their mental health and wellbeing. When will we stop?

Certainly can

 

[Wolfgang West]

When will we as a football community realise that our actions can have a significant impact on the mental health and wellbeing of AFL players, coaches and administrators. Torment from crowds, horrific actions, online trolling and constant abuse has an impact on people no matter who they are. It’s time to stop. AFL Football is a wonderful game, the best on Earth but it is not life. It is happening time and again and it won’t be long before the worst scenario imaginable will happen again. For God sake, have fun, enjoy stirring up the opposition and bleed for your club but stop the abuse at games and online.

Does this apply to Adam Goodes ? How do You think his Mental Health would be fairing ?

 

[South of the Yarra]

Does this apply to Adam Goodes ? How do You think his Mental Health would be fairing ?

Of course it does. Most definitely. Why wouldn’t it?

 

[Bunk Moreland]

There’s plenty of reasonable criticism that is okay. But there’ll always be cowardly dickheads on the internet. It’s about what’s wrong with them, not what’s wrong with the people they talk about.

 

[dustysnecktattoo]

well they tried policing the dickheads at games and it didn’t go down so well, I’m fact the op probably protested against it

 

[MemoryLane]

It is so naive to try and moralise with fans of the game. Fans are fueled by emotion. Emotion gets in the way of rational thought.

You want the fans to behave perfectly 100% of the time you are going to need to take emotion out of the sport.

I get it, fans should be able to get excited about footy without making it personal. Yeah yeah yeah okay go with idealism but it's a waste of time and it disrespects the role of the fan.

Most of the things said by fans in heat of moment are regretted later.

While it would be nice to live in a better world it simply doesn't exist.

The ever increasing movement toward wellbeing and ever increasing diangosis is eroding people's ability to be resilient.

In fact people feeling sad or offended now don't know how to be resilient because we are teaching everyone that they need to go and seek help elsewhere. People who don't actually have a mental illness mistake their mild stress for something more because we are so oversensitive to mental health issues that we almost tell people that it's not only normal but more than likely they suffer.

You need only go to schools to see this first-hand as kids spend more time in wellbeing than in class with many knowing how to game the system. I fear for how unprepared they will be for the real world.

Much like overdosing on antibiotics increases resilience to it's effects so is the opposite for mental health.

Don't get me wrong for those that need it the new push for mental health issues is important but it's a be careful what you wish for scenario.

Emotional fans are just angry customers and we all need to and should have to deal with it, it helps us grow into something better.

As always we should eradicate the extreme element but as the AFL has found earlier this year, trying to overpolice and moralise fan behaviour is not only impossible, it's also to the detriment of the whole.

 

[Wolfgang West]

Of course it does. Most definitely. Why wouldn’t it?

Question was to the collective. Sorry for the confusion.

 

[Jobe Watson]

A lot of heroes on here were all too happy to constantly take shots at Essendon players during the supplements thing. Shame on them.

Posters should have to post under their real names so we can hold them to account in real life.

 

[Chinacats]

When will we as a football community realise that our actions can have a significant impact on the mental health and wellbeing of AFL players, coaches and administrators. Torment from crowds, horrific actions, online trolling and constant abuse has an impact on people no matter who they are. It’s time to stop. AFL Football is a wonderful game, the best on Earth but it is not life. It is happening time and again and it won’t be long before the worst scenario imaginable will happen again. For God sake, have fun, enjoy stirring up the opposition and bleed for your club but stop the abuse at games and online.

You made sure you replied to many posts about Geelong winning once woods had won. Hypocrite?

 

[South of the Yarra]

You made sure you replied to many posts about Geelong winning once woods had won. Hypocrite?

Sorry, not even sure what this means.

 

[RUNVS]

A lot of heroes on here were all too happy to constantly take shots at Essendon players during the supplements thing. Shame on them.

Posters should have to post under their real names so we can hold them to account in real life.

Am I actually responding to Jobe Watson right now?

 

[Jobe Watson]

Am I actually responding to Jobe Watson right now?

Unlike you cowards, I don't need to hide behind an alias.

 

[Go the Guts]

When will we as a football community realise that our actions can have a significant impact on the mental health and wellbeing of AFL players, coaches and administrators. Torment from crowds, horrific actions, online trolling and constant abuse has an impact on people no matter who they are. It’s time to stop. AFL Football is a wonderful game, the best on Earth but it is not life. It is happening time and again and it won’t be long before the worst scenario imaginable will happen again. For God sake, have fun, enjoy stirring up the opposition and bleed for your club but stop the abuse at games and online.

It's pretty simple. Be kind to others. End of story.

But people who have/have had pretty shitty lives find this nearly impossible, and find it far easier to pick on/ find fault in others. And a fair portion of our society sadly fit that demographic, including football crowds.

 

[Dipper]

I think there is something that we as a community need to stop doing is getting personal in our attacks.

It is very easy to equate a player making an obvious error on the field with him not trying hard enough, or not being of strong enough character to make the kick. No, that is not it, it is just his skills are not necessarily good enough. To imply he isn't working hard enough, or that he has a character flaw that made him miss that kick or make some other mistake on the field is I feel misguided.

Example. Some of the best players in the history of the game were awful human beings, ie, Gary Ablett Snr, Wayne Carey, Leigh Matthews, but I can think of plenty of players who were not actually that good on the field but who were really nice people.

I would much rather be a below average to bad AFL player who is a really nice and likeable person than a champion AFL player who is an awful person.

Overall I think I am saying is that we need to stop making things personal, or implying that players are making mistakes because of some character flaw.

How can you say don't get personal and then go onto casually throw in that Gary Ablett senior, Wayne Carey and Leigh Matthews are all terrible human beings?

Which is probably a not so subtle troll anyway, the first 2 have well documented off field incidents but what off the pitch makes Matthews an awful human being in your ivory tower arbitration system. I don't actually want an answer, I've seen enough of your work over the years to know what you are.

On SM-J330G using BigFooty.com mobile app

 

[Leeda]

Gently,gradually, without belittling people
Allowing minds to gradually change
Losing the rough nature of talk ..I am guilty
Be ultimately mindful

 

[The King!]

this will end up with people having multiple cracks at each other no doubt