People in glasshouses.

If there's one thing the Melbourne press like more than a pathetic Melbourne V Sydney story it's a beat up on football (that's "soccer" football) over its hooligan 'problem'. If a fan at a football ground is seen so much as contorting his face in anger, guaranteed it'll be all over the front pages of The Age and the Herald Scum with some outraged reporter breathlessly banging on about how violence and football are intertwined yada yada yada. It's so utterly fucking predictable.

I bet you didn't know that 190 fans were ejected from the MCG during one day of the test cricket but this barely got a mention in the press, whereas if that was at a Melbourne Victory game it would be headline news.

This week saw the emergence of a strange new phenomena in sport - crowd disturbances at the tennis. 150 fans were ejected after fights broke out between rival gangs of ethnically based groups - Serbians and Croatians. Now you would think that this would show that hooliganism is based on age old ethnic hatreds, too many young lads with too much testosterone and a healthy dose of right wing nationalism. In short, it has nothing to do with football.

But no, The Age couldn't report this problem without mentioning football hooliganism, over and over again. They ran an op-ed piece by an absolute fuckwit called John Weldon who moaned on about the intimidating atmosphere at Wembley when he saw England play Germany in the football there and says...

I was taken back to September 2000 and the last ever game played at Wembley Stadium. England was playing Germany and after having stood outside in the rain for hours, I'd finally scored a ticket and was inside. All my life I'd watched games at Wembley on TV, hoping that one day I might actually get there. And there I was, watching Beckham and co go down 1-0, but instead of enjoying the game I sat there saddened, wishing I was back home in Australia instead of in that ground full of racism and hatred, full of chants about who won the war, mock Hitler salutes, Irish-hating songs, full of spite, full of vitriol.

I wanted to go home to a place where I could sit next to an opposition fan, or a fan from another country, without either of us having to hate each other.

Obviously I can understand why he wanted to get back to Australia as it's a peaceful multicultural rainbow of a country where all the ethnic groups hold hands and the whites love everyone - especially those Wogs (how cool is it that Greek and Italian people have accepted what we want to call them?! Bless.)

But then he goes to the tennis and sees fighting between the Croats and the Serbs (let's conveniently ignore the fact that most of them were born or raised in Australia) and he despairs. Poor John. He says...

I lost them [the people fighting] as they drifted deeper into the square, but I haven't yet lost the sickened feeling they gave me. I can still see the massed thousands throwing the Nazi salute across the terraces at Wembley, and I'm still haunted by that feeling of wanting to go home, but after this I'm not sure where home is any more.

Yeah, because acts of racism and ethnic bashing have never been perpetrated in Australia before have they John? True blue Aussies would never act in such a despicable manner would they? Those bloody Europeans coming over here in their football shirts, being racist and fighting. It's un-Australian. I tell you!