Suggest you take him to the cricket or tennis instead.
Seriously, if you have issues with the most genteel and cultured crowd environment you'd better not venture down for a game at the MCG against the Pies, Bombers or Hawks. It's a big bad world out there.....
On the whole the Swans provide a pretty family friendly atmosphere. Your sentiments aren't bad but I doubt if you'll find a football code anywhere in the world (add in basketball, ice hockey, baseball too) where you don't find booing.
I'd much prefer it to personal abuse. And I think there are a number of aspects where it is appropriate
* Where a player has left you for another club in a mercenary manner of on bad terms, for the first game only. I'd be very disappointed if we
genuinely boo Mitchell but it's important to differentiate between the vicious boo and the ironic boo as well. I reckon Annie's booing might have a bit of a personal edge though
I was very disappointed being around fans of ours who booed Jetta on his return and I though the Collingwood fans disgraced themselves on Friday. I hope we respect Tom but his destination club makes me think that is a na�ve hope....
* Opposition players who have during that game committed a dog act against one of our players (as an example, I believe West Coast fans were entitled to boo BBBH after the Staker incident)
* Where an opposition player taunts and showboats the crowd after scoring, fair's fair....
I tend to agree re booing umpires in a perfect world but we're all human and we all get frustrated and most of us probably don't have your self control JR. Nevertheless I'm quite happy with mild booing following repeatedly incompentent officiating, I'd much prefer it too some hot head behind me losing his rag and blowing a gasket verbalising his frustrations.
Re booing the PM or Mike F, are you freaking serious? Politicians who come to the games generally have no interest at all in the game and are just there for PR, they insult our intelligence as they strut around with their smug looks on their faces. KRudd and Bob Carr were the worst of the lot, as if KRudd has ever kicked a footy or had any interest in sport in his nerdy life. I think Big Mal might have a mild allegiance to the Swans but the real target on Saturday was Mike Fitzpatrick and surely you don't need to be told why he got a gobful, or are you going to lecture us on how to act around him too.
I would also say that there is a degree of irony in the booing of a PM, though I suspect you don't really do irony. In most instances it is half hearted and almost obligatory, I'm sure that the politicians are thick skinned enough to not let it bother them at all.
Finally if you're worried about the impact on your son I really like the post of Boddo above. In terms of what it teaches him, your actions rather than words will probably have the greatest impact on him. If you're even handed, gracious in victory and gallant in defeat. If you always stay in calm in the face of atrocious umpiring adamant that "it all balances out at the end of the season" and if you show respect to our elected officebearers then that will far outweigh any booing he may hear.
As an aside if I had one thing I would change in terms of crowd behaviour it is the loud and personal abuse of our own players during the game by our own supporters when things aren't going right. It's downright childish and very very disrespectful. I know we were poor on Saturday but I don't think anyone went out there and didn't try. I had a couple of complete muppets behind me who were just bagging everyone even though they clearly had no knowledge of the game - "kick it" was a repeated call, as was "don't rush". Then I had the scrag in front of me calling Tippet a dickhead just because he dropped a mark. By all means debate after the game who had a bad game, who needs to be dropped etc but turning on the players
during a game is just unacceptable for mine and not the behaviour of what I call a proper fan.
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