Booing: Freedom of speech or nasty niggling?
A week of controversy in the AFL around booing champions is anything but controversial — it is a beat up and nothing more.
Sport is a great leveller, crossing through every possible section of society.
At any given sporting event across the globe, people from every walk of life rub elbows as they cheer on their favourite individual hero or team of heroes.
But it’s not always cheers we hear, is it?
Just as often come the ‘boos’.
Yesterday, on Anzac Day — a much revered day in Australia honouring those ‘Anzacs’ who went to war for love of country — the annual AFL game between the Collingwood Magpies and Essendon Bombers was held. At the end of the game, a medal was presented to the MVP on the day, the worthy recipient in 2019 being Collingwood’s skipper, Scott Pendelbury.
This is what happened next.
As could only be expected, the coach of the club, Nathan Buckley, known for speaking his mind (and who was notably booed during his own playing career), called the booing out in an attempt to shame the booers as being poor sports while disrespecting the broader day itself and what the game stands for.
Both the booing and Buckley’s response have raised questions that come on the back of recent booing of other greats of the game, including less than a week ago Gary Ablett Jnr.
While boos directed at Pendelbury were conceivably unwarranted and poorly timed, it is false to label them as mean-spirited when the context is applied — a close loss for fans of the side from which it can be construed the boos came from, Essendon, tied to some questionable umpiring decisions and in particular one late in the game favouring Pendelbury that could have changed the course of the out come.
Stepping back from these finer details, at the heart of the controversy is the bigger question around the right to ‘boo’, the nature of it and whether there is room in sport for booing.
While many will want to delve into the psychology of booing, the rationale behind it is simply understood. The innate flight or flight response (‘hyperarousal’, or ‘the acute stress response’) buried so deeply in our DNA informs almost everything we do. The natural extension of this has made us need to win (win = survive), hardwiring in many a deeply competitive streak.
This competitiveness overrides our supposedly high-level logic, leading to the reverse of such — the need to boo when we are on the receiving end of loss.
It’s that simple.
To argue it’s anything more is nonsensical.
What is even more nonsensical is, as some commentators and high-ranking AFL officials have argued, banning booing from the game.
Yes, there have been instances, such as the booing of indigenous player Adam Goodes, where the booing was seen as potentially racist in intent.
But unless any one of us can read minds, no one can know the intent of anyone who boos but the booer themself.
So, rather than get into arguments between those arguing for freedom of speech up against those who have labelled the booing as ugly poor sportsmanship…or pointless talk about getting rid of the boo from AFL, let’s just accept the fact that it is more than likely just a deep guttural response to a situation that inflames passion in humans and allows them a moment to let off the steam that comes from their deeply hyperaroused state.
And let’s just get on with the game.
