Jarusa wrote:
NTBlue wrote:
showbag wrote:
DOA wrote:
I can assure all TC posters,I have yet to meet a CFC player who has heard of this forum.
Paul Bower??
I chatted with Marc Murphy, Ryan Jackson, Paul Bower and Josh Kennedy when they sat in front of me at a ODI cricket game at the dome early in the year. ( Avatar pic was taken at the game)
When I mentioned that I belonged to a couple of internet chat forums for Carlton fans they didn't seem to know too much about the forums. This was after we had raised sponsorship money for Paul Bower, but before the announcement by the club of the sponsors.
On the subject of the thread..... I get cheesed off at posters who regularly hurl personal abuse at players. Sure some of our players make mistakes and many need to improve areas of their game, but when your side is down and out that is when the players need positive support.
I follow St Mary's in the NTFL in Darwin. We won 8 premierships out of 10 in one decade a while ago and the supporters were everywhere, business people shouting the bar at club functions etc, but when we experienced a few defeats they were nowhere to be seen. I made it a point to turn up at the club function when we were beaten to shout a drink for the players that I sponsored. I know that they valued the support which they appreciated far more than the hundreds of "fair weather' supporters who were only there in the good times.
It is good to see that many Blues fans applied the same type of reasoning and paid their membership so we recorded our highest membership numbers during some of our bleakest years on the playing field.
So I join DOA and suggest that true blue supporters find other ways to vent their frustration and desist from publicly bagging our players. We will rise again and when we do it will be all the sweeter for players and supporters alike.
Nice post NT.
Thinking about it a bit an online Carlton Fan Forum is a bit like an bizzarro locker room.
The CFC locker room is empty after many losses but the fan forums are busier than ever.
Ok, can't help it, going to get philosophical again...
Great post Jarusa. It's interesting how supporters one minute will bag a player, the next minute praise him. Or how some supporters vilified Thornton when it was announced he was leaving, saying he was useless and had a bad attitude, but as soon as he re-signed, welcomed him back, what a great player, so important for the Club, going to be the backbone of our resurgence etc.
What changes here? A footballer doesn't suddenly become better or worse. He doesn't suddenly have a better attitude towards his team mates on field just because he has re-signed.
The only thing that is happening here is that a supporter goes from being frustrated/angry/upset/disappointed/jealous to happy. So the supporter goes from vilifying the player, to praising him. Based on the emotions that the supporter feels inside. It has NOTHING to do with the player.
Let's take an example. Let's take a player...call him Jones, cause we don't have one...yet! Hmm, ok, maybe call him...Smegley (don't ask, I have no idea!). Smegley is not very good, or is having a bad day, or lacks the skills, or the application, or attitude, or whatever. What makes a supporter, sitting in the stands (or in front of a computer) go from dealing with this situation in an
appropriate manner, thinking or saying that a player is no good, and how frustrating, annoying, whatever, he is, but in a calm, rational, and honest way...to instead, screaming, swearing, vilifying that particular player, getting angry and behaving in what is essentially an
inappropriate manner, and a manner which may cause distress to that player (if they ever knew about it)?
The thing that cause someone to
trip over from being appropriate in dealing with their thoughts and emotions, to being inappropriate, is purely what is going inside of that person, how they are able to deal with and cope with their own emotions, their own fears, their own insecurities, about that situation. Once again, it has NOTHING to do with the player.
So, what that means is, that when we pour vitriol onto one of our own players, all we are doing is projecting our own issues, our own fears, our own insecurities, onto that other player. And we have no right to project our own fears onto other people, just as we do not like it when others project their own fears onto us.
It's why, just as an aside, there has been this growing trend in AFL (for me, a very sad one) to boo opposition champions, not because they are dirty players, or have done anything wrong, but merely because they are champions. All the supporters are doing is projecting their own fears (in this case, that the opposition has a player who is so good that it might actually prevent us from winning...big fear) onto that player.
It is also why, when Carlton was successful, we loved the fact that other team's supporters hated us, because we knew that their hatred stemmed from their jealousy, and that they were simply projecting that jealousy or insecurity or fear onto us. Difference is, when you are successful and winning, it's easy to cop that projection, because you feel secure and comfortable in your own position (as Premiers), so you don't care what anyone else feels or thinks. However, when you are a struggling player (or team), feeling very insecure about your position, it becomes much more difficult to cope with that projection (in some cases it breaks the player).
Hope all that makes sense!
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