Western Sydney star Shinji Ono says the Wanderers are a family. Picture: Phil Hillyard Source: The Daily Telegraph
YOU might have seen the incredible pictures of thousands of Wanderers supporters converging on Gosford last month, a remarkable sea of red and black on the night they played the Mariners.
What wasn't so clear from the pictures was that in the midst of it, as the rain poured down, a woman had a seizure as she crossed a bridge. Within moments, the leaders of the Red and Black Bloc had halted the march, formed a ring around her and carefully split the crowds into two lines to be routed around her.
They didn't know who she was, but paramedics were escorted through the crowd and she was taken to hospital. She has since made a full recovery, but the point of the story is the way the RBB leaders had to act instinctively, just as they have had to make up rules and protocol as they have gone along.
On the day of the their semifinal with Brisbane, if you wanted a metaphor for the way those supporters and the club they follow have coalesced in one year, that spontaneity and human spirit would be hard to beat.
It's a football family, says Shinji Ono. "When I came here, there weren't so many supporters, then suddenly it was 10,000, 12,000, 15,000, with the Sydney derby it was 20,000," he said. "After we start to get results people came and the atmosphere grew like crazy. Now they are like a family. They love us, all of us."
One of the most satisfying features of watching the Wanderers and Mariners finish first and second was the reward for two clubs based on a proper football culture.
In Western Sydney's case, when decisions from player signings to supporter chants have been made at such high speed, it's a wonder there isn't a trail of disasters. You can see it in the fervency of their fans, and by complete contrast in the calmness with which the playing squad hunted down the Premier's Plate.
You see it too, in the "European" intensity of their training, as one experienced observer described it. In the way that players have taken certain decisions, such as Mark Bridge forswearing alcohol for the season. Maybe in part it comes from the leadership group.
Wanderers fans get behind their team in Newcastle. Source: Getty Images
But you see that culture too in the fine detail of how the Red and Black Bloc operates - from the organised midweek chanting rehearsals, to the fans who hold workshops to teach others how to make banners.
You see it in the marshals who in fluro vests organise the pre-match march to the degree they get police approval. And in the way the RBB collected some $4000 to buy more than 200 tickets to one game, for distribution among disadvantaged and refugee children.
The extraordinary pace of it all means issues of restraint and, at times, flashes of idiotic behaviour are unavoidable. But the other side of the story is rarely, as a result, told widely. The fact that one of the leaders of the RBB is Judith O'Brien, a 60-year-old retired principal, doesn't fit many stereotypes.
"The RBB isn't just about making noise in the venue," says Wanderers chairman Lyall Gorman. "They do make noise, a lot of it. But there's tremendous compassion and a desire to do well. Unfortunately, a very, very small element has not allowed those good stories to rise to the top as much as they should.
"If you looked at a photo of the RBB marching and saw the mix in there, the mums and dads, young kids - my own wife and kids go in with the RBB when we travel away. It's a very special group of people.
"That's the point about the club. It's no mistake where we are on the ladder. It's about culture - you never hear Tony talk about our team, it's always our club."
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