OPINION: "1984 Sandover Medal Count Night at Perth Entertainment Centre: Response to the Critics 25 Years On", by Kieran James & Mike Blewett

West Perth cheer squad founders Mike B. (left) & Kieran J., 25 years on, Exchange Hotel, Kalgoorlie, 14/7/2011. We attended the 1984 Sandover Medal Count Night at Perth Entertainment Centre and had a great time. Fan behaviour was no worse than you got in the outer on any match day.

OPINION ARTICLE::

The authors will now discuss the WAFL Sandover Medal Night held at the now demolished Perth Entertainment Centre on Monday 27 August 1984. This was the first time ever that the presentation night had been opened to the general public and it has never been opened to the public again. The authors view the move as part of an effort to “take the game to the people”, a move towards empowerment at the same time as the WAFL commissioners were simultaneously disempowering people by negotiating to be part of an expanded VFL over the heads of the ordinary club supporters and even over two club presidents (Barker, 2004, p. 202).

The Entertainment Centre held around 8,000 people in those days. Tickets were sold to the event for a reasonable fee, three dollars per person or around the cost of a match-day concession ticket, and supporters were allocated specific areas within the venue according to the club they supported. The authors’ group made an effort to attend and secure tickets for the members and for the younger people in the group [West Perth FC cheer squad 1984-86] such as Michael aka Half and Thommo Junior (Thommo’s younger brother aged around eight). Given that the Medal Night was held on a weekday, winter’s evening in a city-centre venue not surprisingly the main group of people in attendance were the hardcore cheer squad members carrying their big flags and banners. Perth, Claremont, Subiaco, East Perth,and West Perth all had large vocal cheer squad groups there that night. Of course the authors’ group cheered and waved flags when a West Perth player scored a vote just like on any match day. Fitting in with the carnival mood of the whole evening, there were three tied winners of the award, Michael Mitchell and Steve Malaxos of Claremont and Peter Spencer of East Perth. Barker (2004, p. 194) is extremely unfair when he writes that: “The result was far more discordant then the mere presence of women could have been, with up to 3,000 fans jeering the tallying of votes for players from rival clubs”. The authors were there and the general behaviour that night was very good because the crowd was made up in large part by young and dedicated football supporters most of whom were cheer squad members and under the supervision of cheer squad leaders. The back page of The West Australian on the Wednesday after the Monday night count was very critical of the event and the booing and jeering of flag-waving supporters. Various identities were trotted out to condemn the night. Surprisingly, it was not The West Australian’s chief sporting writer, the late Geoff Christian, who wrote the piece but some unknown female journalist, Linda Byrne, perhaps drafted in from the front section of the newspaper. One wonders even whether the reporting of the Monday night medal count was held back until the Wednesday paper so that the count results were not reported prior to the reporting of the public backlash.

The sensationalist article by Byrne (1984, p. 128) opened up as follows: “Telephone switchboards ran hot at West Australian Newspapers, Channel 7 and talk-back radio programmes yesterday as people protested about the handling of this year’s Sandover Medal presentation”. The writer goes on to explain how callers were “disgusted” because the “winners were booed by jeering flag-waving fans” during the two-hour event which was also telecast live by Channel 7. George Michalczyk of West Perth was forthright, hostile, and even a tad moralistic and superior in his comments spoken in his capacity as head of the Players’ Association: “It was a commercial failure and a TV failure. I don’t think there are any positive things to say for it. I think the general public reaction will say that this will never happen again at the Entertainment Centre” (cited in Byrne, 1984, p. 128). Of course the vast majority of the fans present enjoyed themselves tremendously by behaving exactly as they would on any match day. Michalczyk need not have worried himself too much: by 1987 most of these noisy, teenaged, flag-waving fans would stop attending WAFL games (having shifted over to support West Coast Eagles in the national expanded VFL competition).

Somewhat more tactfully than most commentators, and not wanting to upset either the moralizers or the fans, the then WAFL president Vince Yovich simply said that the event “lacked atmosphere” (cited in Byrne, 1984, p. 128) which it may have done, from the TV perspective, because of the cavernous and generic nature of the venue. To his credit, East Fremantle’s coach Ron Alexander simply gave full marks to Channel 7 for attempting something different. A Channel 7 spokesperson, station manager Mr Alan Richards, was misquoted by Linda Byrne, perhaps deliberately. At the start of the back page article Richards is proclaimed as having been surprised by the hostile reaction and Byrne takes this to mean the hostile reactions of the supporters on the night. In fact his full quote appears later in the same article and it is very clear that he is expressing surprise at the “hostile reactions” of the people who contacted TV and radio stations and the newspaper to complain about the count on the day after the event. Richards correctly and sensibly pointed out that the fan reaction that was heard was the same as you would hear in the outer on any ordinary match day. In Richards’ words: “As a television person watching the event last night I thought it was the right approach and was somewhat surprised by the reaction” (cited in Byrne, 1984, p. 128). Clearly the reaction Richards is referring to here is that of the bourgeois, public policers of decency and decorum on the Tuesday rather than the reaction of the fans at the count on the Monday night. You cannot invite the public to a venue known for loud rock concerts by bands such as AC/DC and Kiss and charge a very cheap admission price and then realistically expect black-tie, gala-dinner behaviour.

M. Mitchell (Richmond, 1987-91)

The moralistic public uproar resulted in the 1985 count being shifted back to its traditional venue, The Golden Ballroom of the Sheraton Perth Hotel, and the ordinary supporters were again excluded. Nowadays the Brownlow (AFL) and Sandover Medal (WAFL) nights are corporate events at luxury hotel ballrooms, with players and WAGS (wives and girlfriends) dressed up in their showy fineries. The counts have become fashion shows and places to be seen. Carlton AFL player Brendan Fevola’s behaviour at the 2009 Brownlow Medal Count included vomiting, swearing, spilling beer, simulated sex acts, and molestation of women (Hinde and Mayberry, 2011). No teenage cheer squad member behaved in such ways at the Perth Entertainment Centre in August 1984 although some of them might have accidentally spilled their soft drinks! Nonetheless, the ruling-class of football decided that it most definitely did not want the lumpenproletariat supporters to be in such close proximity at future medal count nights [by Kieran James and Mike Blewett, 21 May 2012].

S. Malaxos (Hawthorn, 1985)

1984 WAFL Sandover Medal Count Final Results: Steve Malaxos (Claremont) - 17 votes; Michael Mitchell (Claremont) - 17 votes; Peter Spencer (East Perth) – 17 votes; Laurie Keene (Subiaco) – 14 votes; Peter Menaglio (West Perth) – 14 votes.

All West Perth FC vote getters: Paul Mifka – 9 votes; Brian Perrin – 8 votes; Dean Warwick – 7 votes; Les Fong – 6 votes; Wayne Dayman, Doug Simms – 3 votes; Graeme Comerford, John Gastevich, Derek Kickett, Craig Nelson – 2 votes; Phil Bradmore – 1 vote.

Team totals (3-2-1 voting system): Swan Districts 73; South Fremantle 71; East Perth 66; East Fremantle 65; Claremont 63; Subiaco 60; West Perth 59; Perth 47.

(Source: The West Australian, Wednesday 29 August 1984, p. 127)

Some media quotes from the late GEOFF CHRISTIAN:

“The most disappointing feature of West Perth’s voting was that captain Les Fong, who set a consistent standard throughout the year, polled only six votes”.

“The umpires’ voting reflected the general opinion that West Perth wingman Paul Mifka was the best first-year player in league football”.

(Source: Geoff Christian (1984), “Three-way tie for the Sandover”, The West Australian, Wednesday 29 August, p. 127)  [archival research by Kieran James].

Laurie Keene (S) - fourth

Biography of Geoff Christian by Jack Frost: The late GEOFF CHRISTIAN (1934-98) was a remarkable sports-writer who wrote in an excellent, masterful, and charming prose style that few could duplicate today. He could make a Round  13 match between the two bottom-placed clubs played in pouring rain in front of 4,000 people sound as important, exciting, and earth-shattering as the Russian Revolution or the Arab Spring! His genuine enthusiasm for the WAFL and later for West Coast Eagles was authentic, genuine, and infectious. I love the descriptions, still in place in 1984, of the VFL, SANFL, and WAFL all as “league football” and, by implication, worthy to be called tier-one status.