Well, I guess I see what happened now. This one guy was allowed in the T-AFC group, he was continually negative about everything we wanted to do, and eventually told us we should close the whole thing down and join The Port. We advised him politely as to why this was not going to happen before showing him the door. Now it seems he took screenshots of everything that he found here - and decided to publish them here to... I don't know, try to get YF support for the concept that
peaceable fan groups that he doesn't like the thrust of should be banned?! Talk about an inability to mind one's own business.
T-AFC has good relationships with Manukau United, a club which has a very strong left-wing pedigree (through the Fowler family) and
holds community events for the refugee and Palestinian communities, so anyone in Auckland who think that politics should be
banned from football knows nothing. Admittedly our group is small, but we've had to become very suspicious as to who we let into our group because of fudgewittery like this. But if this is the same guy, I'll happily reproduce what I wrote him.
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I wasn't one of those who started this group. In fact, I had no interest in supporting AFC at all to begin with. Partly because I don't like or trust Bill Foley, Ali Williams or the creepy Mowbrays. Partly because I've been Yellow Fever for a long time and - while rivalry, banter and trolling are all good - the honestly nasty anti-Nix tone of many AFC fans turned me off.
But when the comrades started this group, I went out and bought a season ticket. Why? Because I knew it was something good and something I wanted to support. Bought the shirt, helped pay for the flag. It's something I've wanted to see for a long time, and if there's one thing we learn on the Left, it's that if you don't actively support something, it vanishes.
So this little group of commos is attracting real financial support to our new club who would not touch it otherwise. We are keen to *increase* that support, though we might not be very good at it yet. So: why would those such as yourself be so hostile and keen to derail it?
Perhaps many of you just tend to the Right and it irks you to have out-and-proud Lefties at the game. Well, we can't do anything about that; don't start no trouble, won't be no trouble. A David Seymour Brigade on the other side of the stadium would at least be funny.
But there's something else going on here, I think. And that's the Great Kiwi Clobbering Machine - a kneejerk hostility to *anything* that happens that's not mainstream, that happens outside accepted channels. That whole conformist, "why can't you just do what everybody else does" attitude - just not being able to leave something alone which isn't hurting you, but you don't like or even don't understand. The kind of thing that makes cars swerve to scare cyclists. Well, our reaction to that is: WE WILL INCREASE THE FUDGING THING.
We've had a lot of crap dumped on this venture - much of it much less polite than your contribution - but surely you understand that, if our venture fails, interventions such as yours will make us much less likely to want to join the mainstream active support? This looks like what the pick-up artists call "negging", and it's never worked on me.
We dearly want friendly relations with The Port and other AFC fans, but if we were ever wondering whether what we're doing here is worthwhile, the hostility coming from such as yourself is evidence that it is. Hope to see you all in the South Stand come game time. Particularly looking forward to cheering for Alex Paulsen again.
