[The emergency line] was flooded with calls from disgusted and upset supporters following Collingwood’s 19-point win over arch-rival Carlton.
One fan, Ross, said he’d “never be going to the football again” after being thrown to the ground…
[A] man was also seen “relieving himself” on a police car while leaving the MCG.
There were also reports of spitting and children crying as they were caught up in the mayhem.
Robin, one of those to call 3AW, said she spent the last five minutes of the match trying to break-up fights between fans.
She said it happened in the Carlton members area.
“There were four, full-on fights where people were knocked out,” she said on 3AW Football.
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An eye-witness account.
One star defender is the subject of repeated homophobic abuse, raising the idea of calling the phone number on the scoreboard by which you can report abusive behaviour.
But clearly identifying the source of the remarks in the pack in which the coward is concealed is difficult and, you suspect, alerting the authorities will only inflame an increasingly heated group.
… Where once the overt nature of loud and insistent barracking created some form of self-policing, the friction now seems like the wild, uncontrollable urges of those who have no sense of the consequences of their actions.