Western Sydney Wanderers RBB fans present a unique opportunity for the struggling A-league

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The most controversial sports fans in Australia present an opportunity for a struggling league, but do the bosses of the game want to play?

To be a member of the Red and Black Bloc means to commit yourself to a tribe.

This is the most notorious fan group in Australian sport, and game day in Western Sydney is when members storm down the street behind their 'capo'.

It's when they "forget about everything else".

They're here to watch A-League side the Western Sydney Wanderers, but in many ways, the Red and Black Bloc — or the RBB — is a drawcard in itself.

"The whole thing, the whole atmosphere — you can just feel it building throughout the afternoon," according to member of the march Peter Zanetic.

The 52-year-old, who runs a construction business in the area is one of the hundreds of faces in the RBB crowd as it moves through the streets of Parramatta.

"We start to get together at the pub and have a few beers before the march and then we all get out together with all the drums going and singing," he says.

Zanetic says the RBB is "like a big family".

A family with a history.

Over the years, the RBB's behaviour has cost the Wanderers.

Some members of the group have been violent, thrown flares inside stadiums and declared outright war on the game's governing body the Football Federation of Australia (FFA) over how it runs the sport.

The Wanderers have been served breach notices over the group's behaviour, which have led to fines and the suspension of competition points.

While the group has been known to be one of soccer's biggest problems, the chants and fanaticism of the RBB can also light up the league.

On this day, the RBB are marching with renewed passion.

The Wanderers round-one clash against the Central Coast Mariners would mark the return to the club's spiritual home at Parramatta Stadium for the first time in three years.

And in a rare move, the RBB allowed ABC photographer Brendan Esposito to march alongside them.

Zanetic can be seen charging towards the photographer's lens, emerging out of a red, smoky haze.

It's lingering in the air from a nearby flare — one of the sport's most divisive rituals.

The deep and steady sound of a drum echoes between the shopfront windows, as the moving mass of red and black fans flow past.

The 'capo' wears a red wide-brimmed hat. It's pulled down firmly over his head so you can see his jaw, but not much else and with a megaphone by his side, he gestures to his followers.

Many of the fans, like Zanetic, are well-groomed and heeled.

"Some run car dealerships, different businesses and restaurants," he explains.

"They are CEOs, managers of a lot of companies. Everyone is pumped."

The RBB has a hierarchy, a uniform and a code to live by.

They answer to a 'capo' — a nod to the way mafia families refer to their leaders.

The group's ultimate maxim: they stand for the west.

"We know the lives we lead, the hearts upon our chest," their manifesto reads.

"And for west Sydney, we will stand atop the crest."

The question for those who run Australia's top-tier soccer league is this: how do they harness the passion of fans like the RBB to attract more supporters to the game?

The head of Australia's domestic soccer leagues, Greg O'Rourke, used to sell Smith's Chips as a director of PepsiCo in Australia.

His marketing background tells him groups like the RBB present an opportunity, but he also understands the FFA hasn't had the best relationship with them in recent years.

"We have got our active fans and they have a very different need and a different want," O'Rourke explains.

"Part of what they do is not engage with the establishment.

"We need to work with the clubs and indirectly talk to those fans."

O'Rourke says engaging these fans is a key part of his plan to reignite the domestic game, and it's something greatly needed after the A-League's attendance hit an eight-year low last season.

When the A-League launched in 2005, it was supposed to make the game more appealing to a wider audience.

It was designed to be clean cut and only clubs without ethnic alliances were included.

About 10,870 supporters went through the turnstiles for each regular A-League match in the 2018/19 season.

It was far cry from the 2006/07 season, which averaged more than 15,000 people per game off the back of the Socceroos World Cup campaign in Germany.

"The first and foremost thing for me, is attendance," says O'Rourke, when asked about how he measures the success of each and every footballing weekend.

Those running the sport are forced to strike a difficult balance — allow active fans like the Wanderers' RBB to express themselves freely, while maintaining an inclusive environment for all.

Nielsen Australia managing director Monique Perry is in the business of surveying and measuring Australian sports fans.

She says Australian soccer has a particularly young and avid supporter base, which is a big opportunity for the struggling code.

"Thirty-four per cent of Australians are football fans and 36 per cent of those fans identify as avid A-League fans," she says.

"This is a pretty exciting demographic."

Perry says soccer fans in general are particularly valuable.

"When we look at the A-League fans, it over indexes to younger Australians, so [among] 18-to-24-year-olds and 25-to-39-year-olds," she says.

"That core avid fan base is growing, which is a great sign."

So while Australian soccer does not have the largest fan base, it has the ingredients it needs to grow its tribe.

"A lot of families tell me the reason they go is that it's as much about the football, as it is the atmosphere around the football," O'Rourke says, leaning forward from his chair with a smile.

Other side of the stadium

Ashley Soklevski, 20, also attends games for the atmosphere and to spend time with her family, but she's on the other side of the fan divide.

She is a Melbourne Victory supporter and says: "We have always just gone to games, ever since I can remember, on the weekends."

"My brothers started after him, I [also] played a couple of seasons. So, we have always just grown up with soccer being in the family."

Soccer is Australia's largest grassroots participation sport, with more than 1.5 million people playing the game, according to the latest AusPlay survey.

Turning these participants into fans however, has long been the problem for those running the game.

"We meet some of my dad's friends there and there is a huge bunch of us that sit there and we all watch the game together," Ashley says.

"It's always good when you see Victory fans out and you are like, 'Oh, you follow them too and you are as passionate as me'."

Ashley says she gets "very emotional".

"I scream at the players like they can hear me," she says.

"If they are not doing what I think they should be then I let them know!

"My mum is right next to me doing exactly the same."

Victory, one of the A-League's foundation clubs, is the most well-supported in the competition, listing 26,522 active members at the end of the 2018/19 season.

However, the club's membership numbers have stagnated over the past three seasons, after recording over 27,000 members four years ago.

While it has access to some of sport's most passionate supporters — a clear advantage in Australia's busy sporting landscape — Australian soccer is still trying to find its own identity.

Many believe the key to reigniting growth of the Australian game harks back to when it first began in this country.

Can soccer's ethnic past help its future?

Four friends who have watched the game they love from a familiar spot for nearly 60 years have a few ideas about how the modern version of the sport might survive.

Thousands used to pack into Lambert Park in Sydney during the '60s and '70s, to watch their favourite club APIA Leichhardt; once an envied powerhouse of the Australian soccer.

These men migrated to Australia from Italy and became passionate supporters of this club because it aided their transition into their new lives.

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Rocco Costa, or Roy as he's known, arrived as a young boy.

"My English was poor, my writing was poor, you can only learn that when you go to school here," Roy says.

"Soccer made me feel at home, I used to come to training here every night.

"There used to be 200, 300, 400 people here watching, just for training!"

Like many soccer clubs of similar vintage in Australia, APIA Leichhardt proudly boasted its ethnic heritage — it was what helped form APIA's tribe.

The round ball game in Australia was the lifeblood of migrants, like those at APIA Leichhardt, but the game turned its back on clubs with ethnic ties when the new A-League was launched.

The old ethnic-based clubs were excluded from Australia's new league and the gap hasn't been bridged since.

But earlier this year, the FFA tore up its longstanding national club-identity policy, which stopped clubs branding themselves with their ethnic heritage, opening the door for this kind of fandom to re-enter the game.

Australian soccer has a unique challenge: unite fans as controversial as the RBB, as friendly as families and those with a lifetime of loyalty around the same game.

Those in charge know there are a few levers to pull when it comes to inspiring these groups, but the thing they all have in common is a sense of tribalism — a sense of belonging to something.

The consensus among the Italian group is that Australia's next generation of passionate soccer fans will perceive the game in their own way, reflective of their own circumstances.

"This country is brewing, what I call the minestrone, which is a soup where you have a lot of ingredients," Sam Gerbino says.

"What this country will deliver, in terms of identity, in 30, 40 or even 50 years, who knows?

"Soccer, like any sport, it is educational, it brings solidarity, it brings togetherness and it makes you realise that if you want to achieve anything, you have to sweat."

This week, the ABC's Australia Talks project is exploring what shapes our national identity. Use our interactive tool to share your views and see how you compare with 54,000 other Australians.

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Credits:

Reporting: Sports reporter Patrick Galloway

Photography: The Specialist Reporting Team's Brendan Esposito

Editing and digital production: The Specialist Reporting Team's Emily Clark

Topics: sport, soccer, a-league, community-and-society, human-interest, parramatta-2150, australia, nsw, vic, sydney-2000, melbourne-3000

First posted