Carlton versus Collingwood at the MCG on a Saturday afternoon; a modern edition of the age-old Australian football rivalry.

The Magpies are flying, the Blues are struggling yet again, but only those with no sense of history believe this will be anything other than a tight gripping struggle.

This is Carlton's grand final. A chance to wound the old enemy before a crowd of 70,000, while accelerating the development of the young stars who are the draft-day consolation for years of humiliation.

That Collingwood president Eddie McGuire has belittled Carlton coach Brendon Bolton by suggesting the Blues should contact Hawthorn's Alastair Clarkson has only fuelled the flames.

The queues at the gates are long. Inside, the crowd is heaving.

On an unusual child-free day, I take a place in standing room in the Great Southern Stand with friends who like to congregate in number unconstrained by bucket seats.

The area is usually sparsely populated. This time it is filled with supporters of both teams and, almost immediately, you can tell the atmosphere will be strained; even toxic.

Collingwood has an exciting charismatic team that has even the most strident opposition supporters struggling to find rational reasons to hate the competition's Darth Vader.

Carlton has those brilliant young recruits, including the admirably brutal Patrick Cripps who, if not already the best player in the competition, is a prominent part of the discussion.

Patrick Cripps is a hero for Blues fans, with the Carlton midfielder one of the best players in the AFL. ( AAP: Hamish Blair, file photo )

Common sense says both sets of supporters have plenty of heroes to cheer.

As tensions rise, abuse can lead to confrontation

The darker side of the football-supporting psyche says some will instead spend the afternoon abusing the opposition.

From the bounce, opposition superstars are ridiculed — in more profane terms — as "hacks" and "squibs" and "divers".

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.

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The abuse will not reach the ears of the subjects who are engulfed by a wall of noise and engrossed in an intense physical contest.

Instead it is heard only by opposition supporters who are forced to endure an afternoon having their stars players belittled in the most vile fashion.

As the game remains predictably tight and tensions rise, supporters of both sides will be, to use the vogue social media term, triggered by the abuse and respond in kind.

As moods darken and the prospect of physical altercation becomes inevitable, it seems evident the rats of the social media sewer holes are being exposed in the daylight.

But now the keyboard warriors used to spewing their foul epithets into hyperspace unfettered by customary behavioural constraints are launching a verbal assault that will provoke real reprisal.

Nothing new in aggro from the stands

Nicky Winmar's response to racist chants at Collingwood's Victoria Park in the 1990s shows that fan misbehaviour is nothing new. ( AAP Image: Hamish Blair )

Such interaction is, of course, hardly new. Those who romanticise "the wit of the suburban terrace" conveniently forget the streams of invective, drunken violence and, in the case of Nicky Winmar's infamous treatment at Collingwood's Victoria Park, overt racism of the old mobs.

Yet as someone who spent childhood days standing on tippy toes at now forsaken venues, struggling to see the game over the shoulders of sometimes demented supporters, there is a noticeably different dynamic at play now.

Perhaps it is because those who scream abuse now are in a small minority that the reaction they provoke is more extreme. Consequently, even supporters barracking loudly and positively for their teams can elicit an abrupt, even threatening response.

Similarly, while AFL exceptionalists pride themselves on how "supporters of both clubs sit side by side", there was a form of unofficial segregation at suburban grounds.

St Kilda's 'Animal Enclosure', Collingwood's 'One-Eye Hill' — only the bravest opposition fan would venture there, only the stupidest would raise their voices against the home team.

Mix new-aged, all-seater stadium sensitivity with the emboldened, usually consequence-free keyboard warrior and you have a dangerous cocktail — as the growing number of violent incidents at AFL games in recent times demonstrates.

Indeed, this new crowd dynamic can create consequences even more unpleasant than at the suburban grounds because of its relative spontaneity and unpredictability.

By halfway through the third quarter of the Carlton-Collingwood game the growing chorus of abuse and the increasingly heated responses are enough to suggest trouble is brewing.

So much so that I retreat to the relative quiet of the MCC Members and watch the final stages of a gripping match without constant references to the imagined shortcomings of the brilliant combatants.

When I am reunited with friends it comes as no surprise to hear some fights had erupted near where they were standing and that police had arrived; just as the media reports of other violent incidents at the end of a dramatic game seemed inevitable.

"Been happening as long as they've played the game," some will say. "It's just a few idiots."

But it doesn't feel like that. 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.

The drunk abusive louts don't know the limits of decent behaviour, the triggered opposition don't know how to respond, those who went to cheer and shout loudly for their team are lumped in with the morons, and the art of barracking seems lost.