This week is Christmas for footy fans. The Western Sydney Giants were well and truly flattened by the Richmond Tigers during the AFL Grand Final on Saturday, and we get to do it all again this coming Saturday when the Canberra Raiders and the Sydney Roosters play the NRL Grand Final.
There are a lot of good things about football. Unfortunately, as with most good things in life, some people have to take it too far and be jerks about it. There are more incidents than I can count of fans screaming racist slurs at players, there’s the photo of Tayla Harris that brought out every cretin on the internet, and the entire saga of Israel Folau hating gay people.
Another thing that comes with footy matches is a massive spike in domestic violence cases. On average, police respond to a domestic violence case every two minutes in Australia, adding up to about 5000 cases every week. Major football matches increase these numbers significantly, with the AFL grand final leading to 20% more call outs every year, and a big NRL match like the grand final or State of Origin causing a spike of up to 40% in some places.
Overall, grand final weekends cause the second highest spikes in domestic violence on the calendar. The only event worse is New Years Eve, where rates increase about 50%.
The theory is that the grand final is a time where people drink a lot more than they otherwise would, gamble on the outcome of the game, and watch the match with emotions running high. Sadly, it’s a scenario that plays out the same way overseas as it does here in Australia.
The World Cup is a massive deal in the soccer world, and it only comes around every four years. France were the ultimate winners in 2018, but England made it all the way to the semi finals. If you had any doubt about how emotionally invested fans were while watching the games, check out some of the footage of English fans celebrating in the streets when they scored a goal.
Which brings us to this. You might remember this ad put out by the NHS in the middle of all the world cup hype:
Same awful statistics, same awful reason, other side of the world.
Back home, Australia has already seen 53 women and 17 kids killed so far this year. The most recent was Helena Broadbent, who was taken to hospital in Victoria after falling out of a moving car. She died a few hours later. Helena was five months pregnant, and her baby (who was delivered via c-section) is still in hospital. A 35-year-old man has been charged.
There isn’t much left for me to say about the horrors of our national domestic violence death toll that hasn’t already been said a thousand times, but I’ll try. Every single one of those 53 women was a person with their own complex lives. They had hopes, interests, friends, and they deserved to be here.
As we lead up to the NRL grand final this weekend, think about the people who won’t make it through without violence in some form. Women’s lives matter, and women’s safety is a damn lot more important than the outcome of a football game.