A match that meant next to nothing was overshadowed by a vicious and indiscriminate pepper spray attack by the NSW Police that caused a young teenage boy to be hospitalised.
With the disgraced Perth side expelled from the final series for salary cap breaches taking on a Western Sydney Wanderers team who would finish in 9th place regardless of the result, neither team had anything but pride on the line. Jamie Maclaren opened the scoring in the 16th minute, latching onto a through ball and firing at goal, Dean Bouzanis not getting down fast enough to the shot to keep it out.
Youngster Liam Youlley made his debut for the Wanderers, and he celebrated it with an equalising goal in the 52nd minute. A free kick on the right wing just outside the area was played short to the diminutive midfielder, his effort was relatively tame but it bounced like a pinball through a sea of legs to wrongfoot Danny Vukovic.
Perth were back in front 10 minutes later through the man at the centre of the salary cap breach. Andy Keogh, who was paid outside the salary cap through payments to his wife, drifted between Topor-Stanley & Antony Golec, received a pass and smartly curled a shot with his ill-gotten left foot past Bouzanis.
Off the pitch saw several disgraceful incidents from a handful of members of the New South Wales Police. During the first half a smoke flare was lit in the central RBB of bay 56. Witnessing this, a handful of officers standing on the far edge of bay 55 remarked to the effect that they should "go in and get everyone", made their way into bay 56 and began an 'investigation' that resulted in several members of the public being harassed, interrogated, shoved and ultimately, resulted in the police using an indiscriminate wave of pepper spray in a space containing dozens of law abiding citizens, many of whom were minors. In one case, spraying a young boy and causing him to be admitted to hospital.
With an toxic atmosphere building around the RBB, the leaders of the group decided to leave at half-time. Almost the entire north end was vacated, followed in hot pursuit by the Police. With the crowd outside still chanting, the police formed a riot line. Once again pepper spray was fired into the crowd at random, injuring dozens.
It is simply not good enough for police to respond to a single flare that hurt no-one by charging into the bay, creating disturbances and then targeting people at random with pepper spray. The 'response' from the Police that no-one was hurt is a pure lie.
This was the second occasion this season I wasn't able to watch the second half of a match because of police action. The first was on a much smaller scale, but weeks later this incident was on a scale not seen since August 2012 when the Sydney United supporters were attacked by riot police and dogs asa result of a single firecracker being let off.
All the people involved in the security at Wanderers matches need to go back to the drawing board, because the way things are going there will be at some stage a major injury created by their indiscriminate brutality. A flare is not reason to randomly attack people and pepper spray them at a football game. Nor is chanting outside the stadium any grounds for dousing an entire line of people with pepper spray.
Edited by mack
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