Demon Army Cheer Squad

[—coach— 3,496]

1 hour ago, WalkingCivilWar said:

We’ve actually just recently noticed there’s a group of regular trouble makers who sit close to us and are extremely loud and rowdy. They were there vs. Essendon and then again vs. Freo. Same guys each time. And unfortunately they succeeded in drowning us out. 

Are you talking about the group of about 10-15 mullet haired boys of around the 18-20mark? If so, I noticed them at there freo game and they were definitely there purely to annoy demons members. Not one of them had a scrap of freo gear on

[dazzledavey36 54,282]

20 minutes ago, DemonSam said:

Hey WalkingCivilWar, You're obviously a passionate fan and I'm not here to upset anyone or denigrate your efforts I just think we can be better. I think I've given some constructive criticism. 

I like how you cbf responding in public except for the last 4 posts and that I'm a clown for giving a toss... come on.

I don't think I'm being unreasonable, the hours would be tough no doubt, hence why I haven't been involved in such activities before. Maybe there are some ways to make it easier?

But I've been to all our home games this year,  please read my post rather than getting stirred up by some posters. 

Let's say we wanted to get a ground swell of Demonlanders into the Demon Army surely that kind of response is not going to help.
 

Don't apologise. 

All those points you shared were fair and reasonable.

In fact I think there has actually been some reasonable comments on here. No one has gotten personal towards the demon army nor bad mouthed them in general. 

I attended the North game and while it was a horrible crowd in terms of numbers their own supporters were way louder then us. They were certainly loud towards some of the questionable decisions going against them but it actually turned the atmosphere from dour to entertaining. 

I was gobsmacked because here I am all these years taking the absolute [censored] out of their supporters for not attending games but yet turns we're just as worse. 

 

 

 

[Lord Nev 13,512]

What a bizarre thread.

If you want to make the Dee Army bigger and want them to listen to your suggestions, then join.

Simple.

[faultydet 7,594]

16 minutes ago, dazzledavey36 said:

Don't apologise. 

All those points you shared were fair and reasonable.

In fact I think there has actually been some reasonable comments on here. No one has gotten personal towards the demon army nor bad mouthed them in general. 

I attended the North game and while it was a horrible crowd in terms of numbers their own supporters were way louder then us. They were certainly loud towards some of the questionable decisions going against them but it actually turned the atmosphere from dour to entertaining. 

I was gobsmacked because here I am all these years taking the absolute [censored] out of their supporters for not attending games but yet turns we're just as worse. 

 

 

 

eek.

[Guest]

33 minutes ago, —coach— said:

Are you talking about the group of about 10-15 mullet haired boys of around the 18-20mark? If so, I noticed them at there freo game and they were definitely there purely to annoy demons members. Not one of them had a scrap of freo gear on

That sounds like them. I recognised a few faces yesterday that I remember seeing at vs. Essendon and vs. Saints. I’d say there’s a core group of about 15-20 but sometimes they have hangers-on. Nothing can be done if they’re otherwise behaving themselves. 

[Guest]

1 hour ago, DemonSam said:

I like how you cbf responding in public except for the last 4 posts

I meant I cbf responding in public to YOU. 

Clearly I’m doing so right now. But that’s only to politely ask you to get your facts straight or STFU.

Shame on anyone who unnecessarily bags the labour of love by volunteers under the guise of ‘helping.’

[Demon Dynasty 17,109]

2 hours ago, ElDiablo14 said:

You guys think it's a group of 'neutrals' that just come to our games to hate on the Dees?

Is there something the club can do to ensure that the area around the cheer squad is 100% occupied by only members?

The authorities were doing a fair bit of sorting of the oppo riff raff chaff last night.  Much better than previous home games anyway from what i witnessed.

[DeeZone 9,672]

We sit on level 2 Shane Warne Stand and we like to look down and to the right to watch the Demon Army do their stuff at the Punt Road end. I think that a lot of interesting information has come to light on this thread, not the negatives but areas for improvement. This needs to be addressed by both our Club and AFL. It is so foreign to me that opposition fans can sit anywhere near our cheer squad. That area should be restricted to MFC supporters only. If someone on this site would start a petition I think that it would get a lot of Suppo, we must protect and nurture our Demon Army.

Edited June 5, 2022 by DeeZone

[Demongirl35 1,045]

Our games have been boring this year. Even when we were winning it was ugly football. 100 handballs to kick a goal.. 

That kozzy goal against gws gets the crowd going! 

[layzie 33,752]

I've never seen so much potting of the cheersquad than in the last few weeks. It's like always looking to the government for handouts 

[Rab D Nesbitt 8,357]

I ran it with four good friends during the back half of the 80's and start of the 90's. We came up with the idea to have stencils for the letters and made to measure scarlet coloured sheets of paper to ensure each and every one was uniform as well as spaced and balanced evenly on the run through (nobody called them banners). I got an engineer that I used to work with to design the 30ft aluminium poles with slot in steel inserts and lugs at the top to attach ropes to. Something that nobody else had done at that time. Two of us would design the caricatures we sometimes made, I used to draw them on large squares sketched out on butcher paper whilst the other person could draw freehand. We'd then either paint in the colours or use different colours of crepe paper. Today I think they stick a large photocopied picture onto a crepe backing. We had in excess of 20 floggers made from navy and scarlet coloured plastic which made them waterproof. Even back then Coke gave us $10k in sponsorship annually, again unheard of at that time. We played cheer squad football games wearing the players training gear, slept overnight in the changing rooms at the Junction Oval on Friday run through nights then would help pack all of our gear into the property stewards truck to go to the game early on Saturday morning, usually arriving at the ground by 9am. I had Jim Stynes calling me at work and at home at one point trying to get a blown up picture of his 100th game run through. 

We started making the crepe paper backings (30ft x 60ft) a month before the season to get a head start. This would buy us time late in the season to start work on finals run throughs as they were usually a bit more intricate. We organised interstate travel and hotel accommodation for other supporters and followed the side to all corners of the country. We wrote what we wanted on the run throughs and ended up in the Sunday papers on many an occasion, usually ending with the club asking for an explanation on the Monday morning. It was probably the halcyon days of the cheer squad looking back and many of the kids I knew then are still good friends today. 

I acknowledge that things are different now and the age demographic is probably a lot higher but the amount of work and time these people give up to represent the club and it's supporters in general would easily outstrip anyone writing posts on a football forum. The one thing that I think would make for a better game day experience would have been to keep the cheer squad seats in our members area next to where our race used to be when they were offered them instead of choosing to sit behind the goals at the Punt Road end. This would have placed them front and centre with all our members and prevented them being heckled by idiots looking to cause trouble from the opposition team. 

[brendan 3,434]

2 hours ago, Wodjathefirst said:

The problem is not with our cheer squad.  

The problem is our supporter base culture. A positive summation is that we are polite and quiet. A less positive assessment would be that we are quite  boring and lack passion. Frankly, I’m jealous of sides that have loud passionate supporters, which is pretty much most other sides in the comp.

I was at the GF in WA and it was obviously a ring in crowd but it was loud, real loud and it was exciting.  I loved it. Simple as that.

I so much looked forward to seeing and hearing our real supporters in the rematch at the start of the year and to honest it was almost disappointing in comparison. Similar crowd numbers ( and even allowing for stadium acoustics) it really lacked atmosphere.  Bottom line was that people that didn’t even barrack for Melbourne showed more passion last year (that was in both the Footscray game and the Geelong game prior).  I guess that as a collective that is who we are.  Very, very quiet.  I really feel for our players at times.

We have so much  of a middle class conservative boredom embedded in us that it is embarrassing at times.  We lack passion. (apologies to the middle class out there who are loud snd proud and the exceptions to the rule Melbourne supporters that show passion). 

I dreamed for over 50 years that we would win a flag. Tick. I also dreamed that with success the long suffering supporters would come out of their shells. Fail.

I can almost feel that given a choice the polite clapping brigade would like things to stay as they always have been, for people like me to disappear.  Well it would be impolite of me to say you should consider changing your ways so I won’t.  You have got it pretty good at the moment.

I keep dreaming of course.  I hope we have further success on the ground and that attracts a new breed of supporters to the MFC. 

To me success in the stands will be defined as when the polite brigade would rather watch footy on Kayo because they find our new breed  supporters over the top loud and proud.  Chances of this happening? Pretty low but I keep on dreaming.

 

Agree with all of this, I like to be loud at the footy but everywhere I get reserved seats I feel like I’m being judged, and once had a fellow Melbourne member tell me to be quiet  as I was being too loud, I have changed seats many times now and the only place I have found I can be myself without ridicule is in the standing areas 

[The Swimming Dee 1,904]

3 hours ago, WalkingCivilWar said:

Anyways my patience is well and truly exhausted. I shouldn’t be made to feel like crap by other Dees “fans”especially not after the day we had yesterday. 
WCW out ✌️ 

Thank you for your hard work and for the rest of the cheer squad’s efforts. I really respect what you do and hate the implications of some of the comments on this thread. You are heart and soul WCW…GO DEES!

[spirit of norm smith 16,278]

4 hours ago, praha said:

The problem isn't the cheersquad. They're no different to any other clubs. The problem is that a large chunk of our support base sit in the MCC and Olympic stands. Other clubs fill the Olympic and spill out into the Southern Stand. So for Melbourne games you basically have a free for all of GA and reserved club members of other clubs. 

We just don't have the numbers sitting around and with the cheer squad to really make much of a difference. They were heavily outnumbers by Swans supporters last night. Which raises the question about ticketing. I felt sorry for the cheer squad last night because Sydney basically had a second cheer squad sitting right behind them. So is it the AFL or MFC allowing ticket sales of away teams in areas otherwise dedicated to home team members? It didn't feel like a home game yesterday and I think it has a lot to do with ticketing. Force them into the Ponsford stand. Unless they're AFL or MCC members, they can sit with their own cheer squad.

Nailed it 

[FearTheBeard 1,223]

Potting the Cheer Squad as if they are the problem what a load of crap.

How about the MCC members who are crickets every week, how about the 45k members who don't show up?

When the boys run out the only noise we hear is the cheer squad. 

These guys travel the country to watch every every game, most of our fans can't be bothered going to Richmond.

I have pathetic Melbourne fans around me in the AFL reserve who get all upset when I'm shouting and angry.

The demon army is not the problem.

[Stein9193 129]

In all honesty I think the demon army cheer squad and their presence on gameday has been pathetic. These people will come in and tell you that you have no clue but they are in complete denial. I have often sat near them and half the time can never even tell who they are. The OP hit the nail on the head, they are the worst cheer squad in the league by a country mile. I've heard country footy cheer squads louder and their chants are an absolute joke.

Why the hell are you in the cheer squad if you don't want to make noise and support the team?

I'm not quite as reasonable as the OP, I am not going to have this conversation in private because I've seen enough to know what I'm talking about and I think they could really use some of the feedback on here to get better like a team would try to do. Get off your butt and do something about it.

[layzie 33,752]

2 hours ago, Lord Nev said:

What a bizarre thread.

If you want to make the Dee Army bigger and want them to listen to your suggestions, then join.

Simple.

100% Nev, the best way to improve it is to get off your ar** and help. 

[Wodjathefirst 2,632]

51 minutes ago, brendan said:

Agree with all of this, I like to be loud at the footy but everywhere I get reserved seats I feel like I’m being judged, and once had a fellow Melbourne member tell me to be quiet  as I was being too loud, I have changed seats many times now and the only place I have found I can be myself without ridicule is in the standing areas 

Mate, I am so with you that it is not funny.  I used to have a general membership and could sit where I liked in the public areas. I tended to gravitate to the lower seats in top tier of Northern Stand next to the MCC members.  It wasn’t too bad, sitting around fellow demon supporters who would tend to get into the spirit of the game. It was good fun and ironically it wasn’t the opposition supporters that annoyed me.  It was the negative whining moaning groaning of some fellow demon supporters- it was really painful and embarrassing at times.

I not so long ago upped my membership to get a reserved seat in section 2A of the Shane Warne Stand and it is noticeably more reserved and I too feel that I am being judged at times.  My strategy is to slowly get louder and louder and hope others come on board and start letting go and enjoy themselves. Believe it or not it is very, very slowly working but all good things take time.

The sad thing is when I went to the footy with a couple of mates who follow St Kilda we stood at the back of the terrace and had a ball.  Good people from both teams being boisterous and having fun. I can almost hear some people say ‘why don’t you go back there and stay’

But no, I’m on a mission and that is to bring the spirit of the ‘great unwashed’ and infect other more conservative parts of the G.

Hang in there bro, if they don’t like it, they can move!

 

 

 

[Hellish Inferno 992]

9 hours ago, —coach— said:

Are you talking about the group of about 10-15 mullet haired boys of around the 18-20mark? If so, I noticed them at there freo game and they were definitely there purely to annoy demons members. Not one of them had a scrap of freo gear on

A group of only 4-6 boys similar description were at the pre-season game against Carlton. Barely remember them even supporting their own team as they were clearly there to bait Melbourne fans, saying all sorts of ridiculous crap loudly.

Sadly it's probably more indicative of how some young boys or men behave in this day and age than actually being the same people...

[ElDiablo14 4,991]

8 hours ago, Wodjathefirst said:

Mate, I am so with you that it is not funny.  I used to have a general membership and could sit where I liked in the public areas. I tended to gravitate to the lower seats in top tier of Northern Stand next to the MCC members.  It wasn’t too bad, sitting around fellow demon supporters who would tend to get into the spirit of the game. It was good fun and ironically it wasn’t the opposition supporters that annoyed me.  It was the negative whining moaning groaning of some fellow demon supporters- it was really painful and embarrassing at times.

I not so long ago upped my membership to get a reserved seat in section 2A of the Shane Warne Stand and it is noticeably more reserved and I too feel that I am being judged at times.  My strategy is to slowly get louder and louder and hope others come on board and start letting go and enjoy themselves. Believe it or not it is very, very slowly working but all good things take time.

The sad thing is when I went to the footy with a couple of mates who follow St Kilda we stood at the back of the terrace and had a ball.  Good people from both teams being boisterous and having fun. I can almost hear some people say ‘why don’t you go back there and stay’

But no, I’m on a mission and that is to bring the spirit of the ‘great unwashed’ and infect other more conservative parts of the G.

Hang in there bro, if they don’t like it, they can move!

 

 

 

Are you still in the 2A redlegs?

I am there also and I may be judged too but I don't care haha, just want to live the sport the way I like it 😅

[Stein9193 129]

12 hours ago, DemonSam said:

Hey WalkingCivilWar, You're obviously a passionate fan and I'm not here to upset anyone or denigrate your efforts I just think we can be better. I think I've given some constructive criticism. 

I like how you cbf responding in public except for the last 4 posts and that I'm a clown for giving a toss... come on.

I don't think I'm being unreasonable, the hours would be tough no doubt, hence why I haven't been involved in such activities before. Maybe there are some ways to make it easier?

But I've been to all our home games this year,  please read my post rather than getting stirred up by some posters. 

Let's say we wanted to get a ground swell of Demonlanders into the Demon Army surely that kind of response is not going to help.
 

There isn't a damn reason you should apologise for this post. You've made some very good points and don't let those arrogant people come on here and bully you because that's exactly what they are doing. There is clearly a problem here and this is a message board where we can discuss it. If there is a better forum to discuss this then I don't know what it is.

Good on you for calling this out. When the relevant parties want to grow up and listen then maybe we can have a conversation because right now this group sits wooden spoon on the cheer squad ladder.

[poita 3,892]

My question for the cheer squad is why don't they ever turn the banner around any more so that the people in the Southern Stand can see what is written on the front? All we get is the advertising on the back.

[Macca 16,922]

Why would anyone be dissatisfied with the efforts of a cheer squad?  Who cares how much noise they make

It's not like the players and team are going to be affected one way or the other anyway

They are volunteers doing their best to support the team.  Just like any other supporter

So we lose a game and it's the cheer squads fault?  How utterly ridiculous

 

[BDA 22,735]

1 hour ago, Stein9193 said:

There isn't a damn reason you should apologise for this post. You've made some very good points and don't let those arrogant people come on here and bully you because that's exactly what they are doing. There is clearly a problem here and this is a message board where we can discuss it. If there is a better forum to discuss this then I don't know what it is.

Good on you for calling this out. When the relevant parties want to grow up and listen then maybe we can have a conversation because right now this group sits wooden spoon on the cheer squad ladder.

Rubbish post

[Guest]

1 hour ago, poita said:

My question for the cheer squad is why don't they ever turn the banner around any more so that the people in the Southern Stand can see what is written on the front? All we get is the advertising on the back.

We do a “show” where we raise the banner, hold it for a couple of minutes, lay it back down, move everything 180 degrees and raise it again, ensuring both sides are seen.

On days like Saturday (wet grass) we can’t do a show since crepe paper and water are NOT friends. They’re enemies, and water ALWAYS wins. Especially when water and crepe’s other arch nemesis, WIND, team up, crepe doesn’t have a snowball’s.  On rainy, or even just dewy days/nights the less time the banner is at the mercy of the elements, the better. 

The “advertising on the back” isn’t random. Our major sponsors pay for that and without them we’d be up [censored] creek without a paddle, right?

The “message” side of the banner always faces the race. After all, it’s entirely for the players that we do this. And in case anyone wonders… the players notice. And they appreciate it. 

You see @DemonSam??? You ask a question in a decent manner, and you’ll be afforded a decent response. 

Edited June 6, 2022 by WalkingCivilWar