Australian hooligans booing in sports stadiums is newsworthy now (the Adam Goodes imbroglio) but it was newsworthy, too, 100 years ago today.
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"UPROAR AT STADIUM. PREMIER HOOTED", the Sydney Morning Herald scolded.
"A disgraceful outbreak of booing entirely frustrated an attempt to deliver recruiting speeches at the Stadium [Sydney's boxing coliseum] on Saturday night, the Premier being persistently refused a hearing."
Men had packed the stadium to see returned soldier heroes but then went berserk when despised politicians like Premier Holman tried to hog the limelight..
"It was a typical Stadium crowd, and the rougher element of the typical Stadium crowd likes a fight. On Saturday night they cheered in wild enthusiasm when a score of returned heroes who had been wounded at the Dardanelles entered the boxing ring ... but of the politicians who wished to bring a recruiting appeal home they [the hooligans] would have none. The uproar was indescribable.
"Mr Holman tried to speak. 'Gentlemen,' he began – then a storm of hoots made one realise the irrelevance of the stereotyped opening [because this was a crowd of lairs, not gentlemen]."
"[Later] it was a typical Stadium crowd that filled the trams going back to the city. Outside a hotel two drunken women were fighting. With whoops of joy from the occupants, two packed tram cars emptied in a instant and a ring formed around the wretched women This was an appeal to the fighting instincts that some of the Stadium crowd [not prepared to enlist to fight the Huns] could understand."
