Active supporter groups from various A-League clubs have announced a temporary suspension of their boycott of A-League matches following a crisis meeting on Wednesday with FFA CEO David Gallop. Gallop emerged from the four-hour meeting with the fan groups to say that the FFA and the supporter group representatives had reached an in-principle agreement to making changes to the fan- banning process.
These involved two main proposals. The first was changing the FFA banning notice issued to a fan, to an ‘Intention to Ban’ notice. The second is to allow fans who receive such a notice an opportunity to view the evidence on which it’s based.
Another change agreed to is for banned fans to then have the opportunity to appeal before an independent tribunal at a later date.
“We had a significant meeting with the reps of all 10 clubs’ active supporter groups,” said Gallop afterwards, “and I’m pleased to say we reached in-principle agreement on a couple of changes to the banning process and they (fan groups) endorsed those changes.
“There was a general good understanding of each other’s positions and some robust debate of course. I think it was productive. There were some strong feelings and we’ve listened to that and made some changes to the process but maintained the integrity of the process as well.”
He conceded there was more fine tuning to be done and that they would be in a better position to do this following the thorough review of the system announced last week, to be completed by the time of the February FFA board meeting.
After the meeting, active supporter groups issued a joint statement on their club supporter Facebook pages confirming that the FFA had agreed to implement satisfactory systems by no later than 19 February 2016 to coincide with the announcement of the Whole of Football Plan. On this basis, the fan groups have announced a temporary suspension of fan boycotts.
