![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/fecda664dd21fa5092e56233e001bb3b.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nA professional football club in Melbourne’s northern suburbs faces calls to ban hardline supporters who brandished sexist and provocative banners at a match on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Preston Lions, a club associated with the Macedonian Australian community, faced South Melbourne FC in a state league match that resulted in a nil-all draw.<\/p>\n
South Melbourne FC are associated with the Greek diaspora and are known as the Hellas, the Greek name for Greece, from which the English adjective Hellenic is derived.<\/p>\n
Images from the game showed members of the Preston Boys ultras group holding a banner reading “anti-Hellass” in the stands.<\/p>\n
Other banners posted to social media contained profanity and sexist messaging about Greek women.<\/p>\n
Football Victoria said one of the league’s “showcase fixtures” had again been “overshadowed by the abhorrent actions of a small group of individuals whose behaviour has disgraced our game”.<\/p>\n
The governing body said the actions of Preston supporters were “deliberately intended to provoke, divide and inflame”.<\/p>\n
“These acts were disgraceful and the people who committed them deserve no place in our sporting community.”<\/p>\n
Football Victoria said it was working with venue operators and Victoria Police to identify those responsible and “pursue every available sanction”.<\/p>\n
“We will use every avenue available to identify you, hold you accountable and do everything within our power to ensure you are not welcome back,” it said.<\/p>\n
Preston Lions condemned the banners and said they did “not reflect our club or the vast majority of our supporters”.<\/p>\n
“The club will not tolerate this behaviour,” it said.<\/p>\n
‘Hatred, intimidation, vilification’<\/p>\n
Pan Hellenic Women’s Federation of Australia president Georgina Papafotiou told the ABC she wanted authorities to ensure sporting grounds were free from sexism and ethnic vilification.<\/p>\n
“Parents should not have to explain degrading sexual slogans to their children at a community sporting event,” Ms Papafotiou said.<\/p>\n
“We also need education so supporters understand that passion for your club never justifies degrading women or vilifying an ethnic community.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Georgina Papafotiou, who was previously the mayor of Brimbank Council, is president of the Pan Hellenic Women’s Federation of Australia. (Supplied)<\/p>\n
Another Greek Australian community member, Konstantinos Kalymnios, said he had complained to Football Australia over “sexist, ethnically derogatory, obscene and degrading” conduct.<\/p>\n
“Greek women attending the match, including children and younger spectators, were placed in the position of seeing their ethnicity and gender used together as the subject of a vulgar public insult,” he said.<\/p>\n
South Melbourne FC thanked its supporters for the “disciplined and respectful way they conducted themselves” throughout Saturday’s match.<\/p>\n
“Your passion for the club was on display, while demonstrating the standard we expect from our supporters,” it said.<\/p>\n
“Football should always be played and enjoyed in a safe, welcoming and family-friendly environment for everyone, and we thank our supporters for continuing to uphold those values.”<\/p>\n
Football Victoria said the sport should not be used as a platform for “hatred, intimidation or vilification”.<\/p>\n
“Anyone who chooses to weaponise our game in that way is attacking everything that football stands for,” the body said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A professional football club in Melbourne’s northern suburbs faces calls to ban hardline supporters who brandished sexist and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":812775,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[64,63,10934,164539,3898,387645,387646,1158,62818,2966,55536,80079,85,660,12632],"class_list":["post-812774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-discrimination","tag-football-victoria","tag-greece","tag-hellas","tag-macedonia","tag-police","tag-preston-lions","tag-racism","tag-sexism","tag-south-melbourne","tag-sports","tag-victoria","tag-women"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=812774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812774\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/812775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=812774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=812774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=812774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}