The interesting part of the debate about the penalties Gallop announced against the Western Sydney Wanderers for their supporters' behaviour in Melbourne is not the dreary Punch and Judy Show about which sport has the biggest dickheads. Yes, more people were ejected in three days of the Boxing Day cricket Test match than in a season of the A-League. Yes, if the AFL were serious about its anti-racial vilification policy it could have thrown out 5000 people every second weekend last year. And yes, if NRL grounds did not have dry areas, my kids would not be attending one match, let alone the 10 or so they enjoy each season. Every major sport has an alcohol problem and a dickhead problem, irrespective of "culture" (strange word) and ethnicity (catch up with the 21st century, please). The inverted contest between different sports that all have the same problem, claiming ours is smaller than yours, is an impassioned exercise in missing the point.

What is interesting, and unique to football, is the idea of collective responsibility: that a club has a duty to control not only those who are given the team shirt, but those who buy it. In fining the Wanderers $50,000 and levying a three-point penalty – crucially, suspended and therefore hanging over the Wanderers – the FFA has said that the problem belongs to everyone. Its strategy is to drive a wedge between "true" fans and those who come with flares tucked into their flares. Where policing fails, try self-policing. The idea is that when a committed young fan in red-and-black is heartbroken because her beloved team has to play its semi-final in Melbourne, she will turn her disappointment not against the authorities, but against the dickheads. That's the idea, anyway.

I would be intrigued to see this kind of logic applied elsewhere. What if, next time 90 gold shirt-wearing, beer snake-making, beach ball-bunting buffoons are removed from the MCG on Boxing Day, the Australian team was docked 90 runs? What if the Canterbury Bulldogs lost a competition point for every bottle their supporters threw at a referee? What if, as well as removing a foul-mouthed bigot from the stands, the AFL also removed one player from the field wearing the same colours?

It might bring about change, though Australian cricket crowds are as herdable as cats; I suspect, having been on the juice since 9am, they would sooner throw things at each other than understand the consequences of their actions. By contrast, football is hoping that, because the game's active supporters are uniquely well organised, to know that their actions are directly tied to their team's performance can bring about a change in their behaviour. There is a unity of purpose to football support groups that must be uplifting and nourishing to those who share it. It empowers them to sing together and walk out together. It may also empower them to control their own.

If football crowds have this cohesion, however, the idea of splitting "good" fans from dickheads becomes complicated. The colour of the shirt, presumably, erases all difference, and it becomes my tribe right or wrong, a bond stronger than patriotism. Is it actually a football tribe, or something else? Maybe the unpalatable truth is that the Red and Black Bloc, and other hardcore football groups, are joined by a bond for which football is just a pretext. There is a potentially twisted logic at work in there. If a person letting off a flare proves that he is less interested in the football than in making trouble, how are his actions then the responsibility of his club? By definition, such a person is not a football supporter. If he doesn't care about the game, why would he change his actions under the threat of a loss of competition points? Or, to take it further, suppose a Sydney FC fan is so hell-bent on a home semi-final that he puts on a Wanderers shirt, goes to Parramatta and lets off flares. The Wanderers lose their three points, Sydney FC jump above them in the ladder. Dickhead wins. (I've heard the same suggested about the person who recorded Mitchell Pearce's Australia Day party piece: that it was a South Sydney fan wanting to destroy Pearce's career. I guess that's possible, though it could just as easily, for the same reason, have been a Roosters fan. Or a NSW fan.)

For what it's worth, I believe the FFA's sanctions were the result of exasperation, if not despair, laid reluctantly as a last resort. It was right to suspend the three-point deduction, as this gives the Wanderers and their fans a strong reason to police themselves. To dock them three points retrospectively, for acts that were perpetrated on an away ground reportedly by people who would not have been able to slip into a home fixture, would only have engendered resentment. Sure, the FFA might have looked tougher, but it would have lost future leverage. If it hit the Wanderers harder and the behaviour continued, it would leave itself without room to manoeuvre.

The FFA hopes it has done a kind of ju-jitsu move: using the strongest force in the game, the unity of a club and its supporters, against that club's worst internal elements. It's a high-risk play which, amid average attendances and TV ratings, financially struggling franchises and a season that has not gripped the public imagination as recent ones have, the game in this country can ill afford to lose.