A group of under-13 Shellharbour footballers has been fined $100 - for singing their team's victory song.
The Shellharbour Stingrays rugby league club was issued with the fine after the boys sang their team song at the end of a recent match against the Woonona-Bulli Bushrangers.
All team songs, no matter how harmless, are banned by South Coast Junior Rugby League officials to prevent violent incidents between players and parents.
Stingrays president Scott McLaurin said he was disappointed by the decision to fine his young team, saying the ban took away the fun of team sports.
"I think it's very sad," he said.
"If you are singing a song that's swearing and not appropriate, sure, but when you've got a song like that - very soft and not aggressive and not in anyone's face ... it just does not make sense."
He said his team knew they were not allowed to sing their song on the field but thought moving over to the corner of the field would stop anyone hearing it.
"We have a directive from [the league] that we are not allowed to sing victory songs on the field, only in the dressing sheds," Mr McLaurin said.
"The team doesn't get dressed in the dressing sheds ... so they went over to a corner and sang it in a corner and didn't think anyone could hear them."
However, their breach of the rules was reported and the team was fined.
South Coast Rugby League general manager Jim McAuliffe defended the decision to fine teams for singing, saying the ban had been in place for a number years.
"There was provocative information in some of the songs and this unfortunately resulted in swearing in songs, which we didn't think was appropriate," he said.
"We got to the stage where violent incidents were nearly occurring because of the tone of the songs and we asked on several occasions for clubs to tone those down or change the wording and for a little while they did."
But despite constant warnings, Mr McAuliffe said the problem kept recurring, leaving him with no choice but to issue fines.
He said several other teams had been fined for singing in recent weeks.
"It's our absolute last resort to fine the clubs," Mr McAuliffe said.
"It's not a decision we make lightly, in fact it's one we agonise over, but the last thing we want is incidents at weekend football matches between parents who take offence at another team's song."
"We abhor violence in football so we do all we can to keep it as family friendly as possible," he said.