I absolutely hate it when political issues become sport issues. Its like certain countries boycotting Olympics because of the host (we're guilty of that) and certain national teams in multiple sports not playing each other for political reasons.

Now tennis fans, the least violent fans of any sport outside of maybe golf, are throwing shit at each other because of national vendettas. I shouldn't be afraid to show up to any sporting event, let alone a tennis match, just because of the nationalities of those competing.

1/23/2009 6:35:53 PM

hahaha if you think tennis is bad, you should see how soccer games are in ex-yugo. this tennis thing in AU is nothing.

1/23/2009 7:02:01 PM

recap?

1/23/2009 7:14:32 PM

^ Bosnian and Serbian fans threw plastic lawn chairs at each other, and a couple of fists. This was after a match between a Bosnian-American and a Serbian.

It was tame, as ^^ said. Only a couple of people got minor injuries, is all.

But, ^^^'s point stands. Politics should be kept out of sports. Bringing politics into it indicates a small mind.

1/23/2009 7:50:32 PM

^^^I know soccer is bad, I'm just saying tennis shouldn't be like this too.

1/23/2009 8:14:08 PM

it's like a bar fight. starts with two stupid people and then somehow you have 20 people fighting because somebody pushed somebody. look at the age of people that were arrested...mostly kids.

honestly, it's good that it ended with chairs and not guns.

1/23/2009 8:20:28 PM

well..... i can see how it might happen in this case.

it'd kinda be like an American Jew playing against a German representing the NSDAP party, if Germany had not lost WWII.

1/23/2009 9:49:03 PM

there are some that think

that politics and sport shouldn't mix

i think that's bullshit

1/23/2009 9:54:19 PM

here it is

1/23/2009 10:01:55 PM

Should be left on the court/field/ice/whatever.

1/23/2009 10:20:58 PM

Quote :

"there are some that think that politics and sport shouldn't mix i think that's bullshit"

Why is that? I was really pissed off when Bush tried to keep Cuba out of the first World Baseball Classic. And why is Congress wasting time and millions of dollars interfering with the MLB steroid scandals?

On a smaller more familiar scale, remember when MAFox no-voted BC when it tried to join the ACC the first time? Or when Oblinger changed the tailgating hours? That's politics mixing with sports and it just shouldn't happen.

[Edited on January 27, 2009 at 12:39 AM. Reason : -]

1/27/2009 12:39:04 AM

then why have the olympics? why have any competition based on countries?

all borders are politics.

1/27/2009 1:14:33 AM

Well... some of them are rivers and mountain ranges

1/27/2009 1:31:58 AM

^3

lol

i ain't gonna rationalize a quote by the drunken bassist from u2

1/27/2009 10:16:01 AM

http://orwell.ru/library/articles/spirit/english/e_spirit

Quote :

"In England, the obsession with sport is bad enough, but even fiercer passions are aroused in young countries where games playing and nationalism are both recent developments. In countries like India or Burma, it is necessary at football matches to have strong cordons of police to keep the crowd from invading the field. In Burma, I have seen the supporters of one side break through the police and disable the goalkeeper of the opposing side at a critical moment. The first big football match that was played in Spain about fifteen years ago led to an uncontrollable riot. As soon as strong feelings of rivalry are aroused, the notion of playing the game according to the rules always vanishes. People want to see one side on top and the other side humiliated, and they forget that victory gained through cheating or through the intervention of the crowd is meaningless. Even when the spectators don't intervene physically they try to influence the game by cheering their own side and “rattling” opposing players with boos and insults. Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting... If you wanted to add to the vast fund of ill-will existing in the world at this moment, you could hardly do it better than by a series of football matches between Jews and Arabs, Germans and Czechs, Indians and British, Russians and Poles, and Italians and Jugoslavs, each match to be watched by a mixed audience of 100,000 spectators. I do not, of course, suggest that sport is one of the main causes of international rivalry; big-scale sport is itself, I think, merely another effect of the causes that have produced nationalism. Still, you do make things worse by sending forth a team of eleven men, labelled as national champions, to do battle against some rival team, and allowing it to be felt on all sides that whichever nation is defeated will “lose face”."

1/27/2009 10:41:02 AM

Nationalism, almost as bad as Religion in making people idiots.

1/27/2009 11:46:58 AM

Quote :

"honestly, it's good that it ended with chairs and not guns. "

this is tennis not a basketball match in Southeast LA

1/27/2009 12:31:41 PM