argy-bargy (n.) — a full of life dialogue, argument, or dispute, generally involving a bodily confrontation
Within the final couple of days, the Olympic discipline hockey competitors has seen some unseemly conduct each on and off the pitch.
First got here the revelation that Tom Craig was arrested for buying cocaine the day after the Australia Kookaburras have been eradicated within the quarterfinal spherical of the boys’s competitors. He was made to problem an announcement by group officers, who suspended his Olympic credentials and moved him out of the athletes’ village.
Then, there was the ultimate second of play in yesterday’s girls’s semifinal sport between Belgium and China. With the clock operating down and the horn sounding and the perimeters degree, Chinese language participant Fan Yunxia smacked the ball away, half in desperation and half in frustration. The ball hit Belgian participant Delphine-Daphne Marien, who crumpled like a bag of flour onto the Yves-du-Manoir turf. The Crimson Panthers’ Judith Vandermeiren confronted Fan, a scene which resulted in each gamers receiving yellow playing cards (which didn’t result in an on-field suspension, because the sport was over and headed to a shootout).
After which, there was the ultimate motion of the boys’s gold-medal match right this moment between The Netherlands and Germany. With Duco Telgenkamp having scored the game-winning aim, he might have celebrated along with his teammates on the pitch. As a substitute, he received within the face of German goalie Jean-Paul Danneberg. Germany’s Niklas Wellen, seemingly not understanding the percentages, rushed right into a huddle of of celebrating Dutch gamers to lift objection. It took a few his teammates and technical workers to get Wellen out of the melee.
The latter two scenes have been characterised in tabloid media as a “brawl,” however I by no means noticed arms thrown. Certainly, I’ve lined my share of discipline hockey video games over the course of 33 years, and I’ve by no means seen fisticuffs in a sport.
I’ve, nonetheless, learn accounts of 1 sport between two convention opponents which ended within the second half after a bodily confrontation. I’ve seen a crimson card issued for verbal abuse of an official. I’ve seen an occasion when, in an time beyond regulation interval, a participant was given a second yellow card for pushing, and acquired a crimson card.
It’s a miracle that, in a sport by which gamers carry heavy picket, composite, or (at one time) aluminum sticks, that there aren’t extra situations by which these have change into antipersonnel weapons as a substitute of implements used to craft performs, passes, and, in the end, objectives.
I suppose I received a perspective on this when attending a mid-tournament social occasion when speaking to one of many contributors. He stated, “Hockey gamers are just a bit bit higher behaved than rugby gamers,” he stated.
Given the tight reins that rugby officers maintain on the sport (see movies of Irish rugby referee Nigel Owens), that’s saying one thing. And it’s a disgrace that a few of the extra vivid reminiscences of the Paris discipline hockey competitors is not going to be probably the most savory.
