argy-bargy (n.) — a energetic dialogue, argument, or dispute, typically involving a bodily confrontation
Within the final couple of days, the Olympic area hockey competitors has seen some unseemly habits 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 had been eradicated within the quarterfinal spherical of the lads’s competitors. He was made to challenge an announcement by workforce 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 recreation between Belgium and China. With the clock working 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 Pink 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 recreation was over and headed to a shootout).
After which, there was the ultimate motion of the lads’s gold-medal match at this time between The Netherlands and Germany. With Duco Telgenkamp having scored the game-winning purpose, he might have celebrated together with his teammates on the pitch. As an alternative, he acquired within the face of German goalie Jean-Paul Danneberg. Germany’s Niklas Wellen, seemingly not understanding the chances, 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 had been characterised in tabloid media as a “brawl,” however I by no means noticed palms thrown. Certainly, I’ve lined my share of area hockey video games over the course of 33 years, and I’ve by no means seen fisticuffs in a recreation.
I’ve, nevertheless, learn accounts of 1 recreation between two convention opponents which ended within the second half after a bodily confrontation. I’ve seen a purple 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 purple card.
It’s a miracle that, in a recreation through which gamers carry heavy picket, composite, or (at one time) aluminum sticks, that there aren’t extra situations through which these have grow to be antipersonnel weapons as a substitute of implements used to craft performs, passes, and, in the end, targets.
I assume I acquired a perspective on this when attending a mid-tournament social occasion when speaking to one of many contributors. He mentioned, “Hockey gamers are just a bit bit higher behaved than rugby gamers,” he mentioned.
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 area hockey competitors won’t be essentially the most savory.
