Careful how you light the sledging barbie
Iremember a guy in high school. A big fella who played lock for the first rugby team.
He was always quick with a chirp, but not being the sharpest tool in the shed, didn’t particularly excel at comebacks. So a common sight during first break would have been something like this: he chirps you, you throw one back right in his face, the veins in his neck start bulging while he searches for a comeback which eventually eludes him, at which point he threatens in a high-pitch voice: “Shut up or I’ll bliksem you!”
My mind couldn’t help wandering back to those times when I saw the fracas between David Warner and Quinton de Kock in Durban this week. The loudmouth Aussie chirps away at the Proteas batsmen, gets an unexpected uppercut and then wants to moer Quinnie.
The reaction from Australian captain Steve Smith was even more daft. “Quinton said something quite personal that provoked a response from David. We were very chirpy out on the field before that, but we didn’t get into anything personal like that. That crossed the line,” he said.
Really? Did not one of 11 obnoxious Aussies – the proud founders of the art of sledging and masters of it ever since – say anything personal about any of the South Africans, their mothers or their aunties?
Maybe Proteas skipper Faf du Plessis deserves credit here for his maturity and honesty in addressing the matter after the match.
“Both parties said a lot of personal stuff which made it go off. But it needs to stay on the field.”
It was revealed in the aftermath of the altercation that is was De Kock’s comments about Warner’s missus Candice that set the cat among the pigeons. The blonde bombshell is a well-known longdistance triathlete and model in Australia, but she can’t hide from the fact the first suggestion that pops up during a Google search for her name is “Candice Warner toilet tryst”. It is well-documented how she and All Black star Sonny Bill Williams were trapped on film during a drunken sexual liaison in the cubicle of a men’s hotel bathroom in Sydney back in 2007.
And the Kiwi is just one on an illustrious list of high-profile sportsmen the leggy athlete has been linked to, which actually makes her hubby kind of a sitting duck during heated verbal spats. I would be very surprised it that line hasn’t been tossed at him during a match before, or maybe he was building up years of anger that burst when a usually passive character like De Kock has a sudden stab at it.
Whatever the case, the point is you shouldn’t dish out what you can’t eat yourself.
Quite ironically, David doesn’t have to look further than ... erm ... Candice ... for some sound advice.
“I guess you could be angry, but that just comes with the territory,” she said as she poured her heart out to the Brisbane Courier Mail after the Sonny Bill incident.
Note to all Aussies: When you’re wearing a flammable dress, don’t light the barbie, mate.