Sidestep

Gent lemen Behaving Badly There’s an issue I’ve been wanting to discuss. After watching the Barcelona Open I felt it was time to address it. Men behaving badly in sport. This has become the norm across multiple sporting codes. As kids, sport taught us respect, discipline, sportsmanship, and many other great values which are handy in the big bad world. However, these qualities are almost always discarded and disregarded when athletes turn professional. Footballers (soccer players to my American readers) are the first to get criticised for their poor behaviour on the field. From faking injuries, exaggerated dives to the downright disrespect for referees, footballers are often portrayed in a negative light by the sporting world and deservedly so. But there are other sporting codes whose athletes display actions just as vile if not worse but these are treated like isolated incidents. Let’s talk Golf. Golf is a beautiful game, but despite what those who run it want you to ...

  The fight (if we are to call it that) between Cassper Nyovest and NaakMusiq was one of the most talked about events of Saturday night. This says a lot if you consider how much sport is on TV on any given weekend. Two musicians (with highly suspect boxing skills) had people excited to watch them land throw punches in the ring. The main card will not go down as one of the greatest fights in the history of the sport, but the event itself ticked a major box.   Not only were non-boxing people excited about the bout - it really doesn’t feel right to call it that, but hey – the likes of SuperSport and Sun City bought into the event, and they know a thing or two about boxing. This confirms what most sport journalists, fans and athletes already knew: sports administrators such as Boxing SA are not doing nearly enough for the various codes. Cassper’s event showed that there is huge hunger for boxing in this country, even if the skill level is more suited to a drunk alterc...