‘Conducted themselves like animals’: Manager slams basketball brawl
The manager of several Australian basketball players says the participants in a wild brawl in a World Cup qualifier acted like animals.
With four minutes to play in the third quarter, the Boomers were leading the Filipinos by a convincing 30 points and were reportedly instructed to start using dirty tactics to save face in front of their home crowd.
Aussie Chris Goulding was aggressively fouled, sparking teammate Daniel Kickert to retaliate with a forearm to the face of Philippines player Roger Pogoy.
That’s when things got ugly, with kicks, punches and chairs being thrown by players and game officials.
Daniel Moldovan tells Chris Kenny he’s disgusted by the actions of officials and fans who joined in the fight.
“To me, players fighting with other players we’ve seen for years. And that’s something we can handle.
“But to see team officials, players not in uniform, equipment managers, waterboys, jumping in a melee and stomping on a player for a good 20 seconds the way that they did… was something that I’m disgusted by.”
Hours later and my blood is still boiling. My client did not commit a single act of aggression throughout the entire game and here he is on the bottom of a pile, taking over 20 punches to the head, being stomped on, kicked and held by both players and staff! #BanTheFederation pic.twitter.com/CSJcjhzIVm
— Daniel Moldovan (@AgentMoldovan) July 2, 2018
Daniel says he doesn’t want to see innocent fans punished for the conduct of others and insists action needs to be taken to make sure it never happens again.
“Life bans need to be handed down to all those non-players that got involved and conducted themselves like animals, in order to set a precedent to ensure nothing like this ever happens again.”
Click PLAY below for the full interview
Click PLAY below to watch the brawl unfold
Huge brawl between Australia’s national basketball team (which includes Delly and Thon Maker) and the Philippines team 😳
🎥: @camillenaredo / ABS-CBN News pic.twitter.com/81uJ2NARXV
— SB Nation (@SBNation) July 2, 2018