OPINION: Basketball brawlers need to be punished

A COUPLE of weeks back I was watching Collingwood versus Carlton and after the half-time siren they decided to have a go at each other.

The famous Boomers brawl.

A COUPLE of weeks back I was watching Collingwood versus Carlton and after the half-time siren they decided to have a go at each other.

To me it seemed like every player was involved in pushing and shoving each other but not throwing any punches, a bit like handbags at five paces.

All the umpires, line and goal umpires seemed to be pleading with the players to break it up and appeared hopeless to do anything about it.

When at last the players started to head to their dressing rooms I thought there has to be some way the umpires can take charge and stop such incidents.

In the rugby codes these kind confrontations take place fairly regularly but soon break up when the referees get involved.

The simple reason behind that is those referees have the power to send players to the sin bin for a time or off the field for the rest of the match.

Anyway while I thought this was a bad look on the Aussie Rules game it turned out to be a storm in teacup compared to a certain international basketball match.

Australia was a comfortable leader in their World Cup qualifying match against the Philippines when all hell broke loose.

An Australian was knocked to the ground and one of his teammates retaliated and suddenly it was total mayhem.

What happened next was a total disgrace in any international sport and severe sanctions need to be taken to ensure it doesn't happen again.

The Australian who retaliated was certainly out of line and his hit way over the top, and had he kept his cool the whole incident may not have happened.

But while he may have been the catalyst that caused the incident nothing can condone the Philippines' support staff from becoming involved in the brawl.

The fact that they were part of the mob that attacked an Australian player while he was on the ground should not go unpunished.

By being unpunished I mean they should all be thrown out of the game for life and even banned from attending future matches.

You can understand why hyped players can get involved in the heat of the moment but there is no excuse for support staff sitting on the bench.

The only positive thing to come out of the entire incident was the control shown by the Australians not on the court at the time.

Their actions by not getting involved and staying on the bench ensured we won the game and will have players available for the next qualifying matches.

A major downer for Australia from this incident could be the big American teams in the future may not want to release players for the Boomers.