Sydney Thunder stunt angers Sixers, ignites Big Bash League’s Book of Feuds rivalry

The feud between the BBL’s two Sydney teams intensified to a new level this past season, with Sixers captain Moises Henriques revealing a cheap stunt from rivals Thunder angered his team.

Moises Henriques has laid bare the secret antagonism between the Sixers and Thunder this season to ink the first chapter in the Big Bash’s ‘Book of Feuds.’

The Sydney Sixers captain has revealed his annoyance at a stunt pulled by their cross town rivals at the start of the summer and why the provocative dressing room incident compounded his devastation at being knocked out by the Thunder in the BBL preliminary final at the SCG.

Hollywood actor and South Sydney owner Russell Crowe commissioned a ‘Book of Feuds’ to record the rivalries between the Rabbitohs and their NRL arch-enemies, and now the Big Bash has its own bitter cross-town conflict to fester until next summer.

Henriques opened up on his Chin Music podcast with Tom Gallop about his reaction to walking into the away dressing room at a Thunder home game at Sydney Olympic Park only to be confronted by a series of what he feels were disrespectful posters on the walls.

Moises Henriques looks dejected after being dismissed in the Sixers defeat to the Thunder. Picture: Getty

“The other reason why it hurt so much to lose to the Thunder … we turned up to the Thunder for our first game this year and we were in the away change rooms and the Thunder have all these – their marketing team have all these posters up in the change room of Sixers players getting out to Thunder players,” Henriques detailed on Chin Music.

“I think our record against them at this point is we’ve won 18 and they’ve won 7. We’ve got all the performances up on the board. And I just thought, when any team comes to their away change rooms at a ground, they’re entitled to their own space.

“When teams come to the SCG, we don’t have posters of us getting them out or whatever, and I just thought it was a really strange thing for a team to do.”

The Thunder triumphed in The Challenger fixture to reach the BBL final. Picture: Getty

Henriques said the mind games drove him to want to knock the Thunder out of the competition, and it hurt deeply when the Sixers were unable to stop David Warner’s team from progressing to the Final against Hobart.

“Whether that was marketing or part of their strategy or whatever … but a lot of those guys I’m really close friends with, and the coaches as well, a lot of my close friends are in the coaching staff. I really wanted the players and coaches to do really well but when a club is doing that sort of stuff off the field and trying to do that it leaves a sour taste in your mouth and that was a hard thing to cop in that second game.”

Fellow Sixers star Jack Edwards was also on the podcast and admitted there was “certainly no love lost” between the two Sydney Smash rivals.

The Big Bash in its early years struggled to create genuine rivalries like the football codes and it often felt like the matches were all about entertainment and from a fans’ perspective at least, results weren’t the be all and end all.

However, Henriques’ comments about the Thunder change room incident show that is no longer the case and there is in fact genuine feeling in the Big Bash even though many Sixers and Thunder players are teammates at NSW.

That has translated to the grandstands, where crowds for Sydney Smash derbies are electric and fans decked out in seas of magenta and green.

Originally published as Sydney Thunder stunt angers Sixers, ignites Big Bash League’s Book of Feuds rivalry