Get rid of Nick Kyrgios. Keep Israel Folau

One of them is a total and utter embarrassment to Australian sport. The other is not.

Get rid of Nick Kyrgios. Keep Israel Folau. One of them is a total and utter embarrassment to Australian sport. The other is not.

To steal a line from Robert James Lee Hawke, any boss who kicks Israel Folau out of rugby today is a bum. Any tennis player who throws a chair onto a court in Rome and walks off like a spoilt toddler is a more colossal bum. Get rid of Nick Kyrgios. Keep Folau. One of them is a total and utter embarrassment to Australian sport. The other is not.

First, Folau. We’ve written about him until our fingers have bled. I think he no longer cares for Australian rugby’s hierarchy. If he’s not welcome in a sporting team as he is, unashamedly devout in his Christianity, wishing harm to no-one while training meticulously and performing mostly with aplomb, he doesn’t want to be there. Good on him for chasing every last cent he’s owed. You can build a decent ministry with four million bucks. Brother Love’s Travelling Salvation Show will end up putting more bums on seats than the Wallabies. Preaching the word after living it, he’s going to pack out a stadium or two.

Nick Kyrgios throws a chair (circled) onto the court during his Italian Open meltdown.

Second, Kyrgios. Lauded as a character by Daria Gavrilova and plenty of others for his lame sledges of all-time great athletes that he cannot hold a candle to, applauded as a breath of fresh air for accusing others of behaving in the exact way he behaves himself, he has revealed himself to be an ill wind.

A suspension for Kyrgios while Folau is kicked out forever — the world has lost its mind. Now that Kyrgios is unable to get what he wants as a tennis player, unable to win enough tournaments to be taken seriously as a player, he’s resorted to sideshow alley in his desperate bid to be noticed. He’s mocked Novak Djokovic for wanting to be loved. And yet Kyrgios is even more craving of attention. His podcast was a nonsense. Kyrgios complaining about a lack of respect from Rafael Nadal and others who care deeply about their sport, who work their arses off to excel at it and paint it in a good light and show all the greatness in it — yes, it was funny. But not in the way Kyrgios has intended.

**smashes racket**
**kicks water bottle**
**throws chair**

Rough day for Nick Kyrgios at the Italian Open. pic.twitter.com/7pHQDjFqe6

— ESPN (@espn) May 16, 2019

Watching his tanty in Rome, Nadal and Djokovic and Fernando Verdasco would have been rolling in the aisles. See ya. Wouldn’t want to be ya.

Forget Kyrgios having piled utter humiliation on Donna Vekic. Forget his hounding of ball kids. Forget his foul language. Forget his tank jobs. Forget his simulation of masturbation with a water bottle at Queens. Forget his walk-off at Rome last night, throwing his chair out of the cot, pathetically playing the poor misunderstood victim again as if we’re back in the 1990s and he’s on The Jerry Springer Show. My clearest memory of Kyrgios is this. The launch of a

Davis Cup tie in Sydney. Dear old Ken Rosewall greeting Kyrgios with a smile and words of encouragement. Kyrgios looked through Rosewall with absolute disdain. I saw it from point-blank range. Want respect? Show some.

Again, to pinch a line from a dearly departed ex-Prime Minister, anyone who did what Kyrgios did last night is a bum, through and through. And may his suspension be a long one.