Croatia Vs Serb, a taste of things to come in Iraq?

I was at the Medibank International Tennis last Friday night in Sydney. This was the final of the women’s singles. It was a great game with the Belgium player (and adopted Aussie) Kim Clijisters coming from one set down to beat the Serbian Jelena Jankovic in three tension filled sets.

What disappointed me however was the behaviour of the crowd. There were a pack of Serbian supporters at the game and their behaviour, while entertaining to the spectators initially, started to get a little painful. I was a neutral observer at the start of the game but after the crap the Serbian crowd was serving up, I quickly became a Kim fan.

At many stages during the games, the Serbian crowd deliberately made noise when Kim Clijisters was attempting to serve. Bad tennis etiquette in my opinion. And when Clijisters was giving her post game winners speech after playing through countless jeers and boos (her last game in Sydney as she is retiring at the end of the year), the Serbian crowd started chanting support for Jankovic. Rude behaviour from a small but determined partisan crowd.

Then there are the reports of clashes between Serbian and Croat supporters in Melbourne at the Australian Open yesterday. So what is it with Tennis that is fuelling these nationalistic tendencies of the Balkan region?

For the goat, it just appears that sport has become equivalent to war to these countries. I guess this is a good thing (its better than the alternative) Since the Yugoslavia War in 1995 where the Croatian Army kicked the ass of the Serbians in Bosnia, there has been simmering tensions. And I am not surprised. It’s only 10 years ago. Wounds are still trying to heal.

I just wish Australia would not become the playground of choice for these rivalries. Then again, Australians can’t really talk. We had our own tribal issues in Cronulla against the Lebanese last summer. But at least the fight was of a domestic rather than an international flavour. While the media played up the whole Aussie Vs Lebanese angle, the clash was more about outsiders not respecting the members of the Cronulla shire. Someone has to have home field advantage in these clashes. The Croat's and Serb's are both playing away.

These sorts of ethnic/nationalistic conflicts sort of remind me of the Iraq situation where you have these tensions already frayed by a foreign invader (the Coalition of the willing that include Australia). I wonder just what we have helped start. It seems that a breakdown of the nation of Iraq into these separate ethnic groups is almost inevitable. Only history will judge this as a good or bad thing. What is evident is that the Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis can’t live together in peace.

The sheer anger and hatred are hard to fathom in a country where the closest Australia comes to ethnic rivalry is good-natured ribbing of the Poms and Kiwi’s. But starting a war with them? No way Jose. If Australia went to war, the two group people I would want to have in the trenches with me are the Stoic Poms and the reliable Kiwi’s. Just don’t mention the cricket!