Girls Gone Wild: Chick Fight.

China is quickly gaining a reputation as the place to be for those who love the fringes of the beautiful game. Uninspired by goals, saves, one-touch passing and the occasional backheel? Go to China for some piss poor refereeing, wild fisticuffs and crowd interaction.

But this might’ve been a bit much for even the least cautionary in China: an all-out brawl between the China and Australia Under-19 girls’ teams.

It all started when the Aussies landed in China….not really, but it might as well have. It seems like there’s a report a week of some epic skirmish which sees the police get involved and football authorities burying their heads in tear-drenched palms (see last week’s here).

However following the final whistle, an Australia player fell to the ground while remonstrating with the Chinese, prompting captain Tameka Butt to charge across the pitch and grab the perceived offender.

That sparked a mass brawl as both sets of players and backroom staff charged onto the pitch, with punches thrown.

Once order was restored, several plastic water bottles were thrown from the crowd in the direction of the Australian team – whose ages range from 15 to 19 – as they made their way down the tunnel with local police imploring fans to stop the behaviour.

You know, the crowd is going to get a lot of flack for this, but have you ever played a 90 minute game of football and then sparred 20 people at once? Me neither, but we can safely assume it’s pretty taxing. So clearly the crowd was just trying to cool them off with some refreshing aqua. Who says Chinese football fans aren’t hospitable.

But clearly three things need to be done here:

i. People need to take football much less seriously.

ii. China needs to scrap its football program and create some footy/K-1 hybrid sport (or just change the name of their league).

iii. We all need to move to China and buy season tickets.

Unfortunately the football gods (and Chinese authorities) have decided not to release the footage yet so we’re stuck with photos, but if you scroll down really fast you may catch a punch thrown or a hair pulled.

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Category: World Football