Liz Ellis slams South African cricket fans for “abhorrent” sledge
Australian netball great Liz Ellis has launched a scathing attack on South African fans who mockingly shamed David Warner’s wife Candice during the second cricket Test in Port Elizabeth, South Africa.
After footage of altercation between Warner and South African wicketkeeper Quinton de Kock in the stairwell on the way to the dressing room during the first Test in Durban, it was revealed Warner was reacting to a personal sledge about his wife.
Although both players were charged with bringing the game into disrepute, the fallout continued in the second Test when some fans in the stadium wore masks of All Blacks star Sonny Bill Williams – a reference to Candice’s drunken sexual encounter with Williams in the bathroom of a Sydney pub in 2007.
Cricket South Africa was forced to apologise after two of its officials were photographed posing with fans who were wearing the Williams masks.
Speaking on Channel Nine’s Sports Sunday program, Ellis, a regular panellist, said the incident had been made so much worse because it was during the very week the world celebrated International Women’s Day.
The former Australian netball captain slapped down the shameful stunt, saying it was about shaming women with out-of-date beliefs that have no place in sport or society today.
“Everyone is focusing on the sledging. What I think is the controversy is that 40 years after the sexual revolution ... 40 years after that in the middle of the #MeToo movement, in the week of International Women’s Day, a player’s wife is being dragged through the mud because they’re attempting to shame her for her past,” Ellis said.
“It really does slam home this idea that some Neanderthals have that women are the property of men.
“Do you know what? It upsets me to the core because I think sport is a real driver in society and generally it’s a driver for good. You think of all the good things that have happened and been started in sport and here we have an international sporting contest that is essentially saying to women, the message is, ‘You come here as a Madonna, you come here pure or you don’t come here at all.’
“I don’t see fans turning up to All Blacks games with Candice Falzon masks so how dare they turn up at a South African cricket game in masks of the wife of one of the cricketers (because of someone) she was formerly involved with in some way.
“It is disgraceful, it is upsetting.”
Ellis also said the defence for sledging - what happens on the field stays on the field – didn’t wash because the South African fans had taken the sledge off-field into the public domain.
“My problem is we focus so hard on the sledging we haven’t focused on the bigger issue. We haven’t focused on the issue of what is being said about Candice Warner has nothing to do with the game,” Ellis said.
“Why in the 21st century are we talking about defending a woman? For a reference to her past relationships? The whole thing is abhorrent.”