Besides the recurrence of violence among Balkan fans on the first day of the Australian Tennis Open this year being self-evidently stupid and embarrassing, it is perhaps above all really pathetic.

A really pathetic expression of half-baked nationalism from suburban mamma’s boys at the tennis.
Yes the tennis. Not a bad-ass crowd sport like European soccer matches where iron bars and pocket knives are common accoutrements among fans.
No it’s the tennis fellas, where all you’ve managed to do is scare old Aunty Pat and Uncle Frank visiting from Newcastle, confuse the international media and royally piss-off the nation’s largest selling newspaper by punching one of its photographers.
What next? Croatian fans head to the ballroom dancing to prove once and for all they “own da floor”?
The trouble between Balkan fans has somewhat ironically been amplified in recent times by the proliferation of great players from the region. Serbs like Novak Djokovic, Jelena Jankovic and the Australian/Serb Jelena Dokic, and Croatians like Marin Cilic, Ivan Ljubicic and new Aussie/Croat young gun Bernard Tomic.
To their credit generally the players don’t buy into this crap (Dokic for instance has a Croatian boyfriend), with the unfortunate exception of the ussually affable Marcos Baghdatis being caught chanting anti-Turkish slogans with his Melbourne supporters club two years ago.
Punch editor David Penberthy wrote yesterday what I thought was a pretty good summation of the current status of Australia Day. Perhaps the expression of this kind of transplanted nationalism by largely teenage Australian Croats, Serbs and Greek Cypriot is the result of Australia’s own weaker, and largely formless, nationalism that Penbo describes.
But whatever you say about the problems of Australian nationalism, there is an undeniably more violent streak to expressions of nationalism among Balkan fans, many of whom I’m willing to bet have never lived in the country they proudly support and are seemingly ready to get all punchy about (in one charming incident last year a chair hit a teenage girl in the head and knocked her out).
Despite the immediate temptation to blame organisers or the police, there’s not really much they can do other than what they did - which is not let those intent on violence in or throwing them out and banning them if it occurs (it was hilarious to watch the tough guys turn into cry babies when they were told they couldn’t come into Melbourne Park).
This isn’t a rant about why people “should go for Strain players or not be there mate”, but the kind of violence that we saw yesterday epitomises the dopey pantomime that these guys engage in year to year under the lie of supporting their countrymen.
It’s not about support, or being oppressed back in the homeland, or avenging anything: it’s about brats with rats’ tails and silver tips in their hair wanting to stick it up their confected “enemies” with the legitimising force of cultural feud they understand and related to in a kind of picture book form.
****
Speaking of the actual tennis it was sad to see Maria Sharapova go out in the first round yesterday. On a day when several first round matches were delayed because of rain, the Russian went down to compatriot and namesake Maria Kirilenko in what turned out to be a pretty dominant performance.
But if you’re mourning the loss of Russian beauty at the tournament you may have never seen Kirilenko before. At the risk of The Punch turning into Zoo, queue gratuitous Russian tennis babe shot:

Leo Shanahan will covering the Australian Open from Melbourne Park for The Punch
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