Top 5 fighting team-mates: When colleagues don’t see eye-to-eye

Mark Webber and Sebastien Vettel aren’t the first, and certainly won’t be the last team-mates to fall out. JOE looks at 5 other major bust-ups within teams.

By Declan Whooley

Webber was more than a little pi**ed off with his Red Bull team-mate following yesterday’s Malaysian Grand Prix, when Vettel disobeyed team orders and overtook Webber to eventually take the chequered flag.

The Australian was seething post-race, and while he managed to keep his emotions somewhat in check, but we can think of other cases where things spilled over.

With that in mind, JOE takes a look at five other sports where things have gotten a little ‘unsavoury’ as they say.

Kieron Dyer v Lee Bowyer

Where else could we start but this dust-up between Newcastle pair Kieron Dyer and Lee Bowyer back in 2005. With the team trailing 3-0 at home to Aston Villa, the players were bound to be frustrated, but out of seemingly nowhere, the two were involved in an on-field punch up. The bizarre sight of Villa player Gareth Barry intervening between the two feuding Magpies was an enduring image at the time.

Dyer was portrayed as the victim with the former Leeds man throwing the first punch, and while Bowyer was banned for six games, fined more than £200,000 in total by club, FA and police and was charged by Northumbria Police with Public Order Offences.

Incidentally, Newcastle finished the game with eight men as Steven Taylor was sent off for a separate incident.

Setanta  Ó hAilpín

The Cork man was in the limelight for reasons other than football when he lashed out at team-mate Cameron Cloke at a Carlton training session back in 2009. An AFL Tribunal suspended the 2003 Young Hurler of the Year for four weeks.

Last year Ó hAilpín suffered a cruciate knee ligament injury for his new club Great Western Sydney against Carlton.

Renaldo Balkman

This clip happened just a couple of weeks ago in the Philippines Basketball League and has been seen by millions. Renaldo Balkman, the former Denver Nuggets and New York Knicks player, was a little disgruntled during the game and quickly goes into the big bully in the school-yard role.

He bumps and shoves officials and team-mates before going for the throat of one of his own players. His over-the-top reaction saw him banned for life from the league and fined $6,000, the largest fine the league has ever handed out.

Balkman did apologise afterwards, and is now on the look-out for a new team and country. And accusations of being a choker from Nuggets and Knicks fans will hold a little more weight.

Keith Primeau and Chris McAllister

If there is one sport we associate with fighting, it is surely ice-hockey. What we don’t normally see is two team-mates beating the lard – figure of speech – out of each other, thought tensions often do boil over.

This clip shows Philadelphia Flyers pair Keith Primeau and Chris McAllister having a go at each other during a practice session.

Not too many looking keen to intervene between the two players either.

Arizona Wildcats in-fighting

YouTube is awash with clips of NFL players fighting in training and pre-season, and while this clip is from college football, it does show tempers flaring on the sideline.

Two players from the Arizona Wildcats showed that passions were running high, and while it is fair to say there were no bones broken, it was all in the full glare of the considerable American television audience.