Can you ask your mother to pass the chalk?
You don’t get proper grudge matches any more. Last century, when sport was still a proxy for violence, feuds were a major part of the fun.
Then the media sanitised it all, at the behest of FIFA and Mastercard. Suddenly all the delicious animosity, like John Terry knobbing Wayne Bridge’s wife, was relegated to “elephant in the room” status.
The nearest thing you get to bad blood today is Conor McGregor yelling “yer wife’s in me DMs” at some YouTuber. Which just doesn’t cut it.
So we’ve been counting down the days ’til the “Battle of the Exes” clash between Reanne Evans and Mark Allen at the British Open.
Reanne and Mark dated for three years and share a 14-year-old daughter, but literally cannot bear to be in the same room as each other.
Back in April, Mark got Reanne chucked out of the BBC studio because he complained her presence as a pundit was “distracting him”. She made a formal complaint.
And when Reanne joined the men’s tour, along with another female player, Allen wanted her off that too, sneering: “I’m not really sure what they are going to bring”.
Well today he found at, as his ex gave him a hell of a scare.
Things got off to a thrilling start when Evans snubbed Allen’s offer of a fist bump. And with a raucous crowd cheering her on, she almost pulled off an upset before eventually losing by three frames to two.
Proper edge between the two players at the British Open as Reanne Evans refuses the pre-match fist bump of former partner Mark Allen. From ITV4 pic.twitter.com/cXX6pTeNAg
— Rob Maul (@Rob_Maul) August 16, 2021
Allen described the experience as “horrible”, while pundit Stephen Hendry said it was the most intense match he’d ever seen.
