Ding ding ding.

During the third quarter of the 2019 Basketball World Cup qualifying tie between Australia and the Philippines, all hell broke loose with just over four minutes left on the clock.

In this day and age, where we see footballers writhing in agony over a stud to the foot (we’ll get to Neymar later), a good bust-up is sometimes hard to come by, but this ticks a number of boxes.

There are players charging off the bench, there’s some crowd involvement, there’s a small man landing some blows on a much larger man, there’s a guy getting hit with a chair – what else do you want?

I mean other than decency and decorum, which went out the window the moment the first punch was thrown.

Once the live blows have ended, the replays start, and if you skip ahead to the 2:30 mark you’ll see the Ozzie man throwing an elbow that caused things to escalate.

Begin the brawl:

There are all sorts of replays in the video above, but this below is an all-action clip with some classic Ozzie commentary.

How’s the little man with a flying punch at the 20-second mark?

My god. This is outrageous. #FIBAWCAQ pic.twitter.com/5y9CnaPXq0

— Steve Smith (@stevesmithffx) July 2, 2018

No, that tweet above is not Steve Smith, the cricketer, but rather an Ozzie sports journalist who must be sick of people not doing their homework.

Incredibly, they tried to finish the match after this. The Philippines was eventually left with just two eligible players on the court, before the match was halted at the end of the third quarter.

Some of the post-match reaction via CNN:

“Basketball Australia deeply regrets the incident in tonight’s match between the Boomers (Australia) and the Philippines in Manila,” read a statement from Basketball Australia chief executive Anthony Moore.

“We are extremely disappointed with what happened and our role in it.

“This is not the spirit in which sport should be played and certainly not in the spirit in which we aim to play basketball.
“We apologize [sic] to our fans and will await the penalties to be handed down.”

The final score is listed as 89-53 to Australia on the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) website, but in the end fans of a good brawl were the winners.

Oh, and your man Manny was loving it:

[source:cnn]