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  • Full-strength beer will disappear from Australian Open

    1/17/08 9:22 AM | Mattias Yrgård
    - Full-strength beer could go the way of the now-eliminated public betting shop by 2009 as desperate Australian Open officials try to curb a run of violence at the tennis.

    Substituting full-strength been with low-count brew is one of the options on the table after Tuesday's ugly incident in which police gassed a group of rowdy Greek spectators in a mid-match attack at the Margaret Court arena.

    Officials said that three people were banned from the event and ten people in the that area of the stands were treated for effects of pepper spray. South African tournament director Craig Tiley said that banning strong beer - already done at cricket matches at the nearby Melbourne cricket ground - was an option under consideration.

    “We don't rule anything out,” said the man responsible for the eviction of a longtime bettering shop and an ATP-inspired crackdown on suspected match fixing which has included blocking online better sites in the player lounge and prohibiting laptop computers in spectator stands.

    For a second straight day, local news reports were filled with eyewitness accounts of how police went to the attack, with video footage showing a female officer spraying full-on into one man's face and then quickly retreating. Police commissioner Christine
    Nixon called the gas-and-run tactic as standard procedure.

    Greek fans in the Hellas club who were involved on Tuesday are considering their legal options to sue the Victoria police, who continue to defend their actions.

    “Our members are not punching bags,” said constable John Cooke. “We are not there to be the sport of spectators who want to be unruly or cause trouble.”

    The unprecedented police charge during a match between 2007 finalist Fernando Gonzalez of Chile and Greek qualifier Konstantinos Economidis, was the second violent incident in as many year at the event once labelled by Roger Federer as “the happy slam.”

    In an opening-day riot in 2007 between Serbian and Croatian supporters, about 150 brawlers were evicted from the grounds. That was the only major trouble within memory at a Slam prior to the gassing incident. If things couldn't get any worse for the
    international image of the event, they have:

    Reports have surfaced of a young girl “touched inappropriately” by an apparently drunken male earlier this week which police are now investigating.

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