Maybe it’s time for volleyball officials to beef up security during volleyball matches. Crazy and stupid volleyball spectators are getting out of hand lately.
Check this out.
A terrible episode happened in Italy at the end of a game of B1 Italian League (a minor national league). Beatrice Francesconi, spiker of Fenera Chieri ’76, was assaulted and jostled by a supporter as you can see in this video:
Her fault?
She was guilty of making a bad reception during the tie break in the match against Igor Volley Trecate (won by Trecate 3-2).
After her mistake, some supporters started to scream at her and she decided not to stay silent and answered them “we will talk after the game”. Then, during the post match handshake between Chieri and Trecate players, A.S., president of Chieri supporters, went mad and started to push Francesca, who fell down while the other players were watching her incredulously.
In a press release, Chieri society reprimands and condemns this unacceptable incident, saying that they will discuss the measures to be taken about this person.
On the other side, A.S. states to a local paper that the attacker apologizes towards Chieri (who doesn’t deserve such bad publicity) but he’s not sorry with what he did to Francesconi. He feels she deserved such action mainly because she provoked him. His anger originated from an argument between Francesconi and another supporter who told her to take the uniform off as she was not worthy of wearing it.
Beatrice is remains traumatized from what happened and prefers to stay quiet.
The incident has been picked up by Italian media and it’s all been on social media.
Volleywood Correspondent Verena Guidi contributed to this article.