A grandmother was hit in the face during an altercation on the sidelines at an under-17 football match on Auckland’s North Shore last weekend.<\/p>\n
The incident led to the game being abandoned and police being called.<\/p>\n
Charlotte Lee had taken her mother to watch her son’s football match for Albany United against M\u0101ngere United on Sunday in Long Bay.<\/p>\n
“She’s quite little, only five foot and a bit, your typical grey-haired lady,” Lee told 1News. “I couldn’t believe she ended up being the one that got hit and her lip split.”<\/p>\n
Lee described the scene as “chaotic and aggressive” and said a row was sparked by a foul tackle on the field. It then became physical and punches were thrown with her 75-year-old mother being hit in the mouth, she said.<\/p>\n
Lee said her mother was “really shaken up” following the incident.<\/p>\n
“She’s got atrial fibrillation, so that started making her heart go off which was a bit worrying. We had to put her in the car and calm her down and help her out.”<\/p>\n
Lee’s son was “quite upset” when he learnt from one of his Albany United teammates that his grandmother had been hit.<\/p>\n
“He said to his nan, ‘I’ll understand if you don’t want to come and watch another one of my football games’,” Lee said.<\/p>\n
The Albany United coach told the referee his team didn’t want to continue playing after learning the woman had been hit.<\/p>\n
Game abandoned<\/p>\n
Northern Region Football, which organises the Auckland under-17 Championship division, confirmed the game had been stopped at around the 70 minute mark.<\/p>\n
“A disciplinary investigation is also ongoing,” a spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
It did not comment on whether there had been any other incidents or concerns.<\/p>\n
It is understood police attended and took statements though a police spokesperson was unable to confirm if there were any developments in the investigation.<\/p>\n
Behaviour on the sideline <\/p>\n
Lee had a message for parents and supporters attending youth games.<\/p>\n
“These are children learning how to play a sport. Their behaviour on the sideline impacts their child’s psychology. If you can’t manage your emotions, do everyone a favour and don’t turn up,” she said.<\/p>\n
Reflecting the broader issue of violence at children’s sport, Lee added: “We’re in New Zealand, right? We pride ourselves on being sporty, not violent. But violence seems to be taking precedence, and I think that’s quite embarrassing as a nation.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A grandmother was hit in the face during an altercation on the sidelines at an under-17 football match…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21740,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,22065,63,8513,596,85],"class_list":["post-21739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-auckland","tag-australia","tag-crime-and-justice","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21739\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}