ABSTRACT
This chapter considers sports anti-diplomacy in the NSSA context. It has gone to great effort in arguing for the compatibility of sport and diplomacy. In sports diplomacy, actions always speak louder than words. The damage was done and, even today, Kiwi cricket fans still passionately complain about the issue. Sports fans have long memories, after all. Proportionally, sports anti-diplomacy is but a small part of a generally positive international society of sport, one that can appear disproportionally large because of a salacious media obsessed by darkness more so than light. Ancient Greece is as good a place as any to contextualise the bloody nature of sport. One of the most popular sports of the Ancient Olympiad, for example, was the pankration, a sort of no holds-barred version of wrestling and boxing where punching, kicking, choking, 'tracheal dig using the thumb', throwing, and arm, head and waist locks were permitted; pretty much everything 'except biting, gouging and attacking the genitals'.
