West Country-based TV presenter Nick Knowles has hit back on X after a Springbok supporter account slated English sports fans.<\/p>\n
Knowles, a regular at rugby matches, is best-known for fronting the popular TV show DIY SOS as well as appearing on Celebrity Strictly Come Dancing, but he\u2019s no stranger to courting controversy with his forthright opinions on rugby on social media.<\/p>\n
During Rugby World Cup<\/a> 2023, Knowles once described the refereeing of one match as \u201cgrotesque\u201d and he\u2019s previously slated the officiating of Nigel Owens.<\/p>\n Responding to the Scrumming flyhalf account\u2019s post about international sports teams with the worst fans, which listed England<\/a> cricket at number one, Ireland<\/a> rugby second and England football and rugby, third and fourth, Knowles said: \u201cAs an England fan I realise that our fans can be really irritating but I have to say that I have travelled the world to watch rugby, where all the nations get along with banter \u2013 always, the least hospitable, the least friendly and the most whinging fans to be sat with are the South Africans.\u201d<\/p>\n Knowles\u2019 jab has inevitably kicked off the usual back-and-forth online, with Springbok supporters firing back. None of it is likely to change anyone\u2019s view of anyone else, but it does add another log to the never-ending bonfire of cross-hemisphere fan rivalry that lights up social media after every big Bok Test these days.<\/p>\n The exchange comes as Bok fans bask in the glory of their team\u2019s 24-13 win over Ireland in Dublin \u2013 a result that ended a 13-year wait for a Springbok victory at the Aviva.<\/p>\n Rassie Erasmus\u2019 side dominated the scrum and breakdown and survived a late Irish fightback to take the second half on the scoreboard. Ireland\u2019s constant ill discipline [which saw them ship four yellow cards and a red card] fed into an increasingly terse contest, with repeated flashpoints between players adding an edge to what was already an abrasive Test match.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"West Country-based TV presenter Nick Knowles has hit back on X after a Springbok supporter account slated English…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":591324,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4102],"tags":[4151,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-591323","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-rugby","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=591323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591323\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/591324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=591323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=591323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=591323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}