Vancouver Kissing Couple: Make Love, Not Sports Riots

There really is a lot to be said for making love and not war. During the Stanley Cup playoffs last week when the Vancouver Canucks lost to the Boston Bruins, a number of Canucks fans decided to take to the streets and started rioting, setting fire to a number of buildings and looting. Most people would think that to be an act of extreme immaturity - and it is - instead of being a good loser, but apparently there is no room in the world of sports for such unseemly behavior. During the riots, of which a number of photos were taken and posted on the Internet, one particular photo went viral as it showed a young man and woman on the ground kissing each other. The couple in question is Scott Jones and his girlfriend Alex Thomas.

How did Scott and Alex get caught up in such a situation? It appears that Thomas was accidentally knocked to the ground when police were called in to terminate the riots. Scott was nearby to comfort her since such an experience is quite a shock, getting caught up in a riot that one had no intention of being part of. Scott is from Australia and works as a bartender, and met Alex who is Canadian while he was on a working vacation. To help calm the bedraggled Alex, Scott held her and before they knew it, they started to create their own comfort zone in the midst of the rioters and burning buildings. News photographer Richard Lam took a photo of the couple but did not know they were in it as he was being pushed out of the way by police. Not surprisingly, the identity of the couple initially went unknown until a post of the photo on Facebook eventually led to their identification.

Alex Thomas was lucky in escaping with only a bruised leg during the Canucks fan riot. In a way, Thomas and Scott were lucky the Canucks fans did not decide to travel to Boston overnight and start torching the city that is home to the Bruins. That would make more sense than taking out their disappointment in the Vancouver Canucks. Ice hockey is a dangerous game, even when hockey sticks and pucks are not involved. With a riot like this, soccer is no longer associated with fan riots when a team loses. But soccer still has a long way to go in having a couple like Jones and Thomas get caught in the middle of it all just to make the statement of "make love, not sports riots."

http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/blog/puck_daddy/post/Video-Vancouver-riot-kissing-couple-tells-their?urn=nhl-wp7563