PRO FOOTBALL DAILY REPORT : RAIDERS : Tension Released in Form of Brawl

It began with guard Steve Wisniewski and defensive lineman Nolan Harrison.

It ended with bodies rolling in all directions.

After battling each other for nearly a month in a tough training camp, and, last week, practicing against the Dallas Cowboys and playing against the Green Bay Packers, the Raiders finally let out their pent-up tension with a brawl during Tuesday’s practice in Oxnard.

At one point, there were about 10 players involved.

“It looked like a hockey game,” one Raider official said.

It took finally took the firm hand of Coach Art Shell to stop it.

There were no reported injuries.

Shell gathered the players around him and told them: “You know what you’re here to do. Don’t fight each other.”

Afterward, Shell downplayed the outburst.

“It’s that time in training camp,” he said. “This was the first big one (fight). We didn’t have one in Austin, so we came back here and had an explosion.

“The defensive guys were taking care of their own. The offensive guys were taking care of their own. We’re going to be a tough team.”

Harrison and Wisniewski were later seen talking calmly.

“When you walk off that field, you’re friends,” Shell said. “You’ve got to have that. We’re a family.”

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Running back Nick Bell received a scare in the first session Tuesday when he was helped from the field, hunched over and in obvious pain, after a collision.

But tests showed nothing more serious than a pinched nerve in his neck.

Bell was back in uniform by the afternoon, but was kept out of contact drills and limited to running.

“We decided to hold him over until tomorrow,” Shell said. “To make sure.”

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Los Angeles Daily News sportswriter Eric Noland, beginning his 12th season as a Raider beat writer, was banished from camp Tuesday.

Noland was told by Steve Ortmayer, the Raiders’ director of football operations, that his stories about the club’s management have been too negative. “We have no quarrel about what you’ve written about our players,” Noland quoted Ortmayer as saying. “But we’re upset with the negative things you’ve written about the way the team is run.”

A protest to the NFL office has been filed by the Daily News.

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Defensive back Lester Ridley, a free agent from Iowa State, left camp for personal reasons.