Almanac Footy: Football Jargon

FOOTBALL JARGON

 

From the armchair in the dimly lit study tonight there is, as always, plenty to consider in the footballing realm. And glancing out of the window there is much to recommend the evening air, illuminated by a beautiful golden glow provided by the burning wreck of a Tesla in our street, a lovely show of colour sparking into the night. There must still be some of them around, after the initial wave of Tesla torching a few months ago.

 

But I digress. Footy fans, I think most of us would agree that sometimes all you can do is just sit back and marvel at how much the game we love has changed, and continues to change before our eyes. And of course this is also happening in the area of the language of football, so important in this media driven industry, and as a result we thought it was opportune to have a brief look at the fascinating subject of Football Jargon, and try to clarify what the hell coaches particularly are saying when somebody pokes a microphone in their direction and asks them to wisely pontificate.

 

Let’s begin with a classic of modern football jargon, which refers to the importance of ‘learnings’. Learnings, we assume, are related to ‘teachings’. It’s a very simple one to begin with- a humiliating, fifteen goal thumping is a ‘learnings.’ Alternatively, a fifteen goal victory is a ‘teachings.’

 

How about ‘we lost supply to our entry’, a term we’ve heard used to explain a loss. Interesting, because it indicates that the coach in question might be a bit of a World War Two history nerd in his quiet time away from the game, and likes nothing more than curling up on the couch with, perhaps, Anthony Beevor’s latest brick of a book. In attempting to explain his team’s performance, he is clearly calling on the example of General Erwin Rommel of Germany’s Afrika Korps, who was criticised by fellow officers for outstripping supply lines during his daring advances through the desert and leaving his forces vulnerable to counter attack. Or something like that. We think.

 

We noticed this next example some time ago, which appeared on a club’s official website, explaining how the same coach and his team approached a game and how they won it. ‘We set the purpose very early’ he said to whoever was apprehensively taking notes, ‘about where we wanted to take the week in terms of our purpose’. Hmmm. As John Lennon said way back in 1967, “Goo-goo-ga-joob!”

 

Another coach, and another jargon wizard, told the gathered press following his team’s victory over Collingwood earlier this year, that his mob had the Magpies’ ‘signature’. We’re not quite sure what he was getting at, but seeing that he’s still considered by many (maybe not so many as before on recent results) to be a pretty good coach, there may be something in it. But we’re struggling to work out the tactical value of possessing twenty two crayon scrawls of ‘X’ on sheets of butcher’s paper.

 

After a game in Perth, one of the main factors in his side’s win, this coach theorized, was that his team ‘put some work into’ the young Eagles’ sensation everybody has heard about, the name on everybody’s lips- Harvey Reeves. Yes, what a player….sorry, what was that?….ahem….Harley Reid. Now normally if we’re going to ‘put some work’ into something, it’s of a positive nature, crafting and improving an object. But not in the football world. Here it is code for targeting a star player and scragging, pushing and punching the poor bloke until he is staggering around in circles wondering where the next assault is coming from. This is always great to watch, but.

 

‘Stoppage clearance’. Very straightforward. Your local pharmacy will have something for this, magnesium salts, sodium bicarb or something like that.

 

Heard of ‘hamstring awareness’? Some people out there think it’s just a term used to cloud an unrelated injury concern, misleading the opposition. Or a vague excuse to rest a player, in the same area as ‘soreness’. But we think hamstring awareness is an important issue for contemporary players, something not to be glibly dismissed, and hopefully foremost in their minds along with racism and sexism awareness, climate change awareness, considered and mature use of social media awareness and a whole lot of other matters to be aware of. Bravo the modern footballer.

 

Well footy fans, as you can see, the language of the game is a big subject, so we may well return to it at some stage in the future. That’s all for now.

 

 

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