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We need to get rid of these footballing cliches immediately

1st January, 2018
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Tim Cahill of Australia celebrates. (Photo by Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)
Expert
1st January, 2018
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1846 Reads

Jargon and corporate speak do my head in. In the media, in the workplace and in life itself. I cringe when people spit out inane catchphrases and hyperbole.

A friend of mine shares my frustration and we have begun compiling a list of all the nonsense we are bombarded with on a daily basis. It has started to take on something of a substantial shape, as the list grows longer and longer.

So sick we are of being asked to ‘diarise’ material, of management ‘flagging’ things with us and encouraging ‘blue sky thinking’ to solve workplace issues.

Apparently I also practise the art of having lunch ‘aldesko’, which sounds so exotic, yet is merely a sad indictment on the realities of the modern day office worker.

As with many sporting endeavours, football reflects life. Both in the beautiful metaphor it presents as an educative lesson, but also as something of a microcosm of broader society.

In this sense, football too has become laced with a variety of oral ‘standards’ that appear in both the professional and amateur game.

To the untrained ear, they probably sound a little strange yet for the majority of us immersed in football throughout much or all of the year, they seamlessly slip into our vocabulary and weave their way through our football conversations.

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They are words and phrases that could be replaced, potentially, by more effective language choices yet they never will be. They are part of football and our kids are hearing them at local parks and in the media early enough, that they too, will eventually adopt the phraseology.

#1 Between the lines
I grilled my daughter on this one; a two-year football veteran whose team isn’t at a level for this word to mean anything to her.

Her interpretation had more to do with the painted lines on the surface of the pitch than any concept of a player stepping into the vacant space between defensive structures.

On reflection, it seems odd that we use a rigid and precise concept in what is such a fluid game. Sure, the back four will be aligned at times yet ahead of them lies a constant flux that is more like a series of ever expanding and contracting triangles than a straight line.

#2 Ball watching
I am not sure Robbie Slater can make it through a day without a reference to this one.
Every now and again at home, I will cite the reason for a goal, pause the coverage and indicate the player in question, illustrating the exact moment when he switched off defensive duty.

My wife is constantly fascinated by the entire exercise, mystified as to how ‘watching the ball’ can be such a fatal error in a game where the sphere is essentially the only piece of equipment required to participate.

As cliché as the term is, it is a fascinating conundrum for coaches dealing with young kids and trying to teach appropriate decision making in defence.

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Tim Cahill tall

(Photo by Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)

#3 The front third
I will curse the day football ever introduces a broken, faded line on the pitch to indicate this area.

As many other sports have experienced, there is something of a statistical obsession with scoring position or ‘the red zone’ as the Americans so cheesily label it.

Ned Zelic is the master of this one and combines it well with ‘wide areas’ when discussing attacking play.

In essence, it is so simple. Get the ball forward and use width to create space on the flanks. My favourite footballing word: width.

#4 Brace
I don’t like this one at all, although I guess it is a little better than a commentator interviewing a player after scoring two goals and saying, ‘wow, you scored so many goals today that we had to separate them with a comma and place them in parentheses’.

#5 Well in
Used to commend a player for committing to a challenge and timing their assault on the ball well, this one is a vivid memory for me as a kid.

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I can still remember hearing it shouted out from the sideline and thinking the manager was referring to our centre back named ‘Walid’.

I kid you not. Good player Walid; scored a brace once.

#6 Worldie
This one is particularly apt for Australian football in its constant battle for acceptance on the world stage. Sadly, we seem to spend more time trying to gain that acceptance from people within our own country rather than those beyond our shores.

Another fun one to try out on the kids before they understand what it means. I’ll never forget the day ‘Timmy with a Worldie’ echoed through the house; sounds more like the title of a Wiggles song.

#7 Hit
Last but not least, the universal synonym for kick has taken on a life of its own. Whether it be ‘hit it’, a ‘great hit’ or ‘what a hit’, you aren’t a real football fan until you completely ditch the archaic notion of kicking and start ‘hitting’ things all over the park.

I am sure there are many more clichéd examples of jargon from within the footballing world; the words that form the sound of the game and the specific little language that we share.

I’m wondering if football-speak crosses all languages or whether each dialect contains a unique set of phrases and terms.

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I’m sure there would be some cross-over yet without the skill to express my ideas in anything other than English, I can’t quite put my finger on the German word for ‘worldie’ or the Russian term for ‘ball watching’.

Happy New Year everyone.

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