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Sporting television commentary legend Rex Mossop died in 2011, aged 83. Another legend, David Coleman, died last year aged 87.
Both had the innate ability to mangle the English language more than any of their peers.
That’s what made them so irreplaceable.
Mossop was the undisputed king of tautology due to his use of redundant words. Here are some samples.
“A little bit marginal”.
“He’s made great yardage over 25 metres”.
“Now the referee is giving him a verbal tongue lashing”.
“He seems to be favouring a groin injury at the top of his leg”.
“Tiny, diminutive, little Mark Schulman”.
“He’s running sideways and not making much forward progress”.
“The kick had both height and elevation”.
“I don’t want to sound incredulous, but I can’t believe it”.
“I keep getting O’Grady and Boyd mixed up because they look alike, especially around the head”.
“It’s like a baby factory out there, he’s throwing dummies left, right, and centre”.
“He’s doing his club a bad disservice”.
“AFL is a bastard of a game, a pussy game”.
But Rex didn’t confine his comments to the football field.
“I’ve got an opinion on every conceivable theory – like it or lump it”.
“A brainy woman is a dangerous women”.
“Too many Australian men are pathetic specimens, short of wind, flabby, beer-gutted, and most of all too weak”.
“I don’t think the male genitals or the female genitals should be rammed down people’s throats – to use a colloquialism” – after his citizen’s arrest of a nude bather at Reef Beach near his home.
From Rex Mossop, dual rugby-rugby league international, to David Coleman, who covered 11 Olympic Games for the BBC, and six soccer World Cups. He also had a few pearlers:
“I am not a man of faith, but my wife is”.
“Here they come, every colour of the rainbow – black, white, and brown”.
“A truly international field, no Britons involved”.
“There you can see her parents, her father died some time ago”.
“In a moment we hope to see the pole vault over the satellite”.
“This evening is a very different evening from the morning we had this morning”.
“He is one of the great unknown champions, because so little is known of him”.
“I think there is no doubt she will probably make the final”.
“He’s 31 this year, last year he was 30”.
“There’s Moses Kiptanui, the 19-year-old who turned 20 a few weeks ago”.
“It’s gold or nothing and it’s nothing – he comes away with the silver medal”.
“The Republic of China, back in the Olympics for the first time”.
“It’s a great advantage to be able to hurdle with both legs”.
“There’s Brendan Foster all by himself with 20,000 people”.
“Forest have now lost six matches without winning”.
“That’s the fastest time ever run, but it’s not as fast as the world record”.
Rex Mossop’s crowning glory was a piece of triple tautology in the one sentence – “We must revert back to the status quo as it was before”.
David Coleman’s best? “There goes Juanturina down the back straight opening his legs and showing his class”.
Both compare favourably with my favourites.
“I’m going back to the club to watch the replay, we can’t play that badly again”.
North Sydney prop Bill “Herman” Hamilton, after the Bears had found another way to lose at North Sydney Oval.
“The bowler’s Holding, the batsman’s Willey”.
“And there’s that great little Australian left-hander Neil Harvey in slips with his legs wide apart, waiting for a tickle”.
Both from the BBC’s Brian Johnson.
“I always kiss my husband’s balls, just for luck, before he goes out to play”.
Winnie Palmer, wife of golf legend Arnold. This quote has been both confirmed and denied. But what the heck, it’s too good to leave out.
“Oh, isn’t that nice, The wife of the Cambridge president is kissing the cox of the Oxford crew”.
Harry Carpenter, also from the BBC.
“A woman from Wahroonga was bitten on the funnel by a finger-web spider”
John Chance, ABC newsreader.
But for mine, the daddy of them all from the inimitable John Arlott on BBC radio, describing the New Zealand paceman of the day.
“Bob Cunis’ bowling is a bit like his name, neither one or the other”.
Pure gold.