Sir, – With the new English football season on our television screens again, it is not the profanities of the players or the inanities of the pundits that irritate the most. It is the catechism of clichés of the commentators, as illustrated.
What is the term given to the flailing arc of the movement of the goalkeeper to stop a goal? A despairing dive.
What is the heartless, unintended deviation causing an own goal called? A cruel deflection.
The atmosphere at matches is never gas-fired or solar-enhanced but electric.
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At the periphery of what weapon is a game often balanced? On a knife edge.
And the attendant tension is never perceptible but always palpable.
What word describes the feeling of dismay after losing a game, a sensation similar to the fate of a fish on a slab? Gutted.
To which of God’s creatures, and in what condition, would that despair be likened? Sick as a parrot.
What fractions, added together, constitute the totality of a match? A game of two halves. – Yours, etc,
TOM McGRATH,
Wicklow.