Discussion Groups / British English / May 2005

[...]

complain,

I wonder if Sir Chuck was using "snob" in one of its older senses,
which was indeed used de haut en bas, meaning something very like
"oik".

I've read that at one time one of the nicknames of the
Sunderland club was "the Bank of England" because of the
lavish funds they were expending for players.

Sunderland may have been notable in that respect at one
time, but I suppose their efforts have in later years been
eclipsed by the vast sums of money spent by other clubs for
players they wanted.

Snippets from http://soccernet.espn.go.com/

    Robben joined the Chelsea revolution in July 2004,
    signing from PSV Eindhoven in a £12million deal.

    The media frenzy surrounding Rooney after Euro
    2004 had put huge pressure on Everton, who were
    desperate for him to pen a new five-year contract
    which would net the star £50,000-a-week, to make
    him the highest paid player in the club's history.

Speaking of Rooney before Manchester United acquired him,
one writer says

    Everton at one stage slapped a mammoth £50million
    price tag on the player's head.

    Rooney moved to Old Trafford four hours before the
    deadline passed, for an guaranteed fee of £20million.
    There was additional £7million on the fee, made up
    of Rooney's appearances for United and England,
    the length of his stay at the club and the
    performance of the Red Devils at home and in
    Europe.

In a piece about Frank Lampard:

    Chelsea stepped in to bring him to Stamford Bridge
    in summer 2001, with manager Claudio Ranieri paying
    £11million.

I wonder how much a 160-pound sack of gold would bring these
days.  A very rough ball-park estimate, taking a typical
gold price of $300 per ounce, not knowing for sure what kind
of ounces gold comes in, and rounding off to the nearest
half-million pounds, the cost of a 160-pound sack of gold is
in the neighborhood of a measly half a million pounds.  So
football stars are worth many times more than their weight
in gold.

Somewhere I've seen a summary of the leading amounts paid
for various players, including the holder of the all-time
record.  I'm not finding it again now.

But sports writing does make very particular demands. If you aren't
Neville Cardus or that West Indian genius whose name briefly but
shamefully escapes me, it's tough to make readable writing out of
something so formulaic. It's quite commonplace to lift expressions
from one sport into accounts of another, and it's often striking
enough for a daily paper: I'd never condemn it out of hand. I think
"pipped at the post" is quite acceptable, cliché though it is, for a
last-minute reversal in any athletic sport; but I'd want it reserved
for such dramatic occasions.

Of course there are winning posts in soccer. The quoted excerpts
actually refer to them - they relate to the season's competition, not
individual matches. Finishing first in the Premiership / Championship /
League / Division or whatever it is / was called at the time is winning.
If you have been leading Division One, as Sunderland were, and are
overtaken at the end of the season, you have been pipped at the post.
Of course there are second and third prizes. In the Premiership, for
example, your position in the final table determines which European
competitions you are eligible for next season.
In the Championship (ex-First Division, ex-Division One) second place
wins you promotion, third place wins you entry to the play-offs for
promotion.