Like most people these days, I have one of those phones on which you can assign your most-used numbers to a one digit memory facility. Unlike most people, I actually use a number of them. A close friend of mine had to phone his own home the other day whilst visiting me, and thus discovered that he was allocated to memory number 6. He was quite put out, figuring that he ought, by his estimation, to have been number 1, or just possibly 2. I told him that I did not allocate these memories in order of how much I liked people, but in order that I could remember them more easily, and that he had many of the qualities which I associate with the number 6. I added that in fact, if it meant that much to him, 5 and 6 are to me more interesting and attractive numbers than 1 and 2, but that still wasn't the reason for him being number 6 on my phone memory list. What I am driving at here is that a number, or a label, once people have got used to it, will stand for what it represents, whatever initial association it might have had; a rose by any other name, and all that.
I mention this, for, since the new fixtures came out the other day, people have realised that what is going to be known as the Coca Cola League has dropped the idea of having a Third Division; which is now known as League Two. The previous Second Division is League One; and the First Division is the Championship. So a team like Leyton Orient, maybe, who I don't think have been out of the bottom division for a long time, are magically transformed into a Second Division team with no effort whatsoever. Wonderful! And even better for Doncaster Rovers, who go from Conference to First Division (well OK, League One) in just two seasons. Amazing! But all of us who are interested in this kind of thing will know perfectly well that League Two is the recent 3rd, which was itself the old 4th, Division, all the time, and they're not fooling anybody. If, a few years back, a club had been promoted from the Conference, then "Fourth Division" were two of the sweetest words in the English language; equally, were, say, Leeds's misfortunes to escalate, and they find themselves being relegated twice more, then calling the division (league?) where they end up League Two is not going to make them or their fans feel any better; they all know how many divisions there are, and how many they are away from the top one. And it is how far away you are from the top one that matters most. When, in 1958, the old Third Divisions North and South were reshuffled to create the Third and Fourth Divisions, it wasn't so much that it was called 'Fourth Division' that the clubs in it disliked (though they didn't like it all that much), but the fact that it would now take at least two seasons to get to Division Two, rather than one, even if only one club per division actually went up under the North/South system. So, as I say, the Coca Cola outfit are not fooling anyone.
All the same, I imagine that fooling people is why they are doing it. That old maniac Brian Mawhinney apparently said something about attracting more investment by renaming the old Nationwide Division One as the Championship. Well yes, confused foreigners learning the language might well think that if someone cons them into buying a midfielder "playing in the club lying second in the Championship", then they're getting someone like, to name an example completely at random, "Spotty" Parker, of SW6, whereas the reality would be someone more like Cardiff's Robert Earnshaw, i.e. quite a good player, but not what the punter thinks he is paying for. But why stop at the Championship? Obviously, as it is the thing to call your league something ending in 'ship', then why not rechristen the rest of the operation while they're at it?
When the old First Division broke away to form what we now call the Premiership, the word 'premiership' didn't exist, except as a possible definition of the position of Prime Minister, but it wasn't much used as such. They could have called themselves the League Championship, i.e. a competition to win the position of League Champions, which is what it had, in fact, always been called, but again there was the obsession with trying to rebrand something which basically wasn't going to be any different, as far as your average fan is concerned. Still, the invention of 'Premiership' left the word 'Championship' lying fallow, so it can be used again, but of course the winners of this league, or Championship Champions, as they might become, won't be the best team in the land, despite sounding rather like it.
(Last Thursday night I was at the pub, not for the quiz for once, but for the Portugal - England. There was a huge turnout of Madrid Brits, occupying the three bars, each with its own TV, and once people had stopped crying (about one third) or fulminating against Beckham (quite a lot) and the referee (a hell of a lot), I did a kind of straw poll, and do you know what? All the people I spoke to said that the English leagues should be called Divisions One, Two, Three and Four, and maybe even Five for the Conference, irrespective of their financial structures or the fact that they might be formed of three different organisations. It won't happen though.) Anyway, I thought I'd help Mr Mawhinney out a bit. It's pointless to have a Premiership and a Championship, and then a League One or Two. They should have their 'ship' word, also.
So I visited the Collins Wordbank site to do a concordance on words ending in 'ship', but they're closed for rebuilding, and I eventually tracked down another concordance site which is here. This is what there was, having been arranged in alphabetical order:
airship; apprenticeship; authorship; battleship; censorship; chairmanship; citizenship; companionship; comradeship; courtship; craftsmanship; custodianship; dealership; dictatorship; fellowship; flagship; friendship; guardianship; hardship; headship; horsemanship; kinship; ladyship; leadership; lectureship; lordship; marksmanship; one-upmanship; ownership; partisanship; partnership; professorship; receivership; relationship; scholarship; seamanship; showmanship; spaceship; sponsorship; sportsmanship; stewardship; township; warship; workmanship; worship.
There must be something there for the old Third and Fourth Divisions to call themselves. Custodianship and Guardianship sound like leagues for teams made up entirely of goalkeepers (though they can score, too, as Ricardo proved last week), while the Seamanship would presumably be a special league just for David, formerly of Arsenal. Apprenticeship could be a league for pre-teens, and Millwall, for one, would certainly be at home militating in the Battleship or the Warship. The FA Nationwide Women's Premier League ought with immediate effect to be renamed the Ladyship, while the Lectureship might be characterised by the sternness of its referees. The Receivership could be set up for those clubs in dire financial straits, and both Oxford and Cambridge Uniteds, and of course Hamilton Academicals, would be ideal candidates to play in the Scholarship. Northampton, Luton, Halifax, Ipswich and others could be founder members of the Township, and the Worship would be perfect for Newcastle and Sunderland, and maybe Hartlepool and Darlington, too. But sadly there appears to be little that would be suitable for the other two or three leagues, except maybe the Hardship.