Clashes and Battles

I have been quite busy with our round of February exams at the Centre, and have thus been neglecting my blog, but today Charlton return to action, and I ought to say something before they do.

It is a bit late to run a heading with the scoreline reflecting the 0-2 reverse at Old Trafford, now 14 days ago, and there didn't seem to be very much to add to what other commentators, including Sir Alex F. himself, said, which was that Charlton are a much improved side, and will have a good chance of surviving. Thus, there being, as I say, nothing to add to that, for today's piece, I will return to a couple of the other remits of the blog, starting, as so often, with the media.

While perusing the BBC Football pages yesterday morning, in search of stories which really were stories, as opposed to headlines announcing the bleeding obvious ("Rafa salutes Liverpool win"; "Hughes disappointed at Blackburn defeat" and the like), however, I came across something which did give me pause. I was looking at the gossip section, where they repeat stories made up by the national press about future transfers, and throw in a few other quirky stories like the one about Roy Keane's dog finally moving up to Sunderland to join him, which I referred to a while back.

And I saw this:

Dundee lost out in a fixture battle with rivals Dundee United on the toss of a coin.

I don't actually find Dundee or Dundee United terribly interesting and can never remember which is which, though oddly enough I do know that one of them plays at a ground called Tannadyce, which has a nice, homely, Dr. Finlay, kind of ring to it.

But what set me thinking was the phrase "fixture battle". I wandered off at this point for a shave prior to showering and getting ready for my long day at the Centre, but as I deployed the Gillette Fusion, vibrating smoothly in my right hand (if you haven't got one yet, you don't know what you're missing), cutting a neat swathe through the shaving foam, I continued to mull it over, and then I realised that what was meant was a fixture clash. It must be. The two Dundees (I have had to check this) play in different divisions and the fixture compiler had accidentally scheduled the two clubs to be at home on the same day: a fixture clash, in fact, like a clash of interests.

But it isn't a battle, for heaven's sake. Regular readers will know that my opinion of the BBC football page has never been very high, but they do, more or less, use the vocabulary of the English language accurately, or they have done up to now. It is true that 'clash' and 'battle' are employed turn and turn about by sports hacks who are incapable of describing one club playing another as a 'match' or a 'game', but that doesn't mean that the two words are completely interchangeable.

And while on the subject of 'battle', when will the press and the media go back to saying that someone or other has died of cancer, instead of the invariable 'lost his/her battle' with it?

Anyway, talking of football matches, Charlton are at home to West Ham this afternoon in a game which has been eagerly awaited, and speculated about, by Frankie and his visitors, and the Inspector, but unfortunately not by me, for the reasons stated at the top.

So, with just over ten minutes to go before they kick off at the Valley, it is worth mentioning that hopes are high, as Charlton's latest form has been good, those defeats to Chelsea and Manchester United were fairly honourable (© Iris Murdoch) ones, and they have just had a winter break over here in Spain, though probably not Madrid as I didn't see them anywhere, and best of all, Darren Bent, Luke Young and Andy Reid are all expected to return to the team after what seems like ages.

I am not in the prediction game, but I suppose I can stick my neck out to the extent of saying that a win will launch a revival which will probably be successful, and a defeat, er... won't.

At the quiz last week David pointed out that I haven't written anything about it for a while, and he is quite right, as always (well OK; not always, they haven't won for a while). I had hoped to add something here, but I want to get this up on the blog site before kick off, really, so I'll include the quiz news with my reaction to this afternoon's result.