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From: John Armstrong <jja@blueyonder.co.uk>
Newsgroups: sci.lang,alt.usage.english
Subject: Re: First BBC live football broadcast (22-1-1927)
Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2024 08:45:40 +0100
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On 16/07/2024 08:31, HenHanna wrote:
> On 1/22/2024 7:49 AM, Antonio Marques wrote:
>> Ross Clark <benlizro@ihug.co.nz> wrote:
> 
>>> For this occasion (Arsenal v Sheffield United at Highbury stadium,
>>> London), the BBC had devised a grid dividing the football pitch into 8
>>> squares, which was published in the _Radio Times_. The chief
>>> commentator, Henry Blythe Thornhill Wakelam ("Teddy"), would describe
>>> the action, and an assistant would call out a number indicating which
>>> part of the field the ball was in.
>>>
>>> Example: "now up field (7)...a pretty pass (5,8)..."
>>>
>>> Eventually they realized that fans could easily visualize the playing
>>> field, and a single commentator could deliver all the necessary
>>> information without the numbers.
>>>
>>> This kind of live description belongs to what Koenraad Kuiper calls
>>> "formulaic genres" (the title of his book, Springer, 2009). The speaker
>>> has to respond to sometimes rapidly changing real events, and makes use
>>> of ready-made elements and sequences to ensure fluency. Kuiper's
>>> original interests were in horse-race calling and auctioneering.
> 
> 
> They used     "now up field (7)...a pretty pass (5,8)..."  for several 
> games?
> 
> it's Odd that they didn't use  Chess's  (A-H, 1-8)
> 
>                 or  combination of  (Number + Right, Left, Center)
> 
This is the origin of the expression "back to square one".