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From: HenHanna <HenHanna@devnull.tb>
Newsgroups: sci.lang,alt.usage.english
Subject: Re: First BBC live football broadcast (22-1-1927)
Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2024 00:31:25 -0700
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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)

> 
> In Portugal it gets really annoying that, maybe to avoid repetition, maybe
> to fill up space, maybe to slow the rhythm, sports broadcasts don’t ever
> refer to things by their names, but by multi-word paraphrases. ‘The team
> from the capital city of furniture’, ‘the spherical (object)’, ‘the
> norwegian forward’, etc. Is that a thing in other countries too?
> 


‘the spherical (object)’  ------ good one!