Finished With Aplomb

I started this blog back in 2012 with the intention of publishing something every week, which I managed to keep up until 2017 when I missed a few weeks. 2018 was less productive still, there were more weeks when nothing appeared than those when something did. There are two obstacles to my publishing something every week, a lack of inspiration and a lack of time (if I’m honest, sometimes a failure of will to make the time).

But just because there isn’t a blog every week, it doesn’t mean I’m not writing anything. I’ve been writing articles for Romford Football Club’s matchday programme for longer than I’ve been blogging, and that means between forty and fifty pieces of about 800 words each between August and April each year. And this season I have ended up with the task of writing match reports for the programme and website, and for Saturday home games at least, for The Non League Paper. In a recent programme, I found that I had contributed seven of thirteen pages of text, or somewhere approaching 5,000 words. In what I hope is an instance of justifiable self-plagiarism, a somewhat cut-down and revised version of this blog is scheduled to appear in an upcoming issue of Romford's programme.

Add to that another new responsibility – I’m now jointly running the club’s website, for which I’m writing content such as match previews and news, in addition to the match reports – and I seem to be constantly pecking away at my laptop's keyboard.

Does all of this mean that I can call myself a journalist? Possibly, yes, if one uses the commonplace definition that journalism is writing for newspapers, magazines, or news websites. Having work published in a national newspaper, even if it’s a niche publication like The Non League Paper counts, surely?

The wordcount - 120 - means that the report in The Non League Paper is very much
a cut-down version of the one that appears on the club website or in the programme.

Like a proper journalist, I’m not averse to using a bit of journalese. Read any newspaper and you will come across examples of it, words and phrases rarely used outside their pages. Only in newspapers are small children ‘tots,’ experts – especially scientists – ‘boffins,’ and any dubious activities that involve alcohol ‘booze-fuelled.’ The sports pages use expressions that the average fan rarely – if ever – utters, and football reports are no exception.

Match reports, including those that I write, have their own particular jargon, so teams that hold a three or four-goal advantage have ‘an unassailable lead,’ while their hapless opponents have ‘a mountain to climb.’ Some of the terms favoured by sports reporters are increasingly anachronistic. Strikers are sometimes deemed to have ‘turned on a sixpence’ before scoring, despite the fact that the old tanner probably went out of circulation before the forward in question – and probably the reporter – was born. 

A sixpence, forwards for the turning on of.

Shots that rebound off a post are normally said to have ‘struck the post’ as though there was only one, rather than two, or ‘hit the woodwork’ despite the fact that few goalposts outside public parks are actually made of wood anymore. 

Another somewhat inaccurate description used when a shot strikes the frame of the goal – another phrase rarely employed outside the sports pages – is that the forward was ‘denied by the woodwork’ as though the post or bar had made a conscious effort to prevent the ball entering the goal. Meanwhile, ‘aplomb’ – meaning composure or assurance – is a word that hardly ever makes an appearance in ordinary conversation, but features regularly in match reports, and on occasion on Match of The Day, when describing a confident finish.

How appropriate is aplomb in this report, I wonder? How hard did the writer have to try to get it in?

My first encounter with the word aplomb came in my childhood while reading one of the Jennings books by Anthony Buckeridge. In Jennings Goes To School, the eponymous hero is called upon to summon the fire brigade by using the telephone. The headmaster, while making it clear that boys may not usually use the telephone without permission, praises Jennings, saying that he rose to the occasion “with exceptional verve and aplomb.” I immediately filed that away for future use, and am always pleased when an occasion arises to use it.

Another word which one seldom encounters these days outside of reports of football matches is the preposition, cum, used to join two nouns. Most often in match reports it will appear between ‘cross’ and ‘shot’ to describe a ball driven in from the flank that either ends up in the net or forces a save from the goalkeeper over and above a routine catch, and its use indicates that the reporter, and quite likely the player who delivered the cross-cum-shot, is unsure which it was intended to be. Cum does of course have another, rather more earthy use, hence when it appears in print it is likely to provoke some sniggering from readers, especially those not of the vintage for whom the word, in the context of a football match, is wholly unremarkable.

Good to see The Mirror keeping the traditional use of the word cum.

I confess  that not only do I find journalese fascinating, but that I resort to the odd example of it in my scribblings, thus ‘much-travelled’ is employed to label players who have had more clubs than Gary Player (one for the youngsters there), and ‘won’t live long in the memory’ is often used to describe games that fail to rise above a certain level of mediocrity. ‘High, wide, and none too handsome’ gets the occasional outing when describing a wayward shot at goal, while ‘we’ve all seen them given’ gets wheeled out when a penalty appeal is turned down, and mass confrontations are inevitably ‘handbags.’

A problem with writing match reports is the unavoidable need to refer to one team or the other frequently without simply repeating their name. A similar issue is faced when referencing certain players – particularly goalkeepers. Here, the reporter tends to resort to what is referred to as ‘elegant variation.’  It is my convention to refer to Romford as Romford in the first instance, and then Boro (the club’s nickname) in a single sentence, and similarly Romford’s opponents first by their given name and then by some alternative. In this way, Felixstowe might be The Seasiders when mentioned a second time, and then the visitors. In desperation to avoid repeating a team name, this may mean resorting to something as hackneyed as ‘the men from Suffolk,’ or -in desperation - ‘the team in stripes.’ Variation it may be, but elegant? Not always.

While reporters are resorting to well worn, tried and trusted expressions to describe events in games, the subs (sub-editors) on national newspapers are more inclined to look for new, memorable, and pithy, headlines. Except there is rarely anything new under the sun (or should that be under The Sun?). When Celtic were beaten at home in the Scottish Cup by Inverness Caledonian Thistle in February 2000, one headline writer came up with what he thought to be a new, Mary Poppins based gag, to wit, ‘Super Caley Go Ballistic, Celtic Are Atrocious.’ Original, one might think apart from the fact that back in 1960s, the headline on a report of a Liverpool match against QPR in which Ian Callaghan scored a hat-trick read, 'Super Calli Scores a Hat Trick, QPR Atrocious.'

Still, both are better than The Observer’s effort after England beat Spain in a penalty shoot-out at Euro 96 – ‘Seaman Sinks Armada,’ and infinitely preferable to the Daily Mirror’s ‘ACHTUNG! SURRENDER! For you, Fritz, ze Euro 96 Championship is over!’ employed before the semi-final against Germany, although they might have got away with it had England actually won.

I have not yet managed to emulate Martin Lawrence, who once wrote match reports for Romford’s programmes and managed to include the word ‘crepuscular’ (relating to twilight) in one many years ago, and to date, ‘aplomb’ is not a word I have managed to incorporate into any of the reports that I have written, although I live in hope!

Meanwhile, my wife has recently started a writing course; she asked me if I would like to do it as well. I declined, “I’m writing enough as it is,” I said.