Re: First BBC live football broadcast (22-1-1927)

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!