EVILS OF SPORTING SLANG.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1481, 12 February 1887, Page 2

EVILS OF SPORTING SLANG.

A correspondent of the St. James' Gazette makes strong objection to the nag of sporting slang m the newspapers :— " We are In the middle of the football •eaßon at present, and a deioriprfon of a football matoh maybe entertaining reading. Ido not agree with the persons who think this game so rough that it mast corrupt boys' morals ; but everyone mast see that it is bad for their English. Boys devour the newspaper report* of match en; and of coarse they adopt the language m which the reporter writes. They soon dia cover thai the match is not between twt> clohs, but that it is a case of ' teams ' who. * antagonise ' each other. ' Teams * may paeß, but « antagonise ' makes on© shiver. The contest, again, is a « fixture, 1 and the football is * the leather ' The player whose duty it is to watoh the goal is no longer the ' goal-keeper,' bat the 'custodian ; and the goals themselves are ' the sticks.' Yod don't • make ' a goal nowaday*, you 'achieve' it. Tt is not even a goal you aohieve, but ' the trick/ and tha moat popular way to put it is that you 'do the triok.' When you do the trick you • lower the colors ' of yon* antagonists ; and unless they • iqualUe ' by doing the trlok too they ' gound^r.' The side that makes a nn sober of goals la said to • pile on the agony/ Cricket suffers iv the same way. The wioketß are the ' sticks,' the bat Is « the willow, 1 and tho ball (b a^ain • the leather ' The Utsmaa ofiver hits the leather He'SPJoks'nr 1 draws,' or « swipes ' it. But it would ba labor lost to quota muoh from the book of crioket and football slang. Yet the sporting reporter's weakness for Latin can hardly be passed ovur. There ii one word that be must introduce into the smallest paragraph — the word nil Few/ persons, even though they read the foot* ball reports regularly, pan luv-t any idea of what, the word oil «s to r.h« reporter. Kven the word ohio id not d< arer to the dramatio critic Only to day I looked through a long lint of Saturday's fooibal matches m a weti-koown d-»)ly jonmvi— . not » sporting p^per— and wihout Gxcepton every lub \bat made c>oioloK Is. announoud to have made nil. Adnlt» who are able to pick an 4 «hoos« eau, it fa> me, lay th«->ir h»n^H opt>n a few newtpapers 'h»- sportV'g r'p rts «/f w.Moh are itn ten io th,e K'n^l-sh l»n»aagß. BmJB, howtives, cannot bo «xp ot-d tin disoriminate carefully, and t ey, nata>aliy jeuough '.talk Ilka ttie papera.' This, perhaps, has something to do with the bad name that football has got ttncrPg. mwf pweoti, ■ *"