...Send Reinforcements
HE classic example of the difficulty men have communicating with each other is the story of the urgent message from the fighting front, which, having been handed on many times, reached the Officer Commanding as: "Enemy dancing on wet planks, Send reinforcements." New Zealand football-commentators do a better job than any others I’ve heard, but their very speed and accuracy build an illusion about the game. "The forwards pack round." "Jones makes 10 yards and then runs into a _ tackle." "Robinson goes down on the ball." Sound, stock descriptive phrases, but like a blackboard diagram they don’t communicate urgent action. Football is not a smooth, impersonal game. It is full of violent personal encounters and unexpected hazards. There is a quality of desperation in the players’ movements that cannot possibly be communicated to radio listeners. The commentator must of nécessity make his own game of this complicated, chancy confusion. He does, and he makes a most exciting
business of it, but commentator’s football isn’t spectator’s football, any more than spectator’s football is player’s football. Send reinforcements? What reinforcements? Television, I «suppose.
G. leF.
Y.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 540, 28 October 1949, Page 11
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186...Send Reinforcements New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 540, 28 October 1949, Page 11
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