Ribblesdale Rovers vs The Rules, Chris Sutton vs football jargon & the exact definition of a "hoick”

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Kung Fu kicked a supporter who was Iwip without a shadow of a doubt getting him lip.

Oh I say

it's amazing.

He does it tame and tame and tame again.

Break up the music.

Charge a glass.

This nation is going to dance all night.

A lamentable tale of Sunday League admin-fueled cynicism.

Obscure uses for transfer marked.

The exact practical definition of the verb to hoik.

Chris Sutton manufacturing his disapproval for modern footballing jargon.

Some joyful commentary that only a Nicholas Foolcrook header could inspire, historic moments for English football in supermarket prices, and which injury-plagued former Premier League titan most deserves to have an immersive improvised electroacoustic album made in his name.

Brought to your ears by Goal Hanger Podcasts.

This is Football Cliches.

Hello everyone and welcome to Football Clichés.

I'm Adam Hurry.

This is the midweek adjudication panel.

This is where we look at some more timeless football linguistic matters, some compelling content for you today.

Joining me on the panel, first of all, Nick Miller, welcome back again.

Hello, how you doing?

I'm good.

And 81st clichés cap for you.

You're now Rio Ferdinand.

Oh, I thought he would have got more than that, but delighted to be in illustrious company.

FSA Podcast of the Year.

FSA Podcast of the Year.

Alongside you on the adjudication panel is David Walker.

Dave,

10 days or so ago, Mother's Day no less, was set to be a great day in the history of Ribblesdale Rovers.

A cup semi-final victory, a giant killing, booking your place in the final of the Donovan Thomas Cup.

But that wasn't to be the end of the story, was it?

No, sadly not.

So those of you listening who have been following Ribblesdale's progress this season may have seen me tweet a week ago on Sunday that the Rovers were in the final, that we had defeated Clapham Chiefs and we were through to the final.

It was a great day, it was a great performance, we won the game 2-1.

But sadly, there was a twist.

A few hours later, about four o'clock on Sunday after I'd left the pub and I was still basking in the glory of the day, just about to tuck into a nice Mother's Day Sunday roast with my family, I received an email from the league chairman saying, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but we've received a complaint from the Clapham Chiefs.

And it soon became apparent that we, hands up, were in breach of a rule buried deep within the Southern Sunday handbook that in semifinals and finals, all players must have played at least three times for the club.

Oh my god.

And one of our players, Niall Robinson, had only played twice.

You can imagine how crestfallen I was upon seeing this email.

Honestly, it felt like a punch to the stomach.

And then what preceded was more than a week of intense back and forth with the league,

who I must say conducted themselves.

You put La Liga to shame.

He was an admin faf.

The league conducted themselves very respectfully with great dignity throughout.

And I thank them.

But also with the opposition, Clapham Chiefs.

And we essentially, we admitted that we'd broken the rules.

I had no idea.

I had absolutely no idea that this rule existed.

I was operating under the, I think, reasonable assumption that all players just needed to be registered for the club.

To that extent, I actually even registered an emergency player for the game that morning.

Why would I do that if I was aware of the rules?

I put Niall Robinson on the team sheet in a match refereed by the head of referees.

Again, why would you do that if you knew the rules?

But our argument was, yes, we've broken the rules.

We didn't know about them.

But come on.

Really, the spirit of the rule has not been broken.

We've won that match, fair and square.

It was a good match, a close match.

Niall Robinson's not a ringer.

He's not a semi-pro.

He's not someone we've just plucked in just to come in and do a job on the opposition for a semi-final.

He's played for us twice before.

He's been registered for two seasons.

It was Mother's Day, as I said a few weeks ago.

We were struggling.

He's one of a number of players who most teams have.

This sort of group of like, if you're short, let me know.

I can't play every week.

I'm never going to be able to play every week.

But if you're short, I'm up for it sometimes.

And this was one of those occasions.

He played.

We won the game.

I was so proud of the players that we played so well.

Oh, mate.

We played so well.

It was a proper semi-final.

We edged it 2-1.

But then this happened.

And the Clapham Chiefs were given on more than one occasion the opportunity to withdraw their complaint.

Yep.

And they chose not to.

Wow.

Dave, to what extent do you think this is a case of pathetic jobsworthiness on behalf of the vanquished opposition from a higher division?

or you just not reading the rules of the composition in which Ripplesdale Revers were competing?

It is, of course, a bit of both.

As I've said before, I accept that I should have known the rules.

I apologise to the squad.

I've held my hands up to the league straight away.

I mean, but I mean, I think you can forgive me for not knowing this rule.

I mean, I don't think it's...

It's an incredible rule.

What is the point of the rule?

What is the spirit of this rule?

I mean, I guess it's to stop two things, I think, primarily.

One, to stop obvious ringers for big games.

So getting in a player who is, you know, levels and levels above, obviously,

who could completely change the game on their own.

And probably more relevantly, the instance where if you're a club that you've got, say you've got...

a first, second, and third team, and your third team gets to a semi-final, all of a sudden you bring in the firsts to win the semifinal.

But interestingly, the rule allows you to do that twice before.

Yeah, yeah.

You can play Declan Rice on a dual registration in the quarterfinal if you like, and it's fine.

There are many layers to this story, Nick.

Dave accepting culpability is good on him, and the correspondence between Ribblesdale Rebbers and the league has been very cordial, very earnest, I must say.

The earnestness involved in a sixth-tier division club between them and the league has been an absolute wonder to behold.

The PDFs that I've seen blow my mind.

There's an emergency meeting.

Everything was great.

We should also recognise, Nick, the irony of a member of this podcast being a victim of footballing pedantry.

We should recognise that.

But I think we should also take a moment, Dave, to acknowledge the fact that Clapham Chiefs, who have the name of a tag rugby team

and the morals of a bin, genuinely well done, lads.

Good luck in the final.

I know.

I mean, what's that speech going to be, the team talk before the final?

Well done, lads.

We've all worked hard to get here.

All in a circle shouting default, default, default.

I mean the thing is right, it's galling and it's annoying because ultimately you just, you know, they've got all the cards, they've got all the power.

Our ignorance has enabled them to take the position that they've taken.

But how fucking embarrassing is it to put a complaint in less than an hour after the final whistle, might I add?

Having to look through our results and our

look back on the FA website through our fixtures to work out if there was any player player in breach of this rule.

They wouldn't have had any reason to suspect the player in question, so they would have had to check

all of our players or all of our fixtures.

I'd actually quite like to know the process.

How do they actually get onto this in the first place and go through it?

Quite curious.

I mean, what it tells me is that they've definitely done this.

They've done this many, many, many times before, and I've never struck gold before.

It's like Goodwill Hunting when he keeps getting out of

his cases by citing a law from 1796 or something.

It's, I mean, I I

I don't know whether Dave is being too uh I can see that the anguish on Dave's face and I don't know whether he's being too diplomatic to to really lay into them.

I've watched his emotional journey this whole time.

O on live on the pod anyway, but I think I am far enough removed from it to say that Clap and Chiefs are a bunch of pathetic fucking wankers and

I hope they get absolutely destroyed in the final.

Of course that poetically it will be it would be fitting if they they equally kind of breached some minor rule in the final and and uh had the game given to the opposition.

Can we rally people to kind of attend this final?

When it when is it?

It's it's Tuesday the 15th at Met Police, sort of near Hampton Court, that sort of way, over there.

Um I'm torn actually because there's a lot of our squad that want to go down and support Park Life B, who are their opponents.

Yes.

Part of me just sort of doesn't want anything to do with it.

I don't even want to look at them.

But I don't know, maybe it could be fun if we went down.

I should I think, you know, Nick, you're right I am being diplomatic and you know I think that's the right thing to be but yeah class from you dignified it's very dignified I will read a couple of choice quotes from Clapham's response to our response just to give you an idea of the general vibe of what they were going with first of all I mean this is annoying again just rubbing our faces in it you refer to the issue in question as an off-field technicality in quotes but in reality it is a rule breach nothing less annoying yes states their position from you could have that could could have been it actually that was job done.

Save us the other the other four more pages of this

exactly.

We specifically checked the three cap rule.

This appearances not caps rule with Graham in advance of the fixture because we take compliance seriously.

Oh fucking hell.

As a result, we made squad decisions accordingly, leaving out multiple players who had one or two caps but were available to play.

Which, I mean, I find that quite hard to believe, but again, fair enough.

We'll take it at face value.

Caps, honestly.

I know.

You mentioned integrity multiple times in your letter, and we completely agree that integrity is vital.

However, the highest form of integrity is following the rules to the letter.

Wow.

Jesus Christ.

True integrity is not just about intent, but also about actions.

Oh, sir, sir.

I've got a player who's only played twice, sir.

As well as them having the name of a touch rugby team, this is very rugby behaviour.

Incredibly rugby.

Again, they emphasise a number of our players were left devastated when they were unable to play due to the three-cap rule.

And as you can imagine, we're particularly unhappy to hear our opposition fielded a player who had not met the same criteria.

Lastly, we want to emphasise that we did not see you as, in quotes, bad guys, or believe you intentionally trying to, in quotes, game the system.

It is simply unfortunate that you did not follow the rules to the same level that we did.

The subtle wind-up language there is incredible.

Incredible.

I think that's enough coverage for Clapham Chiefs for one podcast episode.

You know what you've done.

again worms they're worms yeah congratulations go on park life b is all i can say a good football club as well and a good bunch of lads from my memory right it's time to run the rule over some football pedantry of our own um let's kick things off with this from chelsea keeper robert sanchez speaking after his side's ball draw at brentford on sunday

in terms of the other end of the pitch why do you think there was something lacking in attack today

uh i think it was lacking i think we've created the chances uh i think we created the shots I think we just missed putting it between the three posts, a couple of them.

Between the three posts, Nick.

I didn't know this was a thing on the continent.

Is it a thing on the continent?

Jeep says it's just in his own.

There's a logic to it.

There's something innately maverick about Robert Sanchez at the best of times, Dave.

But I didn't know we ever really needed to bring the crossbar into the equation when it comes to figuratively referring to the goal.

Yeah, I mean, it's not a post, is it?

It's a bar.

Yeah?

You wouldn't say between the sticks is exclusively to refer to goalkeepers.

That is true.

That is true.

But we never really talk about the crossbar in this equation, do we?

I have no idea what Robert Sanchez is on about.

Anyway, meanwhile, as Stephen Bunting claims Premier League dance glory in Berlin last week, Jay Martin claims these last two darts have the crowd noise of a shot being saved and putting on the rebound.

Eerily similar, Dave.

I don't think we've ever picked up on this before.

That's great.

There's even, yeah, it's like a go-on, isn't there?

The first sound is crucial here, Nick.

There is an element of oof about it, even though he did actually nail that dart.

It wasn't a missed dart.

Oh, right.

Right.

I missed that.

I thought he'd like just missed the double and then

got it in the second attempt.

No, it's a perfectly good finish.

Yeah, I think that's why it does sound a bit like a go-on, because he's set it up.

Yeah.

It's like

the second dart is like him breaking past the back line to put him through one-on-one.

Oh, I see.

Oh, you think the sound lends itself more to that than a rebound?

Okay.

I think so, yeah, because they know, right, he's done the first bit.

He's just got to finish it off now.

Amazing we haven't picked up on this before.

It really does lend itself.

I love it.

Next up, Jacob Rosenberg has some very straightforward news for us, Nick.

The England team's head chef is on Transfer Marked.

I've noticed these kind of things before where something like really kind of

weird people are listed on the club staff of kind of obscure teams.

Such is Transfer Marked's idiosyncrasies, Dave.

His job title is listed as Cook, and his career has taken him from Southampton to Everton and now to England.

But I love that,

such is the rigidity of the Transfer Mark's kind of format.

He's got a points per match column in his career.

I was kind of hoping that

the career path would be like, I don't know, Frankie and Benny's.

Then he's moved up to something slightly classier and then he's got in on the yeah.

I love the word for Frankie and Benny's off the top of your head.

This guy's really gone all the way.

What a story.

Thinking of something relatively, relatively kind of low rent, but not like McDonald's or something like that.

I don't know why I went for Frankie and Benny's.

Oh, dear.

How many five-star reviews in a row do you have to get to get from Frankie and Benny's to the elite level?

Getting Michelin Star is like getting your pro license.

Anyway, Tom Kenton, on the up, it's fair to say.

Next up, Kaku Flux gets in touch on Reddit.

And Davey says, I'm a big fan of the word hoik.

I heard it said in one of the games this weekend in the context of a defender hoiking it clear.

And I realized I'd never really hear the word used in any other context besides football.

Maybe cricket.

I think it probably comes from the word hook but I'm no etymologist.

It got me thinking what are the qualities of a hoik?

Given the word actually seems to mean pull abruptly I think this means that a hoik has to be a bit behind the defender.

He has to maybe be reaching to get his foot round it.

I don't think just punting it doth a hoik make.

My instinctive reaction to this is the ball has to be bouncing or airborne.

It has to be essentially a volleyed clearance, right?

You can't hoik off the ground.

No.

No, I think he's kind of more or less got it right.

It's like it's maybe a ball over the top or something or kind of looped pass that the defender's running back and then it volleys it back over his own head.

So it is very, you know, you know, technically, it is very closely related to the hook, let alone etymologically.

I think the over-the-shoulder element helps here because it's, you know, it's similar to perhaps you could also say if you were like throwing, I don't know, say if you're throwing something something over your shoulder, that could be a hoik as well, couldn't it?

Yeah.

So the over-the-shoulder aspect of this feels quite important.

Even the word kind of implies it.

Hoik.

There's an almost onomatopoeic aspect.

You know, like when you're, you know, like a hammer thrower, I think that's quite hoiky, isn't it?

It's really hoiky.

Yeah.

It is very, it's a very crickety word.

I associate it much more with cricket.

In cricket, it's it's seen as like a kind of always to the leg side and quite a

like unskillful bit of a kind of, you know, he's just hoiked to that.

It's not a kind of skillful shot.

He's just thrown everything at it and it's maybe gone for six or something.

But it's so it's a high shot.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, you can't definitely can't hoik along the ground.

Yeah.

Yeah, spot on.

Yeah, I don't, I don't use hoik myself, but yeah, instantly rings a bell in my mind.

Right.

Speaking of the language of football, a very entertaining piece on the BBC website last week about the modern jargon.

that's creeping into football.

Instant Dean Saunders on Talksport alarm bells rang with this.

It began, is it simply the modern language of football or just jargon dressing up the game's time-honoured glossary of terms in fancy new clothes?

So they roped in Pat Nevin and Chris Sutton to debate various entries in the new glossary of football Nick.

Terms like transition, low block, high line, all of which Chris Sutton was just about tolerating because he I think he saw the technical value in them.

But then it all began to unravel.

High press.

This was Chris Sutton's reaction.

If someone talked to me about a high press when I was playing, I would have thought they were telling me to iron my shirt.

This isn't helpful, is it?

These quips.

I did read this piece as well, and I feared for it when I saw that Chris Sutton was involved because I thought this is going to be a horrific.

It doesn't even make sense.

What are you on about, mate?

If someone talked to me about high press when I was playing, I would have thought they were telling me to iron my shirt.

Oi, Chris, high press, mate.

Oh, sorry.

Yeah, I had to rush out this morning.

Yeah, I just did have time.

What are you on about?

Exactly.

If you're going to quip about this sort of thing, you've got to nail it.

Further evidence.

This came from high turnovers.

Chris Sutton.

When someone mentions turnovers to me, I think of the Apple things you used to buy in shops.

No, you don't.

No, you don't.

You don't.

No.

The other thing, I was slightly disappointed in Pat Nevin for this because I thought he might have been a slightly more kind of progressive voice.

But on the high turnovers,

this is the one that I kind of noticed.

Was high turnovers and they give the definition high turnovers as measured by optometrics, number of possessions, start in open play, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And Nevin says, of limited use, winning the ball back high up the pitch, which is longer and more unwieldy than the high turnovers.

Yeah.

These things are, if the point of this is that, you know, oh, these dweebs are overcomplicating things and we just speak about football properly, then surely the more concise phrase is more useful rather than winning the ball back high up the pitch.

This kind of latent kind of implication, Dave, that the wool is being pulled over the old-fashioned football fans' eyes with fancy new terms, even if they are more concise.

But we were always going to go this way.

And then, when they start talking about assists, Chris Sutton and Pat Nevin both raised the fact that, you know, a very simple assist can, you know, counts the same as a great through ball and stuff like that, which is a valid concern when you're tossing up assists.

But, you know, the same could be said about a tap in for a goal.

But of course, Sutton said, and what about when a player lets the ball run through his legs or draws a defender out of position?

That's one for the nerds and laptop crunchers.

Who's crunching laptops?

Don't crunch the laptops.

You need the the laptops.

Crunch the numbers.

It's just a fruit machine of distaste at jargon.

It's completely aimless.

Yeah, that's a little bit clap-and-chiefy, actually, that response, isn't it?

He'd definitely make a complaint uttered, wouldn't he?

Amid all this kind of low-rent kind of rejection, I did enjoy Pat Nevin talking about false nines, Nick, and saying, I'm absolutely okay with this.

The first time it was used to me was in 1982 at the European Under-18s Championship when I was with Scotland.

We won it in Finland and I was player of of the tournament.

We beat Chekerslavaki in the final, so I was very happy with it.

The coaches were Andy Broxborough and Walter Smith.

Andy ended up becoming UEFA's first technical director.

He used a phrase Unreal 9 or false 9.

It simply means no one playing as a traditional centre forward.

It is a false striker.

I had no idea it was being used all the way back then.

That's cool.

Yeah, it is cool.

Again, when I read this, the alarm bell of, well, in my day,

Terry Vanderbilt was doing this 40 years ago.

We just called it closing down back then.

That rung a little warning bell in the back of my mind.

He's backed it up, though to be fair.

Yeah, sure.

That is interesting.

Unreal nine is a great variation on it.

Let's start using that instead.

Unreal nine.

That sounds too much like a superlative, doesn't it?

Oh, he's an unreal nine.

Get him in.

Inverted slash hybrid fullback.

Chris Sutton says, as for hybrid, that just makes me think of cars.

That's your problem, mate.

Absolutely.

As for half space, Chris Sutton says, how can you have a half space?

A space is a space is a space.

If I dig a hole, it's a hole.

It's not a half hole.

He's completely lost it.

For God's sake.

I suppose it could be a half hole.

If you were sort of, if it was a, if it was a

semicircle of a hole in the garden with the little track.

Literal day versus the literal sun.

You should do Premier League predictions, mate.

The worst thing about these pieces, and I'm not going to kind of identify which one of these is it, is you know when you start reading them at some point you're going to go, yeah, actually, I do agree with that.

That is stupid.

Yeah, it's a shame.

It is a a shame but that's fine all of it is up for debate completely some some of these terms are uh essentially vanity no question there has to be an element of that in it but some of it is just quite useful and also the rest of it is just language evolving but we have to move past this we have to analyse things properly if we want to care about the language of football and if chris sutton does care about the language of football he can't start talking about made-up stories about apple turnovers because he's no good

i think you're right nick i think i think going into this piece i think they probably thought pat and evin would give them a bit more than he has, than he ultimately did.

And they probably left with a load of quotes from Sutton saying, oh,

he didn't play ball at all.

He wasn't interested.

He's given me all sorts of rubbish, which is going to have to use it.

It's all we've got, but he just wasn't up for it.

Related to this, this came from Charlie Jones.

Here is Chris Sutton on the It's All Kicking Off podcast, seemingly unable to divorce Football Speak from the rest of his life.

We could talk about this for days, about how

I feel about social media.

I mean, you know, my daughter's 13 this season.

We've debated long and hard, myself and my wife, about letting her have a phone.

Just living his life in seasons, and why not?

We used to call them years, Chris.

Gets us all in the end.

Just one more little boot into the BBC.

No, this is just how these things roll sometimes.

A new podcast coming out, Gangster Presents, hooligans.

And the tagline for this, Nick, is Tony Bellew uncovers the dark side of football hooliganism.

About time too.

It's had too much of a good press, hasn't it, hooliganism over the years?

Also,

there seems to be a few of these, the BBC podcast with very unusually chosen presenters.

There's one about the Bloodgate scandal in rugby recently, presented by...

Do you know who presented this?

No.

If I gave you a million guesses, I don't think you'd get it.

Ross Kemp.

He is quite rugby, actually.

There's more where that came from as well.

So this is all part of the same series, like sports strangest crimes.

And I think it's it's very clearly part of their strategy is to get seemingly ill-fitting strange hosts to present this.

So Vanilla Ice presented one about...

Oh, yeah.

Wasn't that Shergar?

Was that Pete Tong?

What is happening?

I think the first one of these was about Knotts County being taken over by Monto Finance.

And it was presented by Alice Levine, who was from Nottingham.

So there was a sort of...

You could see where they were going there.

But then they just went completely off piece with the vanilla rice one.

Yeah, Vanilla vanilla rice was Shergar.

Yeah, the disappearance of Shergar.

I didn't listen to that one.

Did it turn out that he's got some keen interest in horse racing or, you know, kidnapping or something?

Pete Tong did one on F1, some sort of F1 scandal or something.

But

what's the next?

I don't know.

Gareth Gates on the Niall Robinson Ripplesdale Rovers scandal.

Hey.

Hey, I might pitch it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's a good look for you.

My goodness.

What a midweek adjudication panel this is turning into.

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Bournemouth were leading 1-0.

Andrew Self

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Oh, look at that!

That is wonderful!

Welcome back to Football Clichés.

This is the midweek adjudication panel.

It's been fun enough so far, but we've got a whole second half for you now.

This first one came from James Sowerby.

He says, I couldn't help but wonder if the new Everton Stadium is the first ground to be built without rumors of a construction worker being a supporter of a rival team and burying a scarf or other club paraphernalia under the pitch or in varying parts of the stadium.

Nick, I think this might be true.

We haven't heard anything about this.

And it's such a classic rivalry for this to be the case as well.

And the colours as well.

Like it's just the sort of thing that should happen.

Yeah, I suppose that that space might have been filled by the lad who scored the first goal in like the test thing was a Liverpool fan.

Ah.

There was like a youth.

They played a youth team game in which the, you know, the 5,000 supporters came along and

there's some 17-year-old kid who's a Liverpool fan and he gave it the big one I think.

So that it's not the same, but it's kind of in the same area.

My fear for this, Dave, is that it's not enough to imbue the Everton Stadium with some sort of curse for the next 50 or 60 minutes, like laying a scarf in the concrete would have done.

I think any curse will obviously be applied sort of in retrospect, won't it?

So

we've still got the curse to come.

I think that's we've still got that.

We've still got that up our sleeve if we want to use it.

I think it is, yeah, there hasn't been any of this sort of stuff because even with with the with the totnam stadium and the whole sort of having 1000 more capacity oh yeah than the emirates yeah like and i i don't know i did i'm this might be completely wrong and like correct me if i'm wrong listeners but it does feel that this rivalry is less about that sort of stuff less petty you think yeah a little bit yeah i mean it's still intense obviously in the derbies but it's you know there's the the the old the old sort of cliche of it being the friendly derby or whatever which you know i don't know whether that's actually true but it it does perhaps that's why we haven't seen as much of this sort of tit-for-tat kind of stuff.

Yeah, it's more death threats to James Tarkovsky than Scarfs Buried in Concrete, isn't it?

Yeah,

it's serious stuff.

Right, next up, this is incredible.

It came from mongoose-like creature on Reddit.

I will tell the story in full.

My daughter told me that a boy in her class got a yellow card today.

When I asked why, she said, it's because he put his legs out straight when we were sitting on the carpet and you're meant to cross your legs.

I was surprised that this minor infraction had landed him in the book, so earnestly asked, was it his first one?

She replied, his first one, what?

I didn't explain the intricacy of it, but did wonder if the teacher made a rod for her own back by doing it, and another kid demanding the yellow get shown for similar offences on the carpet.

Maybe a group of children haranguing the teacher, pointing to the spot where the boy sat when receiving his yellow.

The children's parents being brought in are getting chastised for failing to control their children, ironically.

And then wondered if some teachers like to let the kids get on with it a bit more, different styles.

I'm sure the kids just asked for a little bit of of consistency and a bit of common sense, as we all do.

I didn't know they had yellow cards in schools, Dave.

Wow.

Like actual yellow cards.

Yeah.

Teachers

brandishing yellow cards in the classroom.

How vigorously do you reckon they brandish it, Nick?

Teacher pointing to different parts of the classroom as there's some kind of totting up process.

Well, yes, our listeners got involved in this with their various theories.

Cap in Retro says not everything has to be a yellow card.

Some teachers get a lot of praise for just letting the lesson flow, whereas some just want to be the centre of attention.

Walls 4224 Dave says sounds like the sort of thing you'd normally get away with over here but not in Europe.

And Dino Matronic says anywhere else in the school and it's a yellow all day.

Why should it be any different on the carpet?

I suppose we are used to seeing teachers with whistles.

I remember, you know, like in the obviously in the playground, a whistle can be very useful.

And do they have red cards as well?

I assume so.

Yeah, two strikes and you're out situation, I guess.

Off to the head you go.

Just, yeah, just a tremendous moment of Reddit community building.

Can I just say, hopefully not for the first time, but I love this podcast and all who sail in her.

Let's cast our net slightly further afield now.

Our good friends on the sweeper pod, Nick, report from Maltese football saying that it's been some turnaround for Marsax Lock, who went from bottom half in the Apertura to leading the Klausura standings in Malta.

I'm sorry.

I'll stop you there, sweeper pods.

I can't have Malta having an Apertura and Klausura.

That is bullshit.

No,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

But it does make you fear, Nick.

Like, what do you think is going to be the first kind of power league or Sunday league to introduce the Apertura Class Zero?

Oh, that must have already happened.

Surely that's already happened.

I reckon it has to have happened.

Somewhere.

Oh, my God.

I occasionally play in a six-aside league in Borough that they don't call it this, but they do have a play-off system at the end of the league, which is, you know, slightly weird thing for that sort of small sided football.

So there must be someone somewhere.

I mean, you've obviously you've got like at power leagues themselves, they have like the naming of the pitches as true.

The Burnabao, Camp New, Wembley, whatever.

They've got to start updating those, haven't they?

I mean, they are all veritable cathedrals of football, but do you think they will ever, you know, change the naming conventions of Power League pitches to update it a bit?

But what's the next stadium that could be what about the Wanda Metropolitano?

Surely that's

breached.

They might not do that because they'd have to keep changing the sponsors' names.

It's not the Wander Metropolitano anymore.

I can't, well, come on, it's called.

No, no.

No, it always will be to me.

Yeah.

Loyalty to wanders, whatever that is.

The NordVPN Metropolitana to give it its proper name.

But yeah, that's just extra overheads for Power League, and quite rightly so.

I mean, Power League themselves should sell the naming rights.

Get a local business to

sponsor pitch five.

That would be cool.

That would be cool.

The JFS plumbing pitch four.

Yeah.

Speaking of money, this next voice note came from listener James Knowles, just back from the shops.

I've just been to the supermarket, and all my shopping was swiped swiped through by the cashier, who then said, That'll be 1966, please.

Every inch of my body wanted to respond by saying, Great year for English football.

Eric Cantonagh was born, but I bottled it.

And probably for the best, James, let's face it.

But if we could, for a moment, just focus on the subtle joy of being told that your shopping costs 1966, Nick, that what a tremendous moment.

What would you do in that scenario?

I would go through the exact same thought process, but I think I would

obviously wouldn't actually say it out loud.

Hoping for a relatively niche 30-year-old cultural reference to land is

tricky business.

Can you imagine the withering look on behalf of the cashier if you said that to them?

And then just the subtle, like, re-presentation of the card machine.

Just

scan your neck to card palette.

It's a cue here.

You think this is the first time I've dialed up a 1966 order, D?

Yeah, anyway.

Right, a simple question next from Joe Crowley.

If Olivio Giroux had played for another Premier League club, when and who would it have been?

My answer is, of course, West Ham.

Maybe post-Chelsea, but could easily still happen.

Or he could have gone to Fulham post-Chelsea too.

Seems way too London to go anywhere else.

Fulham.

Fulham does feel good.

Fulham is more of a post-Arsenal move, isn't it?

Oh, okay.

I think.

You just fancy West London for a bit.

Well, just

literally, there are quite a lot of players who have gone from Arsenal to Fulham in the last however many years.

Yeah, Iwobi, Smith Row, Rhys Nelson, Willian.

38 years old now, Olivier Girounik.

He's not coming back, is he?

It's all over, isn't it?

Is he still in the middle of his goal drought?

He hasn't scored an MLS goal for LAFC.

Oh my god.

Scored in a couple of cup competitions, but nope.

Yet to notch in domestic football.

Palace?

Sad to see.

As you say, he's not coming back, but Palace would be the move from LAFC.

He wouldn't go directly from

Arsenal or Chelsea to Palace, I don't think.

On loan to keep him ticking over in the the US closed season, perhaps.

But yeah, he's too old for all that now, so it's all moot.

Could you have seen Giru north of the border?

Oh, that's a true test.

He doesn't seem Rangers or Celtic.

No, actually

he feels a bit more.

I think so.

He does feel a little bit like sort of early 2000s Rangers.

Not Celtic.

Yeah, he's definitely more Rangers than Celtic, but I fear that's just the blue shirt.

I don't know.

Right, next up, let's keep these coming.

I don't care how ironic they get, to be honest.

Here's Danish journalist Kian Fanudi.

It was somehow even funnier when it was tweeted in Danish, but I will translate it for you.

If Thomas Frank had been called Thomas Echibaria Aragoria Gakoa Franks, he would have been the coach for a Premier League top six team by now.

Is that the best one so far?

Juan Eustacio is still up there for me.

I think this is much better than Juan Eustacio.

Yeah.

It's tapping into the very specific Basque.

And it's nice that they've they've gone for the full sort of Spanish/slash Basque naming conventions as well.

Chucking in the Netcha Barrira as well is a classy touch.

Thank you for that.

Frank's with an X as well, we should say, as well.

Really pushing the Basque naming conventions there a little bit.

Right, I want to end with this.

It came from Kristen J.

Carroll.

Some music news for you.

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Eponymously titled Ledley is the duo's debut release, a brilliant and adventurous tribute to legendary Spurs footballer Ledley King.

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To play this episode out, here is track nine from the album One Knee.

Okay, It's quite Sunday morning six music.

Is there a track dedicated to his insane tackle on Iron Robin?

There's an interlude all about his quick goal at Bradford.

A bit in the middle about the deflections, which kind of ruins it.

A track speculating that he actually should have played in midfield.

But a state what what an ambassador he's been for the club are there any lyrics

don't think i think it's all all just instrumental long long kind of like 20 minute ambient sections about how he could only train by swimming that kind of thing

oh oh hello

that'll be the tackle on robber milli are

anyway thanks to you nick miller Thank you.

Thanks to you, Dave Walker.

Thank you.

Thanks to you, Clapham Chiefs.

And thanks to everyone for listening.

We'll be back on Tuesday.

See you then.

Mad here, but it's Sunday league.

That's all it is.

It was a match that they lost,

and they have decided to go down this route.

I mean, you know, if you've lost the match, fair and square, you've lost the match.

Get on with it.

Just go home.

It's pathetic.

This podcast is part of the Sports Social Podcast Network.

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