Rob Morgan on FA Cup engraving, football rhyming slang & overrated wondergoals

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Speaker 5 I'm sorry. You can sit there and look and play with all your silly machines as much as you like.

Speaker 5 Is Gas going to have a crack?

Speaker 1 He is, you know. Oh, I think

Speaker 1 brilliant.

Speaker 1 But jeez!

Speaker 1 He's round the goalkeeper! He's done it!

Speaker 1 Absolutely incredible!

Speaker 1 He launched himself six feet into the crowd and Kung Fu kicked a supporter who was

Speaker 1 without a shadow of a doubt giving him lip. Oh, I say,

Speaker 1 it's amazing. He does it tame and tame and tame again.
Break up the music, charge a glass.

Speaker 1 This nation is going to dance all night.

Speaker 5 The knowledgeable knowledgeable crowd bar falls even further. Premature Player X doing Player X things.
Deion Dublin's Diadora passes. Championship away end noises in World Series baseball crowds.

Speaker 5 Speculating on the egos of FA Cup engravers. Football-inspired rhyming slang.
Disrespect for halfway line goals. Players interrupting their warm-up to chat to Daniel Sturridge.

Speaker 5 And what mundane mid-game act could next qualify for a crowd-rousing celebration by a player. Brought to your ears by Goal Hanger Podcasts.
This is Football Football Clichés.

Speaker 5 Hello, everyone, and welcome to Football Clichés.

Speaker 5 I'm Adam Hurry, and this is the 52nd edition of Meza Harland Dicks, where our special guest shares their niche footballing fascinations and irritations. Some team news for you.

Speaker 5 Out of Charlie Eccleshare, open brackets half-term two kids, and David Walker gorilla feeding session, which is a new one.

Speaker 5 If only Keys and Grey Corner was coming in right here, that'd be an absolute tap in for me.

Speaker 5 But joining me first of all is Nick Miller. Hello, Nick.
This is the fifth Mezzert Harlandix you've co-helmed with me. Watson, Cowan, O'Reilly, Fosh, the four so far.
A steady hand, clearly.

Speaker 1 Well, obviously, yeah, and I'm very happy to step in for Dave, who genuinely is doing a gorilla feeding experience. That isn't something you just, a humorous thing you just made up.

Speaker 5 That's what happens when you turn 40. Those are the sort of birthday treats you get.
And to be honest, it sounds amazing. Little bit of feedback for you, Nick.

Speaker 5 Andrew Lowry writes in after Tuesday's episode and says, Nick Miller makes things tick. What a lovely thing to hear.
That must be a really nice thing, bit of feedback to get. That is lovely, yeah.

Speaker 1 And it's kind of, it's, it's a sort of almost the basis of my career, really. Kind of reliable and reliable and fairly sort of, what was the word, versatile.

Speaker 1 Although, I don't know, can you, can someone who is the first reserve, really, be a make ticker? Do you not, someone who makes things tick, you kind of want

Speaker 1 there all the time, don't you?

Speaker 5 You could have a backup metronome. You could be Harry Winks for England, right?

Speaker 5 It's good to have two metronomes, is what I'm saying. I don't know who the first choice metronome actually is.
But I think of that, of you, of you as a bloke, actually, to be honest.

Speaker 5 You're a make things ticker, generally.

Speaker 1 Well, thanks very much. I take it.

Speaker 5 That's all right.

Speaker 5 Anyway, with us today, for Mez at Harland Dix, is the world's leading imaginary conversation merchant on behalf of Intangible Concepts, a West Ham United tolerator, cult figure of the screen rock podcast Extended Universe, and, unless Jonathan Wilson, Jeff Shreves, or John Champion were keeping quiet about it, the only Mezz Harlandix guest ever to have auditioned for X-Factor, it's Rob Morgan.

Speaker 1 Welcome!

Speaker 1 Oh, hello, hello.

Speaker 3 Oh, you found the X-Factor. Oh, great.

Speaker 1 Brilliant.

Speaker 3 Brilliant.

Speaker 5 Mate, if you're going to put it on your website, that's where it's going to get found.

Speaker 1 Yeah, true.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's my own fault.

Speaker 1 Yep.

Speaker 5 I realise this is a little bit the Graham Norton show, but for anyone unfamiliar with the work of Robbie Morgues, here is Mickey Mouse finding out his name is being used as a slur against lesser-regarded cup competitions.

Speaker 1 If I'll talk about it, I'll talk about it, but like,

Speaker 3 no, it's fine. It's just.

Speaker 3 Have you heard of the Carabelle Cup? It's a football competition in the UK. They're using my name as a slur to describe it.
It's just...

Speaker 3 No, yeah, you would think it would be a competition one of cheerfulness and joy, but no, it's like nobody wants to win it, and the teams that do regret it.

Speaker 3 This is a new low honestly like this is as bad as being in fantasia like it's just it's not just that as well fifa club world cup the nations league the indian worlds open it's across all sports across all sports so i've got to get away from this mate my name's everywhere like it's just you know what goof i don't say this lightly

Speaker 5 but i wish i was never drawn it's the goof that gets it goof is such a lovely touch goof is the that's the main bit the goof um Yeah, that was one of several moments where I realised you were really definitely suited for the Football Clichés podcast.

Speaker 5 So, yeah, you are truly welcome.

Speaker 1 Thank you.

Speaker 3 It's good to be here. I love the show.

Speaker 5 Oh, thank you. Before we get into your main event of Desert Island Dicks, I've got a few topical matters to take care of on the adjudication panel.
This first one came from Geordie Badger.

Speaker 5 It's towards the end of the first half of the Lioness's comfortable dispatching of a 10-player Australia. ITV commentator Seb Hutchinson notices a familiar tune from the Pride Park crowd.

Speaker 5 Say it Seb.

Speaker 3 Say it.

Speaker 5 A knowledgeable crowd.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 5 Nick, where on the knowledgeable crowd spectrum does knowing a player's birthday is today sit?

Speaker 1 That is pretty knowledgeable. I suppose there is the possibility that it was kind of, there was some kind of announcement or that it was included in some way before the game.

Speaker 1 But that is, I mean, that's, that's, I'm putting that above the crucible as a knowledgeable level. Because if you're checking all the players' Wikipedia pages before you go into the game.

Speaker 5 Yeah, Rob, I mean, it would be nice to assume that the crowd did their research pre-game, but I'm 80% sure that the birth dates of every England player are just laid out in the match programme anyway.

Speaker 5 So there's a really mundane explanation for this. But someone still had to put two and two together, really.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and

Speaker 3 who started it? Who was the one that really kind of got the crowd, clocked it, looked at the program? Come on, guys, let's get going on this.

Speaker 5 I mean, it's probably the same dilemma as any kind of rendition of Happy Birthday, Nick, is someone's got to get it going. Someone's got to be the one.

Speaker 5 So it is the same sort of dilemma as a football chant release. Someone has to be brave enough to think that it's now, now is the moment.

Speaker 1 And also, I mean,

Speaker 1 the nature of the happy birthday song is you don't, unless you know already, you don't know who you're singing it to until quite late on in the piece.

Speaker 1 So it would, it would take, take a look, unless everyone was

Speaker 1 sort of fully boned up on this

Speaker 1 when you, it would take a bit of a leap of faith for people to join in. Or maybe it's just a kind of fairly joyous crowd anyway, so you just think, oh, it's someone's birthday.

Speaker 1 Let's just let's let's start singing. And then we'll find out whose birthday it is later on in the song.

Speaker 5 That was part of it I hadn't considered actually. Good point.

Speaker 5 Rob I'm just I'm just delighted that they didn't sing the Stevie Wonder version which is

Speaker 5 still attempting to creep in on society isn't it?

Speaker 3 Yeah it's a lot longer I think there's definite end point the definite end point with the original.

Speaker 5 I agree. Right sticking with this game Rob 20 coup de sai on Reddit pointed me towards a update on the BBC live block about this game and it's when England went 2-0 up and it says it's two.

Speaker 5 Kirowolf slides a silky through ball forward for Ella Toon who in turn picks out Lucy Bronze on the penalty penalty spot, and the birthday girl sweeps home to double the arrears.

Speaker 5 I've never heard double the arrears before.

Speaker 3 I don't even know what a single arrears is.

Speaker 5 I mean, my big problem with it, Nick, is that the arrears is from the conceding side's perspective.

Speaker 1 Right?

Speaker 5 I'm not interested in a team doubling the arrears actively. So that's where it's jarring for me.
But I definitely have never heard this before.

Speaker 1 Even then, if it was like a player or someone,

Speaker 1 a player or a fan or a coach or something from the losing team, they've doubled the arrears, which sounds like a very kind of

Speaker 1 strange thing to say. Really? But yeah, it is very strange.

Speaker 5 You'd reduce or halve the arrears, couldn't you? Sure.

Speaker 5 You can't be doubling them.

Speaker 5 I suppose an owned goal could double the arrears.

Speaker 1 I suppose so. But it is quite, it's just a very active

Speaker 1 phrase, doubling, isn't it? So if you, even with an owned goal, you presumably haven't like, you presumably haven't done it on purpose.

Speaker 1 So, yeah, very strange.

Speaker 5 Yeah, really odd. There are no new ways to say these sort of things on BBC live blogs, clearly.
Next up, Rob, this came from several people.

Speaker 5 Here is Paul Lambert on the BBC Scottish Football Podcast talking about the unique pressures of being the manager of Celtic. Now, see if you can just pinpoint the moment where his

Speaker 5 sort of rhetorical device goes a bit wrong.

Speaker 8 A new manager can win, whether it's Ange or not. One thing's for sure that I do know is you have to win games, and everybody knows that.

Speaker 8 You have to win games, or you're a Celtic manager or you're a Celtic player, you have to win games. So,

Speaker 8 whoever gets that job, whether it was the Gaffer or whoever get or answers that job cocoa the clown could come in there and if you don't win games the celestiat fans will only put up because that's the demand of it and i'll be honest with you rob i reckon coco the clown will be under immediate pressure regardless of results

Speaker 1 who is cocoa the clown i don't even know who that is it's quite a dated reference um

Speaker 5 i don't know who cocoa the clown is actually nick 70s 80s who knows

Speaker 3 90s immediate pressure surely i know what's gone wrong here.

Speaker 1 He's gone to the exact opposite end of the scale. You want Pep Guardiola in there.

Speaker 1 And then Coco the Clown is

Speaker 1 at the complete other end of things.

Speaker 5 I wonder if you knew halfway through that and just thought, fuck this, but I'm going to go with it, because you never know. You never know what could happen at Celtic next.

Speaker 5 I mean, would Coco the Clown impress on his unveiling? I don't know.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I don't know

Speaker 3 what kind of style Coco would it be. Five at the back from Coco.
I wouldn't know. 4-3-3 or something.
Yeah, definitely. But if you're not winning games.

Speaker 5 And under the pressure, Coco the Clown is.

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 presumably, he could sort of alleviate the tension. Coco the Clown spoke very well at his unveiling and then squirted up on the reporters with a squirty flower from his locale.

Speaker 1 Just to kind of alleviate the tension, maybe.

Speaker 5 I mean, I guess we're being a bit too root one with the clown sort of framing here, Rob, because you know, clowns are also really good at looking beleaguered.

Speaker 5 You know, that's the postmodern view of a clown. So maybe they would be good at this job.
I don't know.

Speaker 3 Yeah, Yeah, sort of an artsy clown, like a mind artist. Yeah.
Exactly. Try to think of other clowns that would be better than Coco.

Speaker 5 Does Mr. Tumble count as a clown?

Speaker 5 That's not just. He doesn't just clown, does he? He does other stuff.
I don't know if he's officially a clown.

Speaker 3 The McDonald's clown?

Speaker 1 The McDonald's clown.

Speaker 1 What, Ronald McDonald? Ronald McDonald.

Speaker 3 He's a clown. He's clown isn't.
Is he a clown?

Speaker 1 Is he a clown?

Speaker 3 Surely.

Speaker 1 What's the.

Speaker 1 I mean, you know,

Speaker 5 this is a never-before-contemplated debate for me, but I never really considered of him being a clown. He's never overtly presented as a clown, apart from.

Speaker 3 He's definitely related to the music. That's why I look at him.

Speaker 3 Clown adjacent, baby. He's definitely in.

Speaker 3 He's in that mix, surely.

Speaker 5 Nick's complete astonishment. Ronald MacDonald is a clown character used as the primary mascot of the McDonald's farm.
Oh, obviously he's a clown. I just needed it confirmed in writing.

Speaker 5 They never call him a clown, do they?

Speaker 5 Anyway, let's stick with Celtic, actually, Nick. Waizu writes in and says, I was watching the Celtic Hearts game, and the commentator made a remark about Cami Devlin doing Cami Devlin things.

Speaker 5 Who is the most player X doing player things? Footballer? And what is the scenario that embodies this cliché the most? I mean, I'm not going to quibble with the threshold here.

Speaker 5 Cami Devlin may well be capable of doing things that mark him out as being Cami Devlin. But first of all, so who is the player that really embodies this the most?

Speaker 1 Should be

Speaker 1 someone who has a sort of fairly unique skill set, who maybe has a sort of a

Speaker 1 signature move. Like, I don't know, we're going going back a little bit here, but you're Iran Robbins, that kind of thing.

Speaker 1 Cutting in on one side onto his left foot and shooting. So yeah, but is it like that, or is it more kind of results-based?

Speaker 1 Is scoring a goal that's that I mean that's too generic though, isn't it? Really? Yeah.

Speaker 1 He's got to be a a fairly signature move.

Speaker 5 So it's got to be something very specific, Rob.

Speaker 5 But the only thing about the I I I'm I'm sort of on board with the Iron Robin idea, but that's that's quite a functional thing I mean it's very effective cutting in and shooting and you know often scoring but does it need to have something of a flourish about it like could Jack Grealish do Jack Grealish things but unfortunately for Jack Grealish can't figure out what the thing is no he's not unique enough I think I think maybe for like a set piece specialist maybe like Rory Delaney or uh Becks Becks and Beckham doing Beckham things or something very specific to that player.

Speaker 5 Yeah, so it definitely has to be an attacking player, Nick, right? And doing something relatively skillful that's characteristic to them. That's what we're talking about.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you're not going to.

Speaker 1 I suppose you could.

Speaker 1 A bit of a stretch for a goalkeeper, I suppose, to be... If the goalkeeper...
No!

Speaker 3 Your David James down his hair when he drove the packages.

Speaker 5 Where is your bar for Player X doing Player X things, Rob?

Speaker 1 He's done it again. He's only going to have done it again.

Speaker 1 Fine, but that's all right.

Speaker 5 Different things appeal to different people, and that's absolutely fine.

Speaker 1 If he does kind of clear the bar, an entry for Are We Having This Corner was at the weekend when Ellie Croupy scored for Bournemouth against Forrest.

Speaker 1 And the commentator, who I think was Gary Weaver, said Ellie Croupy doing Ellie Croupy things. I think he said, he also said that that's just what he does.

Speaker 1 Now, are we having this for a player who has made two Premier League starts?

Speaker 1 Admittedly, has scored, I think, four goals for Bournemouth in the last few games, but that, I mean, if there is a threshold, two starts feels very, very much below it.

Speaker 5 And he's 19 years old, right? I mean, he's been fast-tracked into Player X, doing Player X things, Rob, which is worrying.

Speaker 5 But on the other hand, Rob, we need to consider the fact that Gary Weaver may have watched Lori on every week last season and seen every one of his 20 goals. Yeah,

Speaker 3 I think you need at least more than 12 appearances.

Speaker 5 Interesting threshold. That's very precise.

Speaker 3 At least half a season.

Speaker 3 At least like four or five games in a row.

Speaker 5 Yeah, you've got to embed yourself in the public consciousness beyond the club that you play for, I'd say.

Speaker 5 But yeah, Elo Croupie, you've got there already. Self-indulgent moment here, but I couldn't help but mention it.
Ruru 2025 saw an advert for my first book on seemingly eBay.

Speaker 5 Someone's selling it for £5.

Speaker 5 Very good condition, it says. But the description says, Football College's book, Adam Hurry, barely read.
Great condition.

Speaker 5 Can you say that about a book?

Speaker 1 Yeah, flick through it. You know, the spine's still intact, you know.

Speaker 5 Yeah, relatively unthumbed. That would be a good way of doing it.

Speaker 1 I think.

Speaker 5 Barely read?

Speaker 5 Barely worn, I can get. But yeah, barely read.
That's, I don't know how to take that.

Speaker 5 But yeah, thanks, anyone. Hope someone buys it and enjoys it.
Finally, for the adjudication panel, this came from Belfast-based rocking soul band, The Gold Tips.

Speaker 5 Here is Dion Dublin on Caraball Cup Co-Comms Duty for Grimsby versus Brentford on 5-Live.

Speaker 9 And now Grimsby looking to get back in this game before halftime, trailing as they are by two goals to now. Play a fat ball down the middle, but not near Cabia, and it runs on through to Valdemarson.

Speaker 10 Yeah, Burns just trying to find Cabia with that sort of what would that Deodora pass, that perfect pass. He's got one player to find with one pass, and there's four defenders.

Speaker 10 It's not going to happen.

Speaker 5 Rob, what the hell is a Deodora pass?

Speaker 3 Old-fashioned? Or was called, no longer cool?

Speaker 1 Was Deodora cool?

Speaker 5 I think I would actually grant you that. I think I would grant you that.
I think it was.

Speaker 3 I think I had some Deodora tracksuit bottoms at one point.

Speaker 5 Fair enough. And you are the yardstick for this, quite clearly.
Nick, what possible theory can you put forward for this?

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 the best I can muster is I associate Deodora with like Italian football in the 90s.

Speaker 1 I'm going to speculate that Baggio wore Diodora boots or something like that. It's possible.
I can't then associate that with a particular type of pass.

Speaker 1 So, unless he is like he's imagined some kind of you know, typically Italian raking pass or something like that, I don't know what the connection is.

Speaker 5 So, on one hand, we've got the suggestion that Deodora was at one point quite a fashionable thing and therefore it relates to a stylish pass.

Speaker 5 And Dublin goes on to sort of reiterate the fact that that player was looking for the perfect pass. So, there's an element of sort of elite-level footballing kind of style about it.

Speaker 5 The only other option I thought about was the Isthmian League. It used to be called the Deodora League at the end of the 80s, early 90s.
And I thought, maybe that's what Dion Dublin is referring to.

Speaker 5 Maybe it's like an up and under, like a direct route. But then he kind of goes on to say that it's too kind of precise for that.
So I'm really confused.

Speaker 5 But Rob, what I did do was message Deion Dublin this morning for the first time in my life, really politely, and ask him what he thought Deodora ball meant.

Speaker 5 I haven't got the blue ticks yet, so it's an ongoing, it's an ongoing situation.

Speaker 1 Stuart on it. This is a big step, given that I know how much you are adverse to contacting people out of the blue out there.
So this is showing how much care you put into your craft here.

Speaker 5 Yeah, can I get an NCTJ now? I've messaged someone to get some journalism done. Surely that's enough.
Yeah, it took every fibre of my being to message him for the first time out of the blue and

Speaker 5 I didn't even say sorry for contacting him. So that's how much confidence I had in the situation.
I will let everyone know if Deion Dublin gets back to me on this one.

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This came from R.

Speaker 5 Walmsley, and the question they ask is simply: is this the most British-sounding crowd noise from a North American sport?

Speaker 5 It could quite easily be a championship away end as someone is put through on goal.

Speaker 5 Nick, I love this.

Speaker 5 This is the, um, for context, this is the Toronto Blue Jays Alejandro Kirk hitting a home run at the LA Dodgers in game three of the World Series, as witnessed on a beamback at the Rogers Centre back in Canada.

Speaker 1 So they were watching it on the screen. Oh, wow.

Speaker 1 Beamback.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I've called it Beanback. The Americans apparently don't.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that is very kind of. Weirdly sounds like, even though it is, the stadium was full of fans of the team that scored the home run.

Speaker 1 It does sound quite, you know, a way-end at Preston kind of thing for some reason.

Speaker 5 I'm not a baseball man, Rob, but I'm assuming that the go-on part of this, you know, the equivalent of the go-on, was the ball being hit, and then the cheer was presumably the ball clearing the boundary to confirm the home run.

Speaker 5 In that sense,

Speaker 5 it matches the concept of a one-on-one quite perfectly.

Speaker 3 There would have to be a quick go-on, though. It'd be like, go on.
It'd be very, the space between would be less, I think.

Speaker 5 So, my only gripe with this sort of sonically, Nick, is that it's a bit too smooth. It doesn't really have, it doesn't really have the kind of up and down of the classic footballing go-on.

Speaker 5 I don't know why.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I suppose

Speaker 1 as a sort of mild baseballman, you kind of do know a lot of the time once the ball has been hit that it is going. Whereas when a player is through one-on-one,

Speaker 1 it feels like there's less chance of them scoring than there is of the home run actually going over the fence

Speaker 1 in that kind of very short period of time.

Speaker 5 So, the optimism kind of smooths out the baseball process.

Speaker 1 There's no uncertainty here. I think so.

Speaker 5 Yeah, okay, fair enough. Anyway, if you want to try NordVPN for yourself, go to nordvpn.com/slash cliches, and our link will also give you four extra months on the two-year plan.

Speaker 5 It's the best discount available. There's no risk of Nord's 30-day money-back guarantee, and the link is also in the podcast description if you need it.

Speaker 5 We'll be back with Rob Morgan's Mezz at Harlan Dicks very shortly.

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Speaker 5 Welcome back to Football Cliches. A reminder that you can sign up for Dreamland for $5.99 a month.

Speaker 5 You'll get ad-free listening of all of our episodes, two episodes a month of Dreamland, our exclusive show, and other bits as well.

Speaker 5 It's gone right to the wire, but episode 10 will be with you on Friday. Just go to dreamland.football dreamland.footballcliches.com.
Right, time for the main event.

Speaker 5 Meza Haaland Dicks with lifetime football clichés fan Rob Morgan. And I had great fun whittling down your long list to the final order.
It was an absolute joy.

Speaker 5 Rob, kick us off with number one, please.

Speaker 3 My first fascination is the phrase, let them know you're there.

Speaker 5 Right.

Speaker 3 I think early in my life, I wouldn't really know what to do when somebody shouted at me.

Speaker 3 Like, do I tap on the shoulder of you know the striker and introduce myself hey mate just let you know I'm there I'm here do I inform the referee

Speaker 3 but yeah you have to let them know you're there by physicality I suppose I suppose it's a shout towards an encouragement to just yeah be physical and and almost foul and

Speaker 3 Yeah,

Speaker 3 it's funny. The only way you can let them know you're there is through like a two-footed challenge behind the back.

Speaker 3 You can't like dribble past them or like nutmeg them, even though that would be more maybe more of a clearer message to let somebody know that you are in fact there.

Speaker 3 I guess you're just adjusting the expectations of what the striker thinks he can get away with. Like a free run? Nah, you've let him know you're there.
You are def you are well in fact there.

Speaker 3 And yeah, also there is I think there is a time frame for the like you have to let him know you're there within the first five, I think.

Speaker 1 Interesting.

Speaker 3 If you don't, it's kind of seen as hot-headed and lack of discipline, I think. There's a very small registration window

Speaker 3 to let them know that you are present there.

Speaker 3 Yeah, a few things like a shoulder barge or backing into someone or giving a routine challenge a bit more oomph, like 30% more. If it's like a routine challenge, you just let them know you're there.

Speaker 5 I definitely want to tackle the time limit of this, Nick.

Speaker 5 We're not allowed to move on. If I forget, you have to remind me.
But the main issue here is that I think letting them know you're there is a mid-level act of violence in a football game.

Speaker 5 I think it can't be a two-footed challenge, as Rob sort of posited at the start.

Speaker 5 I feel like that's too much of a signifier that you are indeed there. But at the same time, it can't just be a nudge.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 5 it has to be kind of a hefty, sort of full-bodied challenge that you basically send them flying, but with your whole body rather than, you know, stud on shin.

Speaker 1 And obviously, this has kind of had to be recalibrated over time.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 in the past, let them know you're there challenge could be a full like

Speaker 1 right from behind, you know, the ball might be vaguely there, but what you're really doing is like going through their Achilles or something like that.

Speaker 1 Which obviously because of woke, presumably, you can't do that anymore. Problems.
So it is a kind of...

Speaker 1 It is graduated to just a kind of, as you say, a more lusty tackle than you might otherwise have done. It's a sort of off-the-ball kind of nudge in the ribs little elbow or something like that?

Speaker 1 Does that qualify, or does it have to be slightly more kind of declamatory? Does it have to be, does everyone have to know that you've let him know you're there?

Speaker 5 It has to, surely, Rob, it has to be when the ball is in and around the ball.

Speaker 3 It has to be, yeah, it has to be an on-the-ball incident. You can't.
I don't think you can do it off the ball. It has to be

Speaker 5 constant hints that they're there, and that's not official enough.

Speaker 5 But actually, on that point, Nick, this did make me think of sort of ongoing physical contact between defender and striker.

Speaker 5 And you'll see this a lot, especially when they do a sort of close-up at a throw-in of the player who might be about to receive it and their marker.

Speaker 5 You see this sort of pathetic needly little nudging that goes on. And it's not...
when they're jostling for the ball when it's thrown. It's before the thrown is about to be taken.

Speaker 5 So a striker will move into position. And as they reach a kind of Christian Romero figure behind them, before physical contact even needs to take place, there'll be just a shove.

Speaker 5 It would just be a shoe, like no emotion whatsoever. It's almost ingrained in football now.

Speaker 5 It's almost unthinking, where a defender will just immediately just barge them out of the way in a kind of shovy kind of motion.

Speaker 5 And there never will be a reaction from the striker either because you often, I guess, you can't really react to it because you don't want to lose your head.

Speaker 5 But it just seems to me like that's the one thing I see in football, apart from all the physical and technical level that are required, where I think, I couldn't handle that.

Speaker 1 I could not handle being passive-aggressively just nudged out of the way for no reason. It would rattle me so much.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I have kind of problems with personal space as well, so that wouldn't, yeah, that's right. That's not going to fly.

Speaker 1 You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 As you say, many, many reasons why I'm not a professional footballer, but you're kind of going, look, fuck off, mate. I'm standing here.
What are you doing? What are you trying to do?

Speaker 1 It's not really going to fly when you're trying to defend a corner, is it?

Speaker 5 Really looking forward to the karaoke room at the football cliche's Christmas Do then. That's going to be great.
You can have a little corner to yourself.

Speaker 5 But Rob, I mean, this is kind of a fanny kind of universal concept, because I remember, even at kids' level, someone shouting, let them know you're there to the centre-backs.

Speaker 3 So this is this is drilled into kids right from a very young age but um i mean should we be alarmed by this is this a thing that kids should be being taught yeah i don't know i mean people shouted it at me and i didn't really know what it meant so i think i think parents just like to shout it because it is quite a good phrase like it kind of rolls off your tongue like all one syllable let them know you're there like it can let them know you're there let them know you're there like it's just it it's got a nice ring to it i think it's more about the the shouter of the phrase rather than the receiver of the the the command right let's so let's get on to the the the the purely clichés element of this rob you have you have suggested that five minutes is the time limit for for um their letting knowing yeah i think i mean i mean that that seems pretty strict i mean the ball could just not be at that end of the pitch and you're never going to get the chance is that your fault no five minutes is a lot is longer than you think i think

Speaker 1 it's

Speaker 3 five minutes is enough time to at least get an opportunity to win the ball i think right unless you're a really bad player.

Speaker 5 But Nick, you know, some would suggest that, you know, a time limit is kind of arbitrary here. It should just be the first contact between the two players involved.

Speaker 5 You know, up to a, you know, a sensible limit of time, at least.

Speaker 1 I did quite like the idea of someone kind of nervously glancing up at the clock, going, that's getting towards five minutes.

Speaker 1 I haven't let him know I'm there yet. I need to do something.
And then just someone's just panicking and just booting someone up the arse

Speaker 1 off the ball and getting sent off.

Speaker 1 It was five minutes. I needed to let him know I was there.
But there's nothing I could do.

Speaker 5 Yeah, the panic setting in.

Speaker 1 Okay, alright, okay.

Speaker 5 Interesting start. I like this.
Rob, tell us about your second fascination of football, please.

Speaker 3 Okay, number two is in a cup final when they cut to the engraver. This just reminds me, I suppose nostalgia, really, but just of classic cup finals.

Speaker 3 I don't know if they still do it, but I just always think, like, are there other engravers watching that?

Speaker 3 Like, are they getting, are there other engravers watching that getting more out of that than the football? Like, just great font on, like, the spacing on that.

Speaker 1 That is fine.

Speaker 3 With five minutes to go, sublime, effortless, left-handed, too. But, yeah, and just also just the process of like, how do they decide who engraves the cup? Like, is there an in-form engraver?

Speaker 3 Like, just everything that he touches turns to gold. Last week, he, like, engraved the seniors volleyball tournament, and now at a spelling bee, back to back without a stencil.

Speaker 3 Like, so he's going to get a big move. I don't know.
It would be quite interesting to see

Speaker 3 who gets picked. And I think also it just, I like that it just causes more drama when they cut to him at like 85 minutes and he's already started.

Speaker 3 I would be more nervous about the engraver having to redo his work than actually who won the the FA Cup or whatever.

Speaker 5 It is a genuinely tense moment watching the engraver at work, Nick, in the final moments of a cup final.

Speaker 5 You know that they're seasoned professionals and you you convinced yourself that there's no way that they would televise this if they thought there was any chance of it going wrong.

Speaker 5 And yet, it's quite a precise thing, so you do fear for them.

Speaker 1 I I mean given the the the so few occasions that uh I actually write anything with a pen these days, I get really nervous about sign-on my name on a birthday card.

Speaker 1 So never mind if you kind of you've got a camera over your shoulder and you're trying to engrave Arsenal onto the to the the cup or whatever.

Speaker 1 On the kind of other other engravers watching, I quite like the sort of other end of that where the engraver goes, I can't fucking believe that Kevin got that gig. I mean

Speaker 1 he's an absolute fraud look at him that's that is just that's amateur stuff it reminds me of there was

Speaker 1 at the the European championships last summer I was in the media centre as the the person who had commented commentated on that game was watching the later game and was absolutely tearing into the

Speaker 1 people who were commentating on that one the the bitterness in it was just sensational really really enjoyable I like to think that that kind of applies to the engravers as well I mean there's absolutely no reason reason to suggest that such a specialist occupation, Rob, doesn't have that level of bitchiness amongst its kind of

Speaker 5 amongst its union. I don't know if they have a union, but

Speaker 5 on the idea of like who gets chosen, it must be just like who gets to referee the final. It's who's been assessed over the season to be at the highest level or has already done the final before.

Speaker 5 Someone's already done the final and they're not allowed to do it again, so they have to pick someone fresh.

Speaker 5 So maybe the same criteria is kind of used for the engraver, but you've got to be on top of your game the whole season, surely.

Speaker 1 Surely.

Speaker 3 It's it's interesting about the manchester fa cup final he must have just done you could do half the work before you wouldn't even have to turn up until like 90 minutes you joke about this but in in the 2023 fa cup final manchester was engraved in advance before the game oh i mean you could is that good prep or is that just not a high-stakes moment you don't want to uh get involved in it is it is good prep nick but there's also there's also a complete lack of magic about that as well like that's what i'm seeing yeah the magic yeah no magic there is a lack of magic but it is also, this is a bit like in journalism,

Speaker 1 you have like obituaries prepared for people ahead of time and

Speaker 1 other things that you think are going to happen.

Speaker 1 And, you know, sometimes they backfire. But

Speaker 1 this just seems kind of, from the engraver's perspective anyway, it just seems like a sensible move.

Speaker 5 So I managed to unearth a Guardian interview in 2007, Rob, with the FA Cup engraver for the final that year.

Speaker 5 And so it's like a quick fire interview. And some of the questions and the answers are genuinely superb.

Speaker 5 So Emmett Smith, the FA Cup engraver, was asked if it was all a bit stressful and says, yeah, it's a bit nerve-wracking when the camera's on you. You need really steady hands.

Speaker 5 Hand engraving is an ancient craft.

Speaker 5 I have to remain calm while the FA staff, the army, and the TV crews run around. So it's really stressful doing it in five minutes.
He's then asked, do you ever try to guess the winner to save time?

Speaker 5 What an insane question.

Speaker 5 But I suppose they get asked that all the time, don't they, Rob?

Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah. But I feel like they would.
I remember the Liverpool Arsenal one at Millennium Stadium that the engraver was already... He's already doing half his work with like, you know, 82 minutes.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 so there's got to be some sort of guesswork or just hoping.

Speaker 5 Rob, you'll never believe it. It was Emmett Smith for that FA Cup final.

Speaker 1 He was the engraver.

Speaker 1 And wow.

Speaker 5 So, in answer to the question of, do you ever try to guess the winner to save time, he says, the first year I counted my chickens and predicted the winner.

Speaker 5 In the last seven minutes, two goals went in and everything changed. That set the cat among the pigeons, which is amazing!

Speaker 3 That was the Liverpool one, yeah.

Speaker 5 He says, that was Liverpool versus Arsenal, where Michael Owen scored the winner. I was gutted.
I'm a goona. It was painful rubbing Arsenal off and writing Liverpool instead.

Speaker 3 Oh, yeah, that was like the first cup final I properly, properly remember.

Speaker 5 So, um, so Nick, what happens is he sketches the name on with a pencil just to get himself primed, primed, but yeah, in that situation, he has to rub it off to then engrave it.

Speaker 5 This begged the next question from the Guardian: Have you ever made a mistake? And he says, I end up checking spellings far too much. I get obsessive about it, checking everything hundreds of times.

Speaker 5 After a while, I begin to doubt my own sanity.

Speaker 1 What is that awful?

Speaker 1 What an incredibly...

Speaker 1 I think

Speaker 1 in that interview, he also says he's kind of just... obviously just waiting around for the rest of the time.

Speaker 1 But he's obviously got to be there for the whole day, but to just be waiting around for, you know, three, four hours, and then this very intense thing that is the only thing you're there for, is intense five minutes where you think, cannot fuck this up.

Speaker 1 If I get even a little bit wrong here, then this is all damn toilet.

Speaker 5 Everything we've said about FA Cup engraving so far, Rob, implies that the person involved in this is a very important person in the process, you know, in the match day situation, quite central to the whole magic of the situation.

Speaker 5 But there's a segment of this interview where he's asked what his routine is on the day.

Speaker 5 And he says, if there's a spare seat, I'm allowed to watch the game, but if not, I'm in the FA office with tea and sandwiches watching the game on T V. Fuck's sake!

Speaker 1 Give him a seat!

Speaker 3 That's awful.

Speaker 5 Finally, Nick he's asked, has your TV engraving appearances ever made you a celebrity?

Speaker 5 He says, Usually you just see my hands on T V, but a couple of years ago the whole of me was on screen for a few seconds. I was out in the bars afterwards and kept getting recognised.

Speaker 5 It's remarkable just how those few seconds made people want their photograph taken with me. It's nuts really, the whole day.

Speaker 1 People get whipped up into a frenzy and for that one day everything else is forgotten get your picture taken with the engraver who's asking for he's asking for a selfie he's like people people in the bar kind of nudging each other have you seen

Speaker 1 you seen who that is can you sign this mate

Speaker 1 yeah

Speaker 5 sure just give me 20 minutes

Speaker 5 Fair play. Fair play, sir.
And do you know what?

Speaker 5 Just a lovely bookend to this story, Rob. Emmett Smith, the FA Cup engraver, no longer does the FA Cup engraving.
He now trains people to engrave trophies.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 3 He's off the front line now. He's like a retired soldier.
Just seed it all. Seed it all.
Let's mentor other people.

Speaker 1 I was hoping what you were going to say there was that he doesn't do it anymore. His son does it.
Or he's passed it down the generation or something like that.

Speaker 5 He has taught his son how to engrave trophies, I can confirm. Brilliant.
So there you go. Emmett Smith, absolute legend.

Speaker 5 Rob, did you know you're not actually the first MHD guest to bring up trophy engraving? The only other one was the great Jeff Shreves.

Speaker 5 You personally went to the FA for permission to get the engraver involved in the latter stages of the game. So to just show the kind of the trophy being engraved right at the end.

Speaker 5 And there was a very kind of tight time period. So you got this all sorted out.
The FA kind of grudgingly agreed to do it.

Speaker 1 Not grudgingly, grudgingly.

Speaker 11 Enthusiastically went along with it.

Speaker 12 Much to my surprise, I thought there's no way they'll have it. You know, FA setting their ways.
They couldn't have been more supportive because I laid out the case. I went to them.

Speaker 12 I showed the timings from the previous 10 finals from the moment the referee whistled the final whistle, and then it was in the captain's hands and hoisted aloft.

Speaker 12 And I also gave me permission to go and speak to their engraver. We did a couple of dummy engravings.

Speaker 1 So, no, they were all for it.

Speaker 5 Why is dummy engravings really funny, Rob?

Speaker 1 I think.

Speaker 3 If I was the engraver, I would just be doing

Speaker 3 like the next day, I'd be doing stuff that's like use my hands a lot more just in case anybody recognised my hands.

Speaker 1 I like that that little clip from that episode of MHD really kind of summed the whole episode up. Perhaps the most aggressive

Speaker 1 example of Mezz Island Dix has ever been from Shreves either. Him going in,

Speaker 1 no, not grudgingly, not grudgingly, enthusiastically.

Speaker 5 I know, I had to revisit that episode for this purpose, and it was really hard to find a minute's worth of chat which didn't involve him taking us on in the tiniest way possible.

Speaker 5 But anyway, good to have Rob Morgan and Jeff Shreves

Speaker 5 aligned on one issue at the very least. Right, Rob, your third and final fascination of football, please.

Speaker 3 Third and final thing is people using football rhyming slang in conversation. I think this is

Speaker 3 quite a new thing that's come about, but I really love it. I think it can really

Speaker 3 accelerate a bond, a friendship if you just say, I'm just going for a Pascal Chimbanda, Wanda. And

Speaker 3 if the other person clocks on, my friend George, who loves the show,

Speaker 3 he does this a lot. Like, oh, he's on, he's on the Rock A, the Santa Cruz booze.

Speaker 1 For fuck's sake.

Speaker 3 Need to take the Edwin down to the garage, VanderSaar.

Speaker 1 That's for no, no, no. Sorry.

Speaker 3 Worst one is

Speaker 3 dying for the junior Hoyle

Speaker 1 toilet.

Speaker 5 Thanks for explaining that one. I appreciate you outlining it.

Speaker 3 Anyone know where the juniors are? Desperate for a junior.

Speaker 5 This is like Keesey translating El Classico for us on Tuesday.

Speaker 1 It's fantastic.

Speaker 3 When guys just name random naughtiest footballers, it's kind of a follow-on from that. This is like the next level of that, I think.

Speaker 5 My first question for you for this, Rob, was like, who does this? And you have already outlined that it is your flatmate George.

Speaker 5 Glad we've got him in.

Speaker 5 Glad we've got a mention of him in.

Speaker 5 So at least we have one confirmed human being that does this. But Nick, I mean,

Speaker 5 one thing I am am very much aligned with on this process is the types of footballer that get chosen for the rhyming. Like you, Pascal Chimbondas, you Rocky Santa Cruz's.

Speaker 5 I mean, this was inevitably going to be a kind of Barklesman situation, wasn't it? I mean, they just feel right for this.

Speaker 5 They have to be slightly out of our consciousness a bit. You can't have real star-level players, can you?

Speaker 1 Yeah, for it to be truly kind of rewarding, then it has to, you have to,

Speaker 1 not only do you have to nail the rhyming element, but you have to satisfy with a kind of, oh, I haven't heard about him for a while kind of element.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's very strong. It does kind of remind me slightly of, you know, in Ocean's 11, when Don Cheadle has a famously completely incongruous Cockney accent and does some rhyming slang in this that

Speaker 1 no one really understands. And he's only, it's basically an inside joke.
This is kind of, this reminds me of that a little bit.

Speaker 5 Rob, I wonder what real Cockneys think about sort of, you know, general unofficial slash improvised rhyming slang. Like, is it cultural appropriation, right, of some kind?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I don't know. You're a billy ricky boy, you're not that far away.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, I'd have to ask a few cockneys. I don't know how they feel about it, that we're taking their language and using it for naughty footballer purposes.
But yeah.

Speaker 5 As I said, there is a kind of kudos to using your pascal chin bonders for this sort of thing.

Speaker 5 But I mean, you know, even with actual cockney rhyming slang, Rob, the subtlety of using the non-rhyming word so that people have to stop it for the moment.

Speaker 1 That's how you gotta do it.

Speaker 5 It's a touch of class, right?

Speaker 3 Yeah, that's how you got it. You can't let you can't do the other word.

Speaker 5 He's on the Rocky is, yeah, that would, I would really have to stop and think about that one. Yeah,

Speaker 5 but only Barclaysman literate people are really worthwhile for this conversation.

Speaker 3 If you do get it, think of the friendship you're going to have with that guy.

Speaker 3 It's going to accelerate...

Speaker 3 Through years and years of conversation, you can accelerate it with just a

Speaker 3 Roque Santa Cruz thing.

Speaker 3 It's magic.

Speaker 5 Nick, how long could you tolerate a friendship with someone who does this habitually?

Speaker 1 The problem will come up is if you. Because this is the sort of thing that will be, I suspect, will be funny for a while and then you'll grow weary of.
But there's always going to be someone

Speaker 1 who just takes it a little bit too far. Not takes it too far, but carries on longer than the sort of life of it, really.

Speaker 5 I'm trying to think of Premier League football that arrives with second half. No, it's not going to happen.

Speaker 5 Right, that brings us to the end to Rob Morgan's niche footballing fascinations. We'll be back very shortly with his irritations.

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Speaker 5 Welcome back to Football Clichés. We've heard Rob Morgan's niche footballing fascinations.
Rob, you don't strike me as someone who gets irritated, to be honest.

Speaker 5 You seem quite a happy guy, a joy-filled guy.

Speaker 3 I can get annoyed. This is all up front.
I can get really annoyed. Yeah, you'll see.
You'll see.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I mean, your patience slowly began to run out as I was filling around with mic settings before we started recording, so we might be close to that point.

Speaker 5 But But tell us about your first footballing irritation, please.

Speaker 3 My first football irritation is goals from the halfway line being nominated for goal of the month or goal of the season.

Speaker 3 I just think there's a big deception that halfway line goals are actually like beautiful and good goals. They're ugly.

Speaker 3 Like, and I just, yes, it's it is a long way, and you have to have something like I could, I couldn't score the halfway line goal. I put my hands up, but you are essentially just booting the ball.

Speaker 3 it's like got the ball has the same trajectory as a defensive clearance but they they these goals get like they get awards left right and centre and it's just yeah I think with a well-worked team goal there's much a better the goal satisfaction is so much more but like a halfway line goal is just like like this is this is my reaction it's like oh

Speaker 3 it's like it's not uh it's not the same satisfaction as

Speaker 3 any other goal I think um even a tap in I think has more goal satisfaction than uh than a halfway line girl. But it's more the deception and the delusion that we think these halfway line girls are

Speaker 3 like just incredible girls.

Speaker 5 This is a timely time to have this debate, Nick, you know, given that Route 1 football is clearly on its way back.

Speaker 5 But I mean, I do agree I am at the same sort of point of my tolerance for halfway line goals as Robb is.

Speaker 5 In the sense that if, you know, if a kind of viral looking tweet will pop up saying, watch this player score from the halfway line in Peru or something.

Speaker 5 For the first time in my life, I actually won't watch it by default. I'll be like, I don't think anything here is going to surprise me, and nothing's going to make me go, watch this.

Speaker 5 Whereas, if it's any other type of goal that they hint at, I'm going to watch it because I'm going to want to know what technical skill is involved.

Speaker 5 I won't go as far as to say it's just booting it, but what I would say, Nick, is that halfway learn goals have got, have, have, should have got themselves into position now where they're not great goals, they're not amazing, they're just feats.

Speaker 5 And feats are still good and still, still noteworthy, but they're not on the same levels as any other type of great goal. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1 I'm fully on board with this.

Speaker 1 It is a kind of speaks to a sort of laziness or lack of imagination that you could think that this is automatically going to be

Speaker 1 a brilliant goal. Well, one thing I would say, Rob, is it is

Speaker 1 would you kind of allow any tolerance for a player, like you know, Xiabi Alonso did it a couple of times,

Speaker 1 a player who is like, uh, who has done it a few times, so it's clearly like a thing that they do, or it's clearly something they try very often.

Speaker 1 Is there any kind of tolerance to that, or are you not allowing that?

Speaker 3 Not really. It's still a halfway line goal.
Like, it's still...

Speaker 1 No, not really.

Speaker 5 But, I mean, surely, Rob, there are degrees of impressiveness with halfway line goals.

Speaker 5 I mean, if we take, you know, the kind of standard, industry standard default reference here, which is David Beckham's 1996 effort against Wimbledon.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's the guy.

Speaker 5 He had a lot of time to think about that. There's an element of style about it.
I mean, it still required some delicacy.

Speaker 5 But that's just standard effort. It's, you know, struck from the halfway line, off the floor, essentially a chip.
But, you know, you could have...

Speaker 5 There's Wayne Rooney's for Everton, which was kind of first-time strike, sort of a nice flat trajectory. over the goalkeeper's head.
There's been occasional volleys.

Speaker 5 I'm sure I've seen a Sunday league one where a goal kick has been returned with interest on the volley back over the goalkeeper's head. Now, surely that would impress you, wouldn't it?

Speaker 1 Yeah, no, I'm not saying

Speaker 3 you don't, yeah, I'm not saying you don't have to be a, have, like, no ability to do it. Like, I couldn't do it, but it's just, I think just the way it looks, it doesn't please my soul.

Speaker 3 And it annoys me that everybody else loves it. I think that it's more that that I don't like.

Speaker 5 On that point then, Nick, the kind of default inclusion of any halfway line goal in goal of the month slash goal of the season.

Speaker 5 Is this the point we need to address? It's like, are we at the point now where we need to really really kind of interrogate whether they actually deserve to be in the list?

Speaker 5 Because, I mean, I'll take for example, you know, Tony Boa's goal for lead against Wimbledon, the half-volley. He tried to lob the goalkeeper in that game from kickoff.

Speaker 5 I think it was before that goal. So if he'd scored that, and let's assume the other goal would have happened, he would have completely overshadowed it.
It might have even edged it out.

Speaker 5 Do you want to live in a world where that goal would edge out that goal?

Speaker 1 I do not, no. I am kind of fully behind the idea that

Speaker 1 there should be a sort of an agreement, a broad agreement, that yes, okay, fine, that's impressive, and we we like the kind of impudence of trying that kind of thing, but we're going to leave those out of your puscas awards and your matches and goals of the seasons.

Speaker 1 Um, because we know, yeah, that's fine, that's very impressive, but we want a little bit more imagination, you know, a little bit more creativity, we want a little bit more variety in the kind of goals.

Speaker 1 Because you so because you know, people who have been watching football for a very long time,

Speaker 1 you're quite infrequently surprised by a goal, But

Speaker 1 something that is truly inventive or true, just truly weird, then they're the kind of things that belong in these

Speaker 1 things rather than something you've seen dozens of times before.

Speaker 5 This is a good point, Rob. The Pushkus Award is is kind of pushing boundaries with this.
Like, they're clearly not having halfway line goals in the Pushkus Award situation.

Speaker 5 And to the Pushkus Awards' credit, they are going for the weirdest goal they could possibly find that looks like it was even remotely deliberate.

Speaker 5 And that, that, I mean, maybe they've gone too far with it, but they're after your heart there, aren't they, really?

Speaker 3 The Pushkins Awards. Yeah, they're doing a great job.
I think it's more the Premier League, like goal of the month, goal of the month, goal of the season. Like, they're still in there.
Like,

Speaker 3 they feel forced, like, oh,

Speaker 3 we have to have a halfway line goal.

Speaker 5 You know, it's would you accept a quota for this sort of thing? Like,

Speaker 5 would you say, okay,

Speaker 5 there's going to be one? There's going to be one every 10 years.

Speaker 3 No, not every season, definitely not. I think, like, one, I would say, one every 10 years, or like,

Speaker 3 one every five years. That's how freaking I want to see him.

Speaker 1 Once a day,

Speaker 1 it will go, did you know it's a halfway line golf season?

Speaker 3 So, uh, it could be

Speaker 1 like a leap year, it's like a leap year.

Speaker 1 Would you be willing to accept, like, like Adam said, well, it's the volley, like Stankovich scored one of those for Into in the Champions League, it's a similar kind of thing.

Speaker 5 He's done it a couple times, actually.

Speaker 1 Surprisingly, it was another one, yeah.

Speaker 1 Would you accept, I realise this is kind of physically unlikely, but would you accept like a Robona from the halfway line as the sort of the like variant on the theme kind of thing?

Speaker 3 Yeah, if they're doing, if they're kind of

Speaker 3 doing something different,

Speaker 3 they're changing the genre a little bit. But if it's just a big boot...
I think it's just because of the...

Speaker 3 When a goal is like a bullet, it's more satisfying.

Speaker 3 It's the trajectory of the ball, isn't it? It just... It's like, ugh.

Speaker 5 A halfway line Robona, I actually, I genuinely think would literally break the internet.

Speaker 5 And I think the Pushkus Award would be plummeting into crisis about what they had to do about it.

Speaker 5 But yeah, I think the Robona aspect would transcend the halfway linear, so at least they would dovetail. So, Rob, I can see why you would accept that.
And I think your original point is unbroken.

Speaker 5 Your resolution remains unbroken about this.

Speaker 5 Right, on to your second irritation of football, please.

Speaker 3 Second irritation is like

Speaker 3 when a player breaks out of the warm-up to have a chat with a punditary team. that annoys me.

Speaker 3 I think it's like a symbol of this new era, loose, jokey, frenzy, punditry. I mean, I'm at risk at sounding like Roy Keene here.

Speaker 1 You so genuinely annoyed here. Yeah,

Speaker 3 I think I just have a high value for professionalism, I suppose. Or I think

Speaker 3 the era that you grew up watching football is always going to be the best.

Speaker 3 era and when stuff changes you kind of it annoys you i think but um first of all i don't even know why the punditry team are are on the pitch. Like, there should be more separation.

Speaker 3 I don't like this mixy kind of everyone's fret. Like, it should be like church and state, just pundits in the studio, players on the pitch.
Like, everything's a bit cash. And,

Speaker 3 I mean, I think Grealish did it. Ronaldo definitely did it.
I think Ronaldo probably could get away with it just because he is Ronaldo. But I miss Hansen.

Speaker 3 And, yeah, I mean, you don't have to be a robot pundit. Or it's good to have personality, but...
But then also, what qualifies you as a player to interrupt the Punditry team? I think it's...

Speaker 3 if one of the pundits is a former manager you've played under, possibly, or if you've been abroad for a while, potentially like maybe Harry Kane could be excused from interrupting the Punditship team.

Speaker 5 But incredible caveats here.

Speaker 3 Definitely, yeah, definitely not the third goalie.

Speaker 1 Nick,

Speaker 5 this is quite clearly BT Sports slash TNT Sports doing, isn't it? You know, essentially breaking that boundary between studio and pitch. We've become accustomed to the the little kind of...

Speaker 5 What do we call it? Podium? Plint?

Speaker 1 The table that they use?

Speaker 1 I think just the table. I think it's usually too big to be a plint, and it's not really a podium.
No, it's not.

Speaker 5 You can't stand on it. So

Speaker 5 that's broken the pitch perimeters.

Speaker 5 And then, of course, you've got to the situation where Kelly Cates and Carragher will be strolling through the centre circle on Sky while the team's warming up either side of them.

Speaker 5 And a ball will inevitably go near them, and there'll be a little chuckle as one of them kicks it back. I don't know.

Speaker 5 I mean, TV companies have made the fairly brave assumption, Nick, that we want to be embedded in the action, such as it is in the warm-up. I mean, um, I mean, television looks alright to me.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it does. And it, just as a very mild tangent, you bring up Hansen there.
I cannot picture him, and I can't imagine he'd be happy with the table at the side of the the pitch setup.

Speaker 1 You can't really picture him standing up

Speaker 1 while delivering punditry.

Speaker 1 Don't know why. Anyway, sorry.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's it is is definitely a kind of a uh a consequence of this.

Speaker 1 And they th it's probably by design as well, because particularly TNT, they like their kind of Matey bantery pundits like Joe Cole and Peter Crouch, who have played, you know, maybe they're examples of players who are a little bit, who retired a little bit too long ago to be playing with too many players who would be on the pitch at that stage.

Speaker 1 But like Daniel Sturridge or someone like that, they'll have played with a lot of these people. They're going to be Matey.

Speaker 1 So the TV companies probably want them to do this kind of thing as a almost as a maybe this is overthinking it, but as a way of kind of underlining the relevance of these guys.

Speaker 1 Like, this guy played so recently, he knows some of the guys that

Speaker 1 are in the game today. So, you know, look at him, he's saying hello.

Speaker 5 Rob, one thing I will kind of agree on with this, and where it does irritate me, is that these situations where they're talking to a player, you know, mid-warm-up, it just reminds me how much more time there is before the fucking game starts.

Speaker 5 Because I get really impatient, you know, whether it's my team or, you know, whoever's on TV,

Speaker 5 and we know that there's going to be a good hour before the game starts that they're going to cover cover this game I get really impatient in the bit before they go back in before the warm-up because I know that they've got to go back in get changed and then come out and do the whole ceremony before the game starts and that is the point I'm thinking I really want to watch some football now especially it really kicks in at 1230 on a Saturday which is of course the TNT slot so that's I think that's the where I get most impatient about it yeah it's a long time yeah too much time but I just think

Speaker 3 If Surely the warm-up can't be that important if you're if you're happy to have a little chat with the pundits like what are you doing in the warm-up? Surely...

Speaker 5 That's a valid point. I mean, these days, Rob, it's borderline unprofessional to break off your warm-up and go and chat to the TV.

Speaker 5 It's obviously contractual as well. So maybe, if anything, it's too professional.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 5 So lots to consider on that one. Right, time for your third and final irritation of football, please.

Speaker 3 Okay, my final irritant is defenders celebrating when they make a challenge.

Speaker 3 Again, I feel like this is

Speaker 3 quite new. I don't remember this growing up.
But I feel it was an unwritten code that defenders shouldn't need to celebrate. Strikers and attacking players, we get it.
They're fragile people.

Speaker 3 They need the ego.

Speaker 3 Yeah, we give you that. You need it.
You need it. Defenders.

Speaker 3 They should be stoic and just robotic machines. Obviously, you want passion, but in terms of celebrating,

Speaker 3 it just gives me the ick when it's 90 minutes and the whole defense is celebrating because they're forced to throw in. And I mean, how bad is it going to get?

Speaker 3 Is Lewis Dunk going to be doing the robot because of a well executed off-sidetrap? I think it comes mainly, maybe it comes from American football a little bit. I don't think

Speaker 3 consciously, but American football, they celebrate every play and the defense celebrate too. So maybe subconsciously, they've taken it from there.

Speaker 3 I don't mind when a keeper saves a pen

Speaker 3 and a defender will give like a quick fist bump and then the keeper will just be like, all right, go on, on, go on, go on. But

Speaker 3 defenders celebrating,

Speaker 3 yeah, it irritates me.

Speaker 5 At the top of this section, Nick, I said that I thought Rob was a joyful fellow that I could possibly imagine being irritated by stuff.

Speaker 5 And his selections have been people scoring goals, people wanting to have a talk with someone else, and then defenders doing their job and wanting to actually be, you know, recognised for it.

Speaker 5 This is all very personal stuff, to me, actually. So he's more vindictive than I thought he would be, actually.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's a deep insight into the soul of a person isn't it yeah definitely so Nick really how did this snowball so quickly because it does feel like it's been it's had a really small gestation period the defenders celebrating sort of blocks and tackles and winning throw-ins and stuff like that but it hasn't quite developed enough to have an athletic long read about it so I mean we this is a constant joke that we would make on this podcast but I do feel now that is a cultural milestone that has to be reached for a phenomenon yeah it kind of if if you were really overthinking it you could you could you could think of it as a sort of well we have as the uh exposure of footballers has increased over the years and you know even even the kind of stodgy stoic uh defenders who are uh whose job is to essentially ruin football by stopping the thing that we're all watching for even as their profiles grow that the the the the the profile isn't quite commensurate with the uh sort of attention or glory that they get so they they it's like they have to emphasize that yeah no no i this is this is just as important as that flashy fucker up the other end of the pitch scoring a goal.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 I have to really kind of emphasise that this is an achievement and this is really important.

Speaker 1 It's also a very sort of alpha thing.

Speaker 1 You joke about Lewis Dunk doing the robot or whatever, but

Speaker 1 when the defenders do celebrate this thing, it's always that really kind of angry scream into the kind of night sky type celebration.

Speaker 1 If you're really being NFL and kind of over the top about it, there might be a chest bump or something.

Speaker 1 I'm picturing Gabrielle here, the Arsenal version of Gabrielle. The leading exponent right now.

Speaker 1 Big time.

Speaker 5 Big time. I mean, we're speculating, Rob, on the kind of the motivation for it and how it's become a cultural phenomenon.

Speaker 5 And obviously, in football, things don't really need a great deal of encouragement to catch on. If players see other players doing it to some effect, it's going to carry on.

Speaker 5 So in that respect, it's not a huge surprise that it's snowballed so quickly.

Speaker 5 But at the same time, you can see why it's caught on, because it gets a massive reaction from from crowds straight away and you know you know Premier League atmospheres are being bemoaned year after year and about you know how they're all so quiet but it is a really easy way to get your crowd going but you couldn't you couldn't do it if you were you couldn't do it if it was could you do it if at nil-nil

Speaker 3 there has to be a scoreline criteria for sure do you have to be lead is it like does it have to be an important match or is it like uh you're leading 2-1 and it's like the 85th i feel they happen at the end more than just in the game.

Speaker 3 I don't know. I think, yeah, 0-0, I don't think it would warrant that.

Speaker 5 So I would say, Nick, that there are kind of two explicit kind of scenarios broadly where this can happen.

Speaker 5 One, where you're winning comfortably and so you're not tempting fate in any way and you're in front of your home fans so that so you know it's going to be you're going to have this kind of effect of just getting everything together and the other team are going to be crestfallen.

Speaker 5 So if you're winning and you know you're going to win, you could probably get away with doing it.

Speaker 5 The only other scenario I think you would be allowed to do is if it's real backs to the wall situation and you're probably not expected to hold on and it's really late and you put in something like an incredibly last-ditch tackle.

Speaker 5 At that point you could probably get away with a quite a furious one but nothing too smug. But other than that I don't really see much of a window for this.

Speaker 1 Yeah the two examples that the inevitably the forest examples that I can think of for the latter thing was one was the other night when Forrest were playing Porto and I can't remember what he did.

Speaker 1 I think it was a big tackle or a clearance or something. Murillo really gave it the big one after, and it was a kind of.

Speaker 1 It wasn't quite the sort of tension was mounting, and he was kind of really trying to whip up the crowd, but there was an element of that.

Speaker 1 And the other one was a few years ago when in Forrest's first season back in the Premier League, when I think it was, I can't remember, there was the last game of the season.

Speaker 1 I don't think it was the last game of the season, but it was Forrest against Arsenal. And if Forrest won the game, they would have survived.
It was like confirming survival.

Speaker 1 And Morgan Gibbs White like chased someone back and put in a tackle and

Speaker 1 cleared it out.

Speaker 1 And he celebrated i think more enthusiastically than i've ever seen him celebrate an actual goal um which was kind of the i suppose there was an uh it was it was such a kind of important game it was such a tense situation and it was that was real kind of forrest score quite early on and then held on to it for the rest of the game so that was a real kind of backs to the wall in a crucial situation kind of thing but it was also a uh because it was gibbs white it was a i've done something that i shouldn't really be doing yeah or i'm not associated with doing.

Speaker 1 And I've done it brilliantly. So, kind of, you know, whipping up the crowd that way.

Speaker 5 Yeah, the long run back would definitely have fed into that as well. It's like, look what I've just done.

Speaker 5 You know, Rob, if I'm thinking of the most mundane current thing that gets that reaction, it would be because you see it for goalbound shots being blocked. You'd see it for a penalty save.

Speaker 5 You'd see it for a last-it's tackle.

Speaker 5 But the most mundane thing at the moment would be when a defender goes in for a kind of 50-50 kind of block tackle by the touchline and in their half, and the assistant referee will give it give the throw in to them so it's so not only are they celebrating their their own kind of commitment to the tackle they they are essentially celebrating the opponent not getting the throw in so there's an element of ridicule about it which i think really really adds to the whole thing so chardonfreud definitely plays a part here i think as well yeah um but what's the what's where could we go from here like if if the most mundane thing at the moment is winning an unexpected throw in slash goal kick and like you've suggested that lewis dunk might celebrate like performing an off-side trap really well.

Speaker 5 That's perfectly feasible because if you think about it, an off-side trap being executed perfectly is clearly a thing that gets drilled.

Speaker 5 It results in a break of play, and one player could well be perceived as the one who kind of engineered the whole thing.

Speaker 1 The berese of the whole situation.

Speaker 3 It's also a team effort. Do like all the four defenders do a joint celebration?

Speaker 1 If it's like a point to an off-sidetrap,

Speaker 3 like a human pyramid, as oh, something, maybe a headed clearance. That's where

Speaker 3 we're going.

Speaker 5 But God, could you, but this is the thing. I mean, we've joked about off-side traps, but I do think this is a perfectly feasible thing.

Speaker 5 But a headed clearance, could you celebrate something mid-game while the ball's still in play?

Speaker 1 I think that would be the line for a lot of pundits.

Speaker 3 The ball has to go out of play, I think.

Speaker 1 It has to be at least out of the half. At least out of the half.
I'll tell you what, one thing that I

Speaker 1 would have really encouraged celebration for was the famous Phil Jones heading the ball while on the ground kind of thing.

Speaker 1 That would have been brilliant. I can't remember whether he

Speaker 1 immediately did go out of play following that, but that would have been superb if he'd leapt up and given it the big one after that.

Speaker 5 The thing with that nick, though, was the net consensus on that, that it was actually an achievement or that he'd fucked up and somehow got away with it.

Speaker 1 Well, I mean, that's a crucial distinction.

Speaker 1 Yeah, there's a whole other kind of element to this about how it was actually good defending, but because it was Phil Jones and everyone had kind of decided that Phil Jones was a clown at that point, then it became very meme-y and it it became very, oh, look at this idiot heading the ball while it's on the ground.

Speaker 5 It was great improvisation, if anything.

Speaker 1 Exactly, yeah.

Speaker 5 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 5 So, finally, Rob, how would you feel about a player celebrating a goal scored from the halfway line?

Speaker 1 Oh, God. No.

Speaker 1 No. Well, okay.

Speaker 3 It can't be a big celebration. The best it can be is just like a surprised little group hug.

Speaker 1 That's it.

Speaker 3 You can't do any individual celebration for that.

Speaker 5 Okay, okay. So

Speaker 5 we haven't managed to make Rob Morgan budge an inch on

Speaker 5 his commitments here. So, but yeah, that was a wonderful array of Mezz Harland dicks.
Thanks to you, Rob Morgan.

Speaker 1 Thank you very much.

Speaker 5 Thanks to you, Nick Miller. Thank you.
And thanks to everyone for listening. We'll be back on Tuesday.
See you then.

Speaker 5 This podcast is part of the Sport Social Podcast Network.

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