Listening to the radio this morning [yes, that old fashioned thing in the corner and on MW too] and the Radio 5 football news came on with updates of yesterday's football matches. As the presenter was doing his spiel I predicted that he'd say...
Liverpool lost after taking the lead at Southampton. What he actually said seconds later was that
Liverpool lost after taking a 2-0 lead at Southampton.
So I got it slightly wrong. But how come I came so close to getting it right? It's because since I've been a Saints fan, which is practically all my life, there have only been a few seasons where Southampton FC have ever been truly credited with beating any opposition. That was during the early 1980's and when we were in League One and The Championship in recent years. You see this stuff in the very fabric of sporting headlines in newspaper articles, and time and again it is reinforced. And it's not just Saints. It's any club that beats a glamour club. The glamour clubs don't get beaten. They unfortunately lose. This morning's announcement on Radio 5 was so geared to that way of thinking that the presenter even said that Liverpool lost
at Southampton. Not against Southampton. See the difference? He didn't even acknowledge SFC as a football opposition, but just a place. I know it's very subtle but it is embedded in football journalism.
And now you're aware [if you weren't before] this happens every time Saints beat glamour club opposition, listen out for it when we come up against Man City, if we beat them. Tbf to them, they may not quite yet be establishment enough, but Liverpool are about as historically glamorous as it gets. Hence they lost a football match in Southampton. We don't really know who the opposition were and we don't really care.
Just fancied off-loading that.
