3.1.12 When We Collide - Footballers In Love?

I have, not for the first time, been absorbing the reports that fill the sports pages.  After a flurry (is that the collective noun, I wonder?) of matches over the Christmas and New Year period, there have been numerous games and in line with this, numerous incidents.

As ever, the thugs that put on shirts of various colours and designs, and kick a ball about for 90+6 minutes, have been involved in off-the-ball incidents as well as argy-bargy when someone does in fact have the ball.  What is quite amusing is the terminology used by the various commentators, pundits, managers and players.  No one is ever reckoned to be "that sort of player", because apparently not one of the stud-wielding machines is capable of any 'malice'.  "He's not malicious - he's not that sort of player, and he didn't set out to xxxx xxxx".  The Blankety Blank can be pretty much anything, such as: break his leg, chop him in half, cause an injury.  When two players collide, it's rather like the Matt Cardle song - here's a reminder of the lyrics:

When we collide, we come together
If we don't we'll always be apart
I'll take a bruise I know your're worth it
When you hit me, hit me hard

All of the commentators now describe a clash of any description as a "Coming Together".  Whatever the outcome, and irrespective of any fairness in the challenge or intent by either party, the unplanned clash is described thus.  "It was a simple coming together" says the commentator/manager/pundit, as if it were an inevitable outcome.  Two foreheads just happened to be touching, ahead of one player throwing himself to the floor in supposed agony.  A player steamrollers into the ribs of an opponent who runs in front of him, and it's all a 'coming together'.  All bollocks.  Anyone would think they are having sex, and coming together.  Obviously that all happens after the foreplay (kissing and hugging on the pitch) once back in the changing rooms.

I really do think that as footballers are very commonly thugs or pricks or both, that this terminology is confusing.  Two overpaid ball-kickers managing to bang into each other is not best described as two pricks coming together.  Hmmmmm . . . . . . on second thoughts . . . . . . .

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