The Footballing Perfect Tense

Anyone with an ear for language will have noticed a tendency over the last few years for a strange new English usage to creep into sports' commentary, more specifically football commentary.

Often managers and presenters will say things like "He's come her and done well.....he's crossed the ball and given them problems" instead of the standard form "He came here....he did well, he crossed the ball etc." Just listen next time you here football being discussed. This phenomenon is part of the discussion in Michael Rosen's recent Word of Mouth on BBC Radio 4

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qtnz

and it's worth a listen.

For me the English academic in a French university, was closest to identfying the trait linguistically and culturally, but he missed the point that it is heard not just by players, many of whom have little in the way of formal education, but managers and even presenters. What's wrong with the past definite? There was an interesting attempt to rationalise its use as a past in the present description as a player comments live on a recording of his play obviously in the past. Plausible, but the usage started with presenters and managers commenting live.

I've not yet heard it in the rugby arena, but I think I did hear it during a cricket commentary. If anyone hears examples of this in other sports......curling......Graeco-Roman wrestling.....badminton.....I would love to know.

The Eagle (of The Ninth)

It is said that this film’s title was changed to simply “The Eagle” to avoid confusing American audiences into thinking it was about golf. Any misapprehensions one might have about the film’s subject matter are soon dispelled as a boat of Roman soldiers is seen being paddled stealthily along a tree-lined river in Britain in the second century AD. I suppose they could just have been looking for a lost ball.

When I heard that this film, directed by the Scot Kevin Macdonald (“The Last King of Scotland”, “Touching the Void”...) was based upon Rosemary Sutcliff’s popular teenage fiction classic “The Eagle of the Ninth” (1954) and furthermore starred Jamie Bell (Billy Elliott) and the incomparable Donald Sutherland, I was keen to see it. Disappointment set in almost immediately. The film is exquisitely shot against impressive locations, the production values are very high, the Roman villas, forts, costumes and the wonderfully wild Britons are extremely convincing, the music score evocative until the end when the Gaelic pipes begin to grate, but most of the acting and script are truly dreadful.

Marcus Flavius Aquila (get it?) played by Channing Tatum, a young Roman centurion arrives in Britain in 120 AD for his first command, but with the real intention of rescuing the Eagle, the standard of the ninth legion, which his father commanded and was lost in battle with the Ancient Britons. Aquila’s father was killed in that battle and his son’s mission is to find the emblem and bring it back to civilisation thus restoring the honour of the family name. Severely but gloriously wounded in battle, whilst recuperating, he saves the life of a British slave Esca (Jamie Bell) and the debt of honour thus incurred obliges Esca to serve Aquila and help him in his quest beyond the boundaries of civilisation (aka Hadrian’s Wall) to find the Eagle and rescue it from the clutches of the picturesque Seal People (Picts?) in the Highlands. After many adventures, meeting up with an ex-Roman legionary gone native and AWOL, capture by the Seal People and an interesting role reversal when to avoid death Aquila has to appear to be Esca’s slave, they miraculously find the Eagle and in the face of extreme hardship, bring it back to Roman Britain and glory.
It may be a personal failing of mine, but having Roman soldiers played by American actors was an immediate turn-off. Listening to the Kevin Macdonald on BBC radio, it is clear that this was a deliberate central conceit, thus drawing parallels between the Roman Empire and its modern American counterpart (Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan) and through showing the Britons as slaves, inverting the later historical emergence of the British Empire. While watching the film I was aware of the lack of any female character, but took it to be part of the boys’ own era of adventure story-telling that Sutcliff’s novel came from in the 1950s. But no, apparently there is an overlay of homo-eroticism in the relationship between Aquila and Esca. That interpretation completely eluded me I have to admit.

There are good bits: the Seal people, having been described as the most barbarous of savages are shown to have a settled, ordered village and family life – that is until the Prince slits the throat of his little son for betraying them. Also we are invited to reflect upon the savagery which the Romans themselves inflicted upon the indigenous peoples. These points are well made, but with its obvious and deliberate American overlay which makes one think of “The Deer Hunter,” “ Apocalypse Now,” even “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee,” the film fails to convince. It is severely hindered by a poor script full of banalities key points unexplained and some very wooden acting by Mr Tatum.

Overall I was glad when it finished and the ending, with the two protagonists walking away considering their next move makes one squirm and groan inwardly “not a sequel surely....”

England v France

When responding to a journalist asking about the comments by Marc Lièvremont, the French rugby coach in the week prior to the recent England v France Six Nations’ Championship match at Twickenham that his team and all the Six Nations sides hated England, Martin Johnson England’s coach said “There’s history to this.” Too right there is.

From the opening fixture in this long-running battle (which we the English lost comprehensively in 1066) hostilities have raged on and off for a thousand years. Let us not be fooled by the fact that we haven’t engaged our traditional enemy in warfare since 1815 nor by the anomalous twentieth century wars against Germany; France is and always has been our “bête noire.” I wonder if the French have a word for that………

As any good student of history knows, the destinies of England and that of France have been inextricably intertwined since the Norman Conquest. Under Angevin Plantagenet rule, England and vast swathes of modern France were administered by the same monarchs. Under Henry II (anyone remember Peter O’Toole and Catherine Hepburn in The Lion in Winter?) Angevin lands stretched from Ireland and the border with Scotland south across France as far as the Pyrenees; The Royal Demesne of France being restricted to Paris and the east of the country. Years of warfare with successive French Kings continued as the English monarchs took on a more distinctively nationalistic character and despite notable triumphs at Agincourt during the hundred years’ war in 1415 when English archers defeated numerically superior French forces, our lands in France were gradually reduced until 1558 under Mary Tudor when Calais was lost after 211 years of rule. Wars continued regularly throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries until Wellington finally put paid to Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815.

When facing a common foe, we and the French have proved uneasy and ineffective allies. Jealousy and bitter rivalry characterised relations between Philip II and Richard the Lionheart during the third crusade in 1191 when the French withdrew after making little real contribution. After the Crimean War 1855-7, the interdict on Russia having a military presence in the Black Sea was undone by Napoleon III urged on by Bismarck. In the twentieth century we twice fought in France and twice helped rid them of occupying Germans. In return, de Gaulle blocked Britain’s first and second applications to join the Common Market in 1963 and 1967. Since then, French support for NATO and joint-US action in Iraq and Afghanistan has been distinctly lukewarm.

We are different: temperamentally; politically; economically and culturally. We have different ways of looking at the world and very different interests and yet our geographical proximity and shared history has provided a common thread. Voltaire was impressed by English liberties and English nineteenth century writers have admired French literature, particularly Balzac. But when it comes to serious things like rugby, foreign policy and war, it’s les rosbifs vs the frogs.

Since we’ve stopped fighting them on the battle field, few things give an Englishman more pleasure than beating them at rugby. England 17 France 9 February 26 Twickenham. Mind you, they will be a hard side to beat on neutral territory in New Zealand come the World Cup.