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'The match'
Opinion: What are they all talking about?
If there is one thing that irks me even more than the incessant sports talk that forms the basis of so many social conversations, it has to be the over-use of the word ‘match’ in Irish society. This bizarre phenomenon is still a mystery to me. What is this unspoken understanding that people have when talking about ‘the match’. Which one you ask? Well, this is the question I also ask myself whenever I hear anyone talking about ‘the match’?
I mean, I used to assume that everyone was talking about the same match all the time, but then I accepted that this did not really make sense.
How do they all know which match is being talked about? I mean, I really haven’t figured it out. Is it some regional tone of voice (which I am not picking up), that communicates the precise match and sport being referred to? Is it unreasonable of me to think that there may be more than one match in more than one sport going on at any particular time?
If two people are talking and they have not seen/spoken to each other in a couple of weeks, then just how many matches will have taken place in that space of time? So, which match are they all talking about?! And if they are all talking about the same match all the time, then the players must be exhausted because they never seem to get a break.
It would appear that the answer to ‘which match?’ (a question I like to ask for fear of not being able to exercise my vocal chords for the duration of the conversation) is usually ‘The County Final’, the generic sibling of ‘the match’. This one poses even more problems for me, provoking such questions as ‘Which county?’; ‘Which final?’ and ‘Which, oh my God, could you please be more specific, I beg you-sport?’
And then I start thinking, okay so there are quite a few counties, so there must be many county finals of some description going on all the time, but the answer to the ‘Which county?’ question appears to have only two or three possible answers: ‘Kilkenny’, ‘Tipperary’ and sometimes ‘Waterford’. If these ‘County Finals’ are restricted to predominantly three counties and they are always in ‘the County Final’ every week, do these people ever take a break?
Is it me?
By: Jusus_Chreest
