soccer usages

[Robert Fitzke]

Aren't you blurring the distinction between the location where scoring takes
place, i.e, the "goal" and the name of the score, itself, i.e., "goal"?

----- Original Message -----
From: Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Friday, October 25, 2002 11:03 AM
Subject: Re: soccer usages


> Not to pile on here, but the phrase "an own goal" (in soccer) seems
> to confirm that the goal your keeper/goalie is guarding is indeed
> your own goal, not the other team's.  (The phrase relates to what
> happens when a player inadvertently--at least one assumes it was
> inadvertently--knocks the ball into his own goal, scoring for the
> other team.  This happens in basketball too, but there's no specific
> term for it.  In hockey it happens more frequently, but I'm not sure
> whether "own goal" applies.  My understanding is the same as most of
> the other commentators here:  in each sport, you defend your own goal.
>
> One more piece of indirect evidence:  in basketball, there's of
> course no goalie or keeper, but there is "goal-tending", in
> particular normal ("defensive") goaltending, when an opposing
> player's shot is blocked on the way down or swatted against the
> backboard, the referee calls goaltending, and the shot is allowed as
> if it had gone in (there are subtle rules on when it counts as
> goaltending and when it counts as a legitimate block).  In such
> cases, the defender is overzealously "tending" his own goal.  There
> is a much more rarely called "offensive goaltending" violation in
> which a player tries to tap in or rebound a ball in the abstract
> "cone" above the opposing basket, but this is clearly derivative and
> marked.
>
> Larry
>