Book of two halves is new table-topper

“HOW long is a piece of string?” may be the big question in Irish football but, world-wide, it’s just one among a host of impenetrable mysteries thrown up by the beautiful game.

Baffling, unanswerable teasers such as: why is a left foot either 'trusty' or 'educated' but a right foot is neither? Why is a bad back-pass almost invariably 'suicidal'? Why can you score from a corner with a 'free header' but never with a 'free shot'? And why are hooligans always a 'tiny minority' even when there seem to be hundreds of them throwing seats across Kenilworth Road?

These are just some of the issues raised by John Leigh and David Woodhouse's new book Football Lexicon, an A to Z catechism of cliche that will cause football journalists to blush, and satisfy all those linguists who have been waiting for what the authors call "a sort of Robbie Fowler's Modern English Usage'.