Don’t mention the war

ALL hail the asterisk! Irish football’s most reliable typographical symbol is back and, as the dictionary definition would have it, busy living up to one of its most useful functions: “replacing portions of a profanity in order to reduce offence”.

Those of us with long memories recall its first appearance in 1982 when the Irish were beaten 2-1 by T******d & T****o. Then there was 1995 and that scoreless draw in L***********n, an occasion when the asterisk served the double purpose of helping to spare Big Jack’s blushes while making life easier for geographically-challenged hacks. More recently, of course, we had Cy****s and now, the latest game that dare not speak its name, S*n M****o.

Indeed, ‘asterisk’ seems altogether too noble-sounding a term for something which likes to get down and dirty, so imagine my relief to discover that, in certain computer circles, the symbol is more commonly known as a “splat”, due apparently to its “squashed bug” appearance.