{"id":16,"date":"2004-10-22T12:27:25","date_gmt":"2004-10-22T11:27:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spiritoffootball.com\/2006_blog\/?p=16"},"modified":"2010-01-18T22:19:14","modified_gmt":"2010-01-18T22:19:14","slug":"a-eulogy-to-the-ball","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2006\/blog\/2004\/10\/22\/a-eulogy-to-the-ball\/","title":{"rendered":"A Eulogy to The Ball"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"width:200px;height:150px\" src=\"https:\/\/theball.tv\/common\/images\/2002\/ball\/the_ball_on_white_200.jpg\" alt=\"The Ball 2002\" \/><br \/>\n<i>&#8220;This is what we play with. Go and get it!&#8221;<\/i><\/p>\n<p>That was, apparently, the entirety of the late Brian Clough&#8217;s pre-match team talk, once he&#8217;d placed a ball on a towel in the middle of the dressing room, according to an article entitled &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.footballculture.net\/insider\/trivia_football.html\" target=\"_blank\">The Humble Football: A Eulogy<\/a>&#8221; on the British Council&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.footballculture.net\/\" target=\"_blank\">Football Culture<\/a> website.<\/p>\n<p>The simplicity and directness of Clough&#8217;s message forms the basis for the article, which is worth a read if only because it is the only piece I&#8217;ve found which focusses (like we do) on the primacy of The Ball above all else in the game. The author, Pete May, suggests that &#8220;next time you see it in action give it a cheer. It is after all, the most important spherical object in the world&#8221;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"width:200px;height:150px\" src=\"https:\/\/theball.tv\/common\/images\/2002\/ball\/the_ball_on_white_200.jpg\" alt=\"The Ball 2002\" \/><br \/>\n<i>&#8220;This is what we play with. Go and get it!&#8221;<\/i><br \/>\nBrian Clough<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"geo":null,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2006\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2006\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2006\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2006\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2006\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2006\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":158,"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2006\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions\/158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2006\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2006\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2006\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}