Bronte Follower: Blog

Since I have had a few readers of Beth thank me for teaching them a bit about soccer, I thought I would take advantage of a recent post on the Tifo Football YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9QpXX47Mo4) to write here about the subject of that video.

The point the video makes is spot on, but I also wanted to give Tifo a shoutout for using an example from women's football (which is a rare occurrence in general soccer/football videos). The point of the video is that just because two players occupy the same named position, that does not necessarily mean that they have the same roles (term from the video).

Close readers of Beth will note that, though Rachel and Kim are both starting wing fullbacks on the high-school team (left and right, respectively), they have differing roles. While the primary tasks of the two are defense, Rachel has a secondary responsibility on offense, specifically making runs up the sideline to spread the offense. In fact, during the season, Rachel had two goals and an assist to Kim's single assist.

Another example from the high-school team are the two starting strikers, Rhee and Heather. Rhee is something of a big, bruiser of a striker. She can mix it up in heavy traffic and often come out the winner, while Heather, who might not weigh even 100 pounds, would do poorly in that role; she is more a finesse player.

My final example comes from the premier team, again involving Heather. Before her ankle injury, Lissa was the starting right wing and, though it's not specifically discussed in canon, she was there simply because she was too good not to start, but other positions were filled by others whose talents were more optimized for those positions. When Heather got a chance to show her skills because of Lissa's injury, she proved herself to be a better right wing than Lissa, thus relegating Lissa to being a backup.

In soccer/football, various players have differing skills and interests, and, all else being equal (which it rarely, if ever, is), the team that can maximize on the various skill and interest sets of its players -- that is, have the various positions and roles filled by players that excel in those SPECIFICALLY -- has a higher likelihood of winning the match.

The exhausting-for-me project (see previous post) will be continuing for another week or so. I decided to get something up for Chapter 99, as it's been too long, so chopped off the next two days of diary time and put them at the top of Chapter 100 (they were just bits and pieces of scenes). December and January in Beth time will be interesting, and I'll get to getting some of it published soon. Hopefully. The problem with working in the field I work: slow with not a lot of work for stretches, then everyone wants us! Yes, that wreaks hell on my writing schedule, but it's good for my bottom line!

A surprise new project has me traveling to and fro and I've had nearly no time to write. I expect this situation to continue for another week or two, after which I'll be able to leave the underlings and temps on their own and head back home. Conversely, I'm not too sad about the huge gobs of OT that will embiggen my paychecks.

I've posted Chapter 4 of Sandy, although it's a short one, and made some progress on Chapter 8 of A Tall Young Girl. I should be able to get that eighth chapter posted before long and might even have some time to get the fifth chapter of Sandy up by the end of the month. I've also got a lot of future chapters of Beth partly, even mostly written. Now I just need to get the intervening chapters written. :-)

I finally got time to finish this chapter, the delay being caused by some work staffing problems and some personal editing commitments to author friends. This month, I hope to upload additions to A Tall Young Girl and Sandy, but we'll see how things go.