This Week: AFC Bournemouth

Hello my name’s Jack and welcome to the weekly round-up called ‘This Week’ on Premier Skills English.

In this week, we’ve got lots of interesting words and phrases to help you talk about football in English.

If you are listening to this podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify you can also visit the Premier Skills English website at britishcouncil.org/premierskillsenglish where you’ll be able to download the podcast.

On the Premier Skills English website, you can read the transcript and join the Premier Skills English community by completing a language task in the comments section. This will really help you remember the new words and phrases from the stories from the Premier League.

Now as the new season hasn’t started yet, I am going to talk about the teams that are being promoted to the Premier League. These are AFC Bournemouth, Fulham Football Club and Nottingham Forest Football Club. Today, I’m going to start with AFC Bournemouth.

In this focus on AFC Bournemouth, I am going to use a range of B2 vocabulary that I will talk about more after the story. The words from the story that I’m going to talk about are: county, suburb, stretch, represent, alphabetical, debate, origin and respectable.

Listen out for these phrases in the focus on AFC Bournemouth.

But before that, I want to look at last week’s football phrase. If you didn’t hear it last week, here’s one more chance to guess now.

Last week’s football phrase was quite a tricky one. I thought it was quite easy, but that’s because I hadn’t thought of an alternative phrase that means the same thing. So before I challenge you again, I want to say that I’m not looking for the phrase work out, though it is a good phrase and I believe it was the football phrase not very long ago.

OK - Last week’s phrase was **** ***. This is a common phrase that means to do exercise to stay healthy and in good physical condition. Often, it is used as a noun, with a hyphen between the two words to mean the types of activity you can do to stay healthy. So you can join a ****-*** class. I think that this use is not very fashionable any more, but the verb form is still used a lot.

So ... who got the right answer? Well, congratulations to Adicon from Germany, Goku from Japan, Hsn from Turkey, Taha Gashout from Libya and Vietnguyenngo from Vietnam.

I just want to say sorry for how badly I pronounce your names. Sometimes there’s an English version of your names and so I hope you don’t mind when I use the English version like Daniel_06 from Colombia. My best friend at school was called Daniel so I’m never going to get used to a Colombian pronunciation. And Vietnguyenngo, I am really not sure about your name at all. I hope you can forgive the way I say it.

Anyhow, all of you managed to work out that the phrase I’m looking for was keep fit.

OK, let’s get on with this week’s focus on AFC Bournemouth!

AFC Bournemouth is back in the Premier League

AFC Bournemouth won promotion to the Premier League finishing in second place, just two points behind league leaders Fulham. Bournemouth return to the Premier League after two seasons in the Championship. They were only relegated in 2020 having enjoyed five seasons of top flight football.

Bournemouth is a large town on the south coast of England. It is in the county of Dorset and is quite famous in the UK for having a long sandy beach.

AFC Bournemouth was founded in 1899 as Boscombe, out of the remains of an older club, the Boscombe St John’s Institute football club. Boscombe is a suburb of Bournemouth, east of the centre. As well as having a stretch of beach and Boscombe pier, the suburb is where AFC Bournemouth’s stadium, the Vitality Stadium is located.

The club was known as Boscombe for over 20 years before changing their name to Bournemouth and Boscombe Athletic Football Club to better represent the town. In 1971, the club changed their name again to AFC Bournemouth. The AFC recalls the older name of the club, it represents Athletic Football Club, but it does not stand for Athletic Football Club. The AFC is part of the name and not an abbreviation. The name was changed by Dickie Dowsett who was the club’s commercial manager and an ex-player. He insisted that the AFC should not stand for anything because that way, the club would appear in alphabetical league lists above Arsenal and Aston Villa and is why the club is the first in the list of clubs on the Premier League and Premier Skills English websites. However, when people talk about the club, they usually just say Bournemouth.

AFC Bournemouth’s nickname is the Cherries. While there is some debate about the origin of the nickname, most people believe it came from the cherry-red striped shirts that the club played in. They are also still referred to as Boscombe by some fans.

Their first season in the Premier League was a struggle, but the team avoided relegation and in their second season, they finished in 9th place which was their highest ever league finish. In the following years they managed respectable 12th and 14th place finishes before slipping to 18th place in 2020. They made the playoffs in the championship in 2021, but lost to Brentford. In 2022, they finished in second place so won direct promotion and return to the Premier League.

The words from the focus on AFC Bournemouth that I’m going to talk about are: county, suburb, stretch, represent, alphabetical, debate, origin and respectable.

A county is a division of the UK. It’s how the countries are split up into smaller administrative regionsI think counties are used in Ireland, too. They are a bit like states in the USA, only they have less control over what happens. Each county has a political centre called the county council and they are responsible for things like schools, social care, waste disposal, and roads. I live in Shropshire which is a county in the west of England that borders Wales to the west, Herefordshire to the south and Staffordshire and Cheshire to the north and east. Bournemouth is in Dorset. While counties have an administrative role, there is a cultural aspect to counties and some people identify strongly with the county they are born in.

I said that Boscombe is a suburb of Bournemouth. I’m not sure if suburb is quite right, but it’s what it said on wikipedia. You see, a suburb is normally a residential area outside a city. People who work in the city travel out to the suburbs to live. I mean, they live in houses outside the city. This is because there aren’t enough places to live in city centres. If you live in a city centre, you probably have to live in a flat so if you want a bit more space, perhaps a garden for your kids to play in, then you can move to the suburbs. The reason I don’t think Boscombe is a suburb or not a typical suburb, is that there are lots of things to do in Boscombe. It has part of the beach and a pier and there are lots of businesses. It’s certainly not just a residential suburb where people go to sleep after working in the town centre.

The next word is stretch. This is normally a verb. If you stretch something, you make it as long or wide as possible. You try to cause it to reach as far as possible. You can stretch your body. Footballers will normally stretch as part of their warm up. This means they put their body into positions that makes their muscles as long as they can go. The word stretch can also be a noun and it means a long uninterrupted area of land or water. SO you might talk about a stretch of river, meaning the river between two points. You might hear someone say, this is a beautiful stretch of the Thames. I said that Boscome has a stretch of beach. This means that an uninterrupted area of the beach, along the coast is part of Boscombe.

The next word was represent. This is quite a difficult word to describe and when I looked at the definitions online, none of them quite match the us here. Normally, to represent means to be a sign or a symbol for something else. Or to speak for or take part in a competition for a group of people. So an icon on a road sign represents a hazard, that is something dangerous that a driver needs to look out for. And a sportsperson can represent their country in a sporting competition.

The way I used the word in the focus on AFC Bournemouth was slightly different. If a person looks like or sounds like the people from the group they are in, they could be said to be representative of that group. If someone is very different, perhaps they have extreme views or they are really tall, you could say that they are not representative of the group; that they do not represent the group.

In politics, it’s important that the people in power represent the people they rule over in both senses. They need to speak for and in the interests of the people, much like sports people and they should also be like the people so they understand the issues that are important to the people. When the Boscombe football club became the main football club for the town of Bournemouth, they felt they needed to change the name to include Bournemouth so they could represent the town better.

The next word is much easier to explain. Alphabetical means arranged in the same order as the letters of the alphabet. Ever since the alphabet was first invented, it has been arranged in pretty much the same order and nobody really knows why. At least that was what I found out when I looked it up. The same abcdef pattern has been used for thousands of years. Some people think it was just arranged in that order so people could learn all the letters, as a mnemonic device, a device to help people remember.

I said that there is some debate about the origin of Bournemouth’s nickname. Debate can be a verb meaning to discuss a topic to try to find agreement. Politicians debate what is best for the countries they rule over. In universities, academics debate all kinds of topics. A debate is a discussion or a series of discussions about something. In the USA, there are debates about gun laws. Recently in the news, there have been debates about the role of transgender athletes in different sporting competitions.

The word origin means the beginning of something. If an item's origins were in France, you could say that the object originated in France. Or that it was originally created in France. Its origins were in France. One thing to look out for is sometimes we talk about something’s origin and sometimes we talk about a thing’s origins. If something started to exist in a single place at a single point in time, we say origin. However, if there were more events or actions that led to the creation of something, we can talk about its origins. However, that rule is probably not that helpful as I’m sure you can find lots of examples where the rule is wrong. In the focus on Bournemouth, I spoke about the origin of Bournemouth’s nickname, but I could have spoken about the origins and it would have sounded natural.

The last work I want to talk about is respectable. This word can be broken down into respect and able so it’s used to describe things that people are able to respect. However, respect is quite a difficult word to describe. If you respect someone, then you feel or show admiration, you show that you think they have done something good. People have respect for others if they have achieved something or have other qualities that they think are good or noble. You might respect your friend because they are kind or honest or perhaps they have done something difficult. Often people respect doctors and nurses because they work hard in a profession that helps people. In some cultures, it is important to show respect to older people as they have more knowledge and experience. When we use the adjective respectable, however, it normally means that we think something is good enough. It’s not amazing, but it’s OK. There’s no reason to feel shame for the performance. We often use the adjective respectable to comfort someone who is a bit disappointed. So if someone was hoping to get an A grade in an exam and they ended up getting a B grade, you might say a B is a respectable grade, there’s no reason to feel bad about getting a B.

OK. That’s all the language I want you to think about today. The words were county, suburb, stretch, represent, alphabetical, debate, origin and respectable. Listen to the focus on AFC Bournemouth one more time to hear the words in context and after that, there will be a language challenge and this week’s football phrase.

AFC Bournemouth is back in the Premier League

AFC Bournemouth won promotion to the Premier League finishing in second place, just two points behind league leaders Fulham. Bournemouth return to the Premier League after two seasons in the Championship. They were only relegated in 2020 having enjoyed five seasons of top flight football.

Bournemouth is a large town on the south coast of England. It is in the county of Dorset and is quite famous in the UK for having a long sandy beach.

AFC Bournemouth was founded in 1899 as Boscombe, out of the remains of an older club, the Boscombe St John’s Institute football club. Boscombe is a suburb of Bournemouth, east of the centre. As well as having a stretch of beach and Boscombe pier, the suburb is where AFC Bournemouth’s stadium, the Vitality Stadium is located.

The club was known as Boscombe for over 20 years before changing their name to Bournemouth and Boscombe Athletic Football Club to better represent the town. In 1971, the club changed their name again to AFC Bournemouth. The AFC recalls the older name of the club, it represents Athletic Football Club, but it does not stand for Athletic Football Club. The AFC is part of the name and not an abbreviation. The name was changed by Dickie Dowsett who was the club’s commercial manager and an ex-player. He insisted that the AFC should not stand for anything because that way, the club would appear in alphabetical league lists above Arsenal and Aston Villa and is why the club is the first in the list of clubs on the Premier League and Premier Skills English websites. However, when people talk about the club, they usually just say Bournemouth.

AFC Bournemouth’s nickname is the Cherries. While there is some debate about the origin of the nickname, most people believe it came from the cherry-red striped shirts that the club played in. They are also still referred to as Boscombe by some fans.

Their first season in the Premier League was a struggle, but the team avoided relegation and in their second season, they finished in 9th place which was their highest ever league finish. In the following years they managed respectable 12th and 14th place finishes before slipping to 18th place in 2020. They made the playoffs in the championship in 2021, but lost to Brentford. In 2022, they finished in second place so won direct promotion and return to the Premier League.

Language Challenge

Right, now it’s time for you to think about the language again.

Here are 8 sentences with gaps in them and you have to complete the gaps with the words and phrases from this podcast.

Number 1: Didsbury is a very fashionable _______ of Manchester.
Number 2: There are otters living on a ______ of the river that runs through Ludlow.
Number 3: The teacher made the pupils line up in ___________ order with little Andrew at the front and Zahra at the back.
Number 4: I just got a new job. The hours are flexible and I get good holidays and the salary is __________.
Number 5: The club board spent most of the meeting in a _______ about the new stadium.
Number 6: Yorkshire is the biggest _______ in England.
Number 7: The best part of superhero stories is their ______ stories where we find out how they got their super powers.
Number 8: These messages on facebook don’t ________ how most customers feel about the shop.
Leave your answers in the comments section on the Premier Skills English website and I will go through them next week.

Football phrase

Now it’s time for this week’s football phrase.

This week’s football phrase is a tricky one. I’ve chosen it from the hard vocabulary selection from the Premier Vocabulary pages. The phrase is the *** ******. This means the highest tier in something. It’s mostly used to refer to sporting categories, to the best or most competitive of the groups in a particular sport. The Premier League is the highest tier in the English Football League so it could be called the *** ******.

That’s all I have time for today. Before I finish, I just wanted to say that I hope you found this podcast useful, and I hope all of you stay fit and healthy and safe.

Bye for now and enjoy your football.