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Untypical Boro is a lively topical blog by the Evening Gazette's award winning football columnist Anthony Vickers that aims to get behind the headlines to flesh out the stories that Boro fans are talking about.

Incisive, provocative and well informed it seeks to engage with articulate supporters and give them a platform to help set the agenda on the issues that matter.

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Vot's In Eine Name?

Posted by on March 20, 2006 2:22 PM | Permalink

ARE YOU going to Basle? Or maybe to Basel instead?

The sports desk massive is currently engaged in a vicious internal war of words, split over not only the pronounciation of Boro's next UEFA Cup opponents but also over the logic of Anglicing some foreign place names but not others. We use Beijing in the paper for instance. But not Mumbai.

Plus there is an opportunist sub-textual squabble going on over the headline possibilities determined by this policy decision.

Obviously, we all want Basel. Basel Brushed Aside. Basel Fawlty - Boro take advantage of slips at the back. You know it makes sense.

But the subs house style is to Anglicise and you can't get so many cheap laughs out of 'Barrrl'. Subs house style has resulted in the past in countless stories about Down Under spin kings, shot-stoppers or strikers being dubbed "Wizard of Aus" in the Gazette. It invites a German accent and a compulsion to assume it is Austria.

So Barrrl it is. Unfortunately we can't find a room there because the world's biggest convention of jewellers is in town. We may stay elsewhere and travel in on the day. It's only 40 miles from Munchen.